Frequently Asked Questions

Staff log in through the Foremind platform on any phone, tablet or computer. They browse counsellor profiles, choose who they want to see, and book directly. No phone call, no referral, no work email and no approval from HR or their manager.

Launch is done in with you: onboarding collateral, staff communications and a live launch webinar, with in-person sessions available. We then run a 90-day engagement campaign and check in quarterly with usage data so you can see what's landing. Driving uptake is our job, not something handed off to your HR team.

Most EAPs go unused because of how they're accessed, not because staff don't need them. Phoning a stranger, explaining yourself, then waiting weeks is enough to stop most people before they start. Foremind removes all three steps: staff see real counsellor profiles, pick someone themselves, and book the same day.

Most staff can book and be seen the same day. Availability is shown live in the platform, so nobody has to wait to find out when they'll be seen.

Yes. Foremind offers 24/7 support through an after-hours crisis line, so staff can reach someone immediately at any hour, including nights and weekends if they need to. Counselling appointments are also available outside standard business hours, so shift-based and on-call teams aren't limited to a nine-to-five window.

No. Foremind runs in the browser on any device, so there's nothing to download and nothing sitting on a personal phone for a colleague to notice. Staff can add it to their home screen if they want app-style access.

Most sessions are delivered by video, which is what makes same-day access possible for distributed and regional teams. Face-to-face is available in some locations. On-site support is also part of our critical incident response.

A traditional EAP is a phone number: you call, explain yourself, get assigned whoever is free, and often wait weeks. A modern EAP lets staff see who they're booking, choose for themselves, and get in the same day. It also gives the employer live usage data rather than a report six months after the fact.

Yes. We support organisations from 5 staff up to several hundred, and pay-as-you-go pricing means smaller teams aren't paying for capacity they won't use. Psychosocial duty of care applies regardless of headcount, so a small employer carries the same obligations as a large one.

Yes. Every practitioner on the Foremind platform holds current membership with an Australian professional body and practises under Australian standards, codes of ethics and disciplinary frameworks. There are no offshore call centres.

All practitioners hold current membership with the Australian Counselling Association (Level 3 or 4), the Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia (Clinical Level), or the Australian Association of Social Workers as a verified Mental Health Clinician. All hold a current Working with Children or Vulnerable People Check, and carry their own professional indemnity and public liability insurance.

Yes. Practitioners are vetted before joining the platform and monitored on an ongoing basis, and anyone falling short of their professional obligations is removed. We deliberately keep a smaller, curated practitioner team rather than running an open marketplace, so quality can actually be overseen.

Yes. Profiles show each practitioner's background and areas of practice, including vicarious trauma, workplace conflict, grief, addiction and trauma from client or patient aggression. Staff can see this before booking rather than being assigned whoever is available.

Yes, and it's one of the main reasons people follow through on a first session. Staff see real profiles with photos, backgrounds and specialisations, and book whoever they're comfortable with. If the fit isn't right, they can choose someone else.

Counselling is the core of it, covering both work and personal matters. Staff can also access holistic services through the same platform, including dietitians, nutrition support and family law. There's a library of lived experience and wellbeing content for people who aren't ready to book a session yet.

Yes. Practitioners can be filtered by language, gender and specialