Corporate Services
1. Employee Partner Relationship Health Services Program
2. Organizational Relationship Mediation Services
Employee Partner Relationship
Health Services Program
Lead the world in providing meaningful prevention and remedial services to protect
and repair committed relationships.
Setting a standard presently not available through most Employee Assistance Programs
Rationale
In the August 1996 issue of “The Journal of Marriage and Family” researchers state that, “marital distress is positively associated with work loss.” They go on to say that, “based on the average earnings of participants, work loss associated with marital problems translates into a loss of approximately $6.8 billion per year. These findings suggest that family interventions targeted at the prevention of marital problems may result in important psychosocial and economic benefits for business and society.” Dr. John Gottman has been researching couples and marital conflict for 35 years and during the course of his research he was able to predict whether a couple would divorce or not with 93.6% accuracy. Dr. Gottman’s research also garnered interesting findings on the relationship between contempt in marriage and physical health. In an interview with Tara Brown that aired on 60 Minutes Australia on May 21, 2010, Dr. Gottman reported that, “we can predict how many infectious illnesses a person receiving contempt will have in the next four years. People in those kinds of relationships really live significantly less.” Marital conflict affects more than just marriages and families. Marital conflict affects the individual's health, their ability to go to work and their ability to work well when they are there.
Many organizations have an employee assistance program (EAP) that acts as an extended health care program devoted to employee mental health. Under the rubric of employee assistance, one third of all employee assistance dollars are devoted to the repair of couple relationships.
This employee partner relationship health program has four unique services. These services are integrated carrying similar messages based upon the Gottman research findings. Most EAPs are not organized to deliver the quality of services offered through this program:
Prevention
- Employee Partner Relationship Health Promotion Couples Workshop: The Art & Science of Love Couples Workshop is based upon the Gottman research finding and a psycho educational model of delivery with ten years of operational experience delivered to thousands of couples.
- Visual Educational Posters with messages reflective of the Gottman research findings.
- Educational articles written for the general public with messages reflective of the Gottman research findings.
Remedial
- International Executive Partner Relationship Therapist trained by North America’s foremost world leaders in understanding and intervening in couple relationships travels to a couple’s home to provide Intensive Couples Relationship Therapy or couples travel to Simcoe, Ontario Canada.
The Art & Science of Love Couples Workshop;
A New Structural Support for Employees
Dr. Gottman used his research findings with his wife, Dr. Julie Gottman, to create The Art & Science of Love Couples Workshop. This 2-day workshop has the therapeutic effect of 24 private therapy sessions and provides a powerful foundation for couples to improve their life together, their family and their health.
The experience of The Art & Science of Love Couples Workshop by couples as a prevention intervention is more robust then remedial couples’ therapy. One reason for this is simple: couples wait, on average, 6 years following the beginning of problems to seek assistance. This delay in getting assistance is often lethal to their sense of love and hope. For couples who live with intention, The Art & Science of Love Couples Workshop provides a relationship map while taking into account the uniqueness of all relationships. The “how to” opinions are based on scientific observation and inquiry of the masters of relationship, happy stable couples.
Companies and organizations that provide employee assistance programs now have access to The Art & Science of Love Couples Workshop. In the workshop, employees will learn skills to improve communication and feelings of well being within their relationship to reduce stress in their home, improve their health, reduce sick days and minimize personal distractions at work. In a Newsweek article from May 19, 1999 about Dr. John Gottman’s research, Barbara Kantowitz and Pat Wingert state that, “happily married people are healthier; even their immune systems work better than those of people who are unhappily married or divorced.” The skills couples learn in the workshop will help to reduce stress and improve their quality of life which translates into a greater ability to perform at work and outside the home. In addition, they will learn skills that translate to the workplace. Dr. Gottman discusses how the relationship skills taught in the workshop can be used in other relationships, including work relationships, in his book, “The Relationship Cure.”
Companies like Microsoft in Redmond, WA, have added this workshop to their EAP because it is an added benefit for their employees that improves their personal lives and teaches them skills that they use while at work.
Unfortunately, as mentioned previously, most couples attend private therapy six years after their problems began. This creates serious difficulties for overcoming their distress. The couples’ private therapy benefit is short term in most EAP’s and most of the benefits are lost within the first year of therapy. When the difficulties arise again in the relationship they are often interpreted very negatively by the couple. Consequently, those couples attending private therapy are more likely to experience relationship failure than the general population.
