Perhaps our most distinctive advantage is our “Glocal” model, or the manner in which we mentor, oversee, and treat our provider partners and affiliates. When introducing an EAP to several thousand local national employees in Brazil in 2000, Chestnut Global Partners (CGP) implemented a model we refer to as “glocal”, meaning the program is simultaneously “global” and “local” in perspective. This "glocal" approach enables a multinational organization to provide global EAP services by using our best-of-breed “in-country” provider partners who can offer culturally relevant and competent programs.
The "glocal" model better serves international human resource issues and organizational business priorities by implementing an EAP that is culturally sensitive, community-based, locally accessible, and highly collaborative. An EAP is only as effective as the affiliate providers it utilizes, so we treat providers collegially and make them an integral part of program implementation. In this way, we have an accessible “clinic without walls”. At the heart of the glocal approach is a recognition that professional help works best when there is a direct relationship between those asking for help and those providing the service.
We view the following practices as key in implementing a successful "glocal" program:
- Ensuring that local providers have the infrastructure, sophistication, and systems to deliver a high quality and responsive service.
- Ensuring that local providers understand the principles of EAP and know how to effectively make those principles relevant and appropriate to the local culture.
- Having the monitoring and quality management systems in place to coordinate and integrate services over time and across geographies.
- Having local providers align and integrate at employer’s key regional sites.
- Ensuring that local providers have the financial motivation to build a close and consultative relationship with regional offices by paying them reasonably and quickly.
- Providing management and supervisory training in the local language(s) on identification and referral of the “troubled” employees to the EAP.
- Promoting the EAP to local employees and families in culturally appropriate ways.
- Providing direct local access in the caller’s native language and dialect.