EAP’s: Employee Assistance Programs with Jeff Christie and Tony Devencenzi

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Jeff Christie  is an accomplished employee assistance professional with 30 years of experience rendering, establishing, expanding, managing, and operating employee assistance programs, primarily for Fortune 500 companies. He has broad experience coordinating EAPs in relation to organizational safety, security, and healthcare concerns. Jeff is well-known for his excellent skills in writing, public speaking, strategic planning, research analysis, financial management, and team leadership. Jeff has served as president of the two largest of the field’s professional associations: the Employee Assistance Roundtable and the Employee Assistance Professionals Association. His specific work has involved guiding EAP staff in assisting managers and supervisors dealing with employee performance problems, fitness for duty, and workplace conflict. He has provided consultation to company leadership on job-impacting behavioral issues, interpersonal problems, drug and alcohol concerns, sexual harassment, diversity, threats of violence, and benefits design related to mental health and substance abuse. He has partnered with benefit administrators in the oversight of managed behavioral healthcare vendor as well as ERISA, ADA, ACA, and HIPAA compliance. Jeff has led EAP/WorkLife function in tracking and reporting the value, cost effectiveness and impact of its services on productivity and safety.

Tony Devencenzi  manages all aspects of the program, including services delivered by the internal Employee Assistance Consulting (EAC) team and multiple external employee assistance vendors for Wells Fargo including OptumHealth EAP and Shepell Morneau International EAP. Tony is responsible for strategy development and implementation of behavioral health risk mitigation services including threat management, domestic violence, fitness for duty evaluations, robbery response and workplace critical incidents. He also leads the program design and oversight of employee assistance vendor audits and process improvement plans. Prior to his current role at Wells Fargo, Tony was Director for the Kaiser Permanente Employee and Physician Assistance Program. He also managed multiple functions for the Kaiser California Division Shared Services team including Leadership Development, Professional Development, Organization Effectiveness, Learning and Development and Organization Research. Tony joined Wells Fargo in 2007. He has a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from the University of San Francisco and is a licensed Marriage and Child Therapist (MFT) and Certified Employee Assistance Professional (CEAP). He is a member of the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals (ATAP), Employee Assistance Roundtable (EAR), International Critical Incident Stress Foundation (ICISF), and Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).