After attending The Art & Science of Love, Microsoft employees were asked if the workshop will support their work at Microsoft. They replied, “Absolutely! I intend to use a soft start approach when communicating difficult issues. And probably more important, having a happy and emotional marriage allows me to be more productive and focused at work.” Dr. Gottman has done follow-up research on couples who have attended the workshop. The researchers assessed the couples’ marital satisfaction before the workshop, after the workshop, and then after six months had passed. What were the results? The workshop created effective, lasting changes in marital satisfaction with effects similar to those obtained in six months of marital therapy.
The Art & Science of Love Couples Workshop is provided five times a year at The Seattle Centre in Seattle, WA, twice a year in Langley BC, twice a year in Simcoe Ont., twice a year in Independence, Ohio, and in Washington, DC and many other locations in North America. Our confidence in the training and certification process allows us to offer your employees access to all of the ASL approved workshops listed on the Gottman.com website. The rates vary across the workshops and therefore the agreement concerning cost would have to be adjusted accordingly. You could design your program for attendance to take place only through a Mike Fidler & Associates Inc. Art & Science of Love Couples Workshop, or if you choose geographic flexibility as an option we would discuss how this could work.
We invite you to experience the weekend for yourself.
Make The Art & Science of Love Couples Workshop available to your employees
- Consider adding The Art & Science of Love Couples Workshop to your company’s employee assistance
 program as an added benefit for your employees and spouses.
- There are many pricing options and EAP integration options
- some options will not increase the cost to your programming and
- most options will not require a change in EAP provider. Explore the possibilities with us.
- We can come to you with The Art & Science of Love Couples Workshop if you have employees and their families living away from North America or in remote regions of North America. You could offer the program to your employee families and the local community as a public service.
Visual Educational Posters with messages reflective of the Gottman research findings.
- Encourage employees to access your EAP while increasing their awareness about what sustains a happy and
 stable relationship and what the danger signals are for a troubled relationship.
- Inform employees about The Art & Science of Love Couples Workshop while increasing their awareness about what sustains a happy relationship and what the danger signals are for a troubled relationship.
- Companies offering their employees access to The Art & Science of Love Couples Workshop will receive these materials free to bolster their employee partner relationship health promotion program.
- Companies, social service agencies, EAP companies, private therapists and faith based organizations can purchase these posters for educational purposes and affix the name of their organization as appropriate.
Educational articles written for the general public with messages reflective of the Gottman research findings.
- It is common practice to include self-help articles in employee newsletters devoted to health promotion.
- The articles provide focus on the down to earth Gottman concepts culled from the research observations of the
 Masters and the Disasters of relationship.
- A set of articles are offered free to corporations and organizations adding access to The Art & Science of Love Couples Workshop to their EAP services.
Intensive Couples Relationship Therapy for Executives and their partners living in under serviced regions of the world.
- Strains of travel, over working, disconnection from loved ones, lack of family support in close proximity and loneliness can play havoc with the bonds of love along with a whole host of other issues.
- Intensive Couples Relationship Therapy is generally delivered over a two day period providing about 15 hours of therapy to the couple. An offsite assessment is done prior to contracting the delivery of services.
- The couple come to our clinical office in Simcoe or Brantford, Ontario, Canada or the therapist travels to your location.
- Provide your executives and their partners with a highly skilled and trained couples therapist. See Intensive Couples Relationship Therapy on this website.
- Most jurisdictions lack the combination of highly trained and highly experienced couples therapists.
- Most jurisdictions in the world lack therapists trained by the world leading therapists Sue Johnson, Dr. John Gottman and Dr. Julie Gottman.
- Intensive Couples Relationship Therapy is not a substitute for conventional therapy but can be a preferred approach given the known benefits of this model.
Organizational Relationship Mediation Services
Relationships within organizations, such as equals on a team or in a department, can reach points when antagonisms stop them from achieving their potential. This too can apply to supervisor/employee relationships. In such situations, management may place a high value on the people involved. Rather than break up relationships or terminate members of the organization, they would like to understand the issues and find a means to deal with the relationship issues, in the hope of recovering productivity and a psychologically healthy work environment. Mike Fidler uses a combination of mediation and relationship repair techniques to address the relationship and return it to functionality.
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