For Insurers

Your clients will be a phone call or click away from superior support, whenever they need access to it.

Business assistance clients will*:

1. Call us at 1-877-412-7483 and provide their policy number. If they have access to the Healthy Business Bookmark, they can also request support through an online form on that site.
2. A member of our intake team will actively listen to their concerns and will work with them to identify and match them with the human resources, legal or financial professional best suited to meet their needs and most likely to produce a successful outcome.
3. For business clients looking to refer employees who are struggling, we have an extensive Canadian counsellor network (all held to the highest qualification standards in their fields) that can provide the timely and confidential support employees need—either through phone, video or in-person sessions—whenever they need it.
4. Business clients will also have access to the Healthy Business Bookmark—a carefully curated online library of business information and resources (including sample forms, how-to guides, podcasts and videos) they can access at any time to supplement the professional telephone guidance.

*While their experience will always be exceptional, services may vary by plan.

Employees covered under an assistance program will:

1. Call us at 1-877-412-7483 and provide their certificate and policy number. They can also request support through our online form.
2. Rather than just providing a list of area counsellors, our intake team will actively listen to the individual’s concerns and work with them to identify and match them with the professional best suited to meet their needs and most likely to produce a successful outcome.
3. Our Canadian counsellor network (all held to the highest qualification standards in their fields) is extensive and will provide the kind of confidential support you’d want for your own family—however, and wherever they need it.
4. Note that employees can access support in person, by phone or video.

With Arete, your experience will be exceptional. It’s what we like to call ‘The Arete Difference’ and here’s a few highlights for what you can expect from your journey with us:

1. Simple materials to help you easily demonstrate the added value of Arete products and potentially increase your business revenue.
2. High touch support from a dedicated Program Management Advisor who understands your needs and the marketplace and can support with problem solving, navigation and support for questions around reporting, promotion and more.
3. The opportunity for in-person or digital information sessions to help meet your needs.
4. Access to unique products that can differentiate you and solidify your reputation as a problem solver for your clients.
5. The opportunity to white label product offerings and the flexibility to tailor them to meet your clients’ needs.
6. High-quality utilization reporting designed to help you make informed choices for your business and the clients you serve.
7. The opportunity to be featured in research initiatives that set Arete, and your business by association, apart from the crowd.
8. Secure data systems built to protect sensitive personal information so you can rest assured that your and your clients’ information is secure.
9. The opportunity to annually audit—either by supporting you or through an independent organization—to ensure our service and reporting continue to meet and exceed your needs.
10. Confidence that Arete products and services are research-backed and proven to improve business results.

Offering high-touch, top quality assistance programs to your business clients and their employees or members makes excellent business sense.

In addition to being the right thing to do, our assistance programs are proven to:

1. Provide a significant overall return on investment. A recent study based on anonymized Arete data estimated that every $1 dollar invested in the Arete Employee Assistance Program yielded up to 11 times the financial return based on improvements in work performance and reductions in absence for workers who accessed the program.
2. Lower prescription drug costs. Recent research, conducted on our behalf, found that employees/members who resolved their problems with our Assistance Program had significantly reduced prescription drug claim costs over the period.
3. Reduce disability claims. Programs like ours, when thoughtfully integrated with existing absence and disability management programs, can be effective in reducing the number of long-term disability claims associated with mental health issues—one of the fastest growing categories of disability costs in Canada. In fact, recent research conducted on our behalf, found that employees who resolved their presenting problems through our Employee Assistance Program were 3.3 times less likely to make a long-term disability claim in the following 12-month period.
4. Mitigate risk through transparency. Employees or members access counselling or guidance through our Arete professional network and we are billed directly for those services by the provider. No billing or transactions take place between the Arete professional and the employee/member or their insurance plan or health benefits. This model is unique in the marketplace and is designed to proactively mitigate any risk (or perceived risk) that the insurer could be paying for counselling twice—once through the Assistance Program and once through the psychological benefit.
5. Provide a seamless, confidential and positive experience for your clients. We understand how important it is that those covered under the plan experience the same high-touch, superior experience they’ve come to expect from your organization. You can rest assured knowing that we constantly evaluate our processes and service delivery (both internally and through independent audits) to ensure we are always meeting this high standard, and are nimble and flexible enough to be able to adjust with ease when needed.

Client privacy, confidentiality and data security is of the utmost importance to us. To maintain this high standard:

• all Arete employees are bound by a confidentiality agreement and any personal information is collected in accordance with privacy legislation;
• our online reporting system, e-Tera, employs a confidential client coding system as well as two main applications (one for Arete staff and one for its counselling professionals) that have a separation of data between the intake process, the professional counselling sessions and the plan administration data to ensure privacy is maintained at all times during the transfer and recording of information;
• the nature and content of counselling sessions cannot be shared without the written consent of the client; and
• employers may be provided with high-level, aggregate program usage reports on occasion, though these reports never include any identifying information.

Because people are at the heart of what we do, their experiences are critically important to our ongoing success. We know that collecting and analyzing data helps us to make decisions that improve experiences for all those we serve, but we’re very careful that our pursuit of this data is not a means to an end or merely confirming a bias.

As a result, all research conducted on behalf of Arete or using Arete’s anonymized data is administered and analyzed by an independent research firm. It’s very unusual in this field to invest in independent research, and we’re incredibly proud of this pursuit, and what we’ve learned as a result.

Here’s a few highlights of how we use research and data to assess how we’re doing:

1. Client Reported Outcomes Survey. Every Arete client is asked to participate in a short pre- and post-contact survey to assess their experiences with us. We receive the analyzed results each spring and use them to improve internal intake, referral and case management processes, as well as our ongoing assessment of quality assurance within our provider network (both counsellors and specialized providers of human resources, legal and financial guidance).

Of course, we also share the results with our clients and use the information in marketing and other promotional materials.

2. Ongoing investments. In addition to the client survey, we also invest significantly in having our Employee Assistance Program independently researched and evaluated on an ongoing basis so we can continue to evaluate and demonstrate the impact on a number of important outcomes, including:
   1. mental health,
   2. problem resolution,
   3. workplace productivity and engagement and
   4. saved costs for insurers to other lines of benefit, such as reduced disability claims and prescription medication, etc.

The results of these evaluations are always shared with our clients, and are often published within scientific, peer reviewed journals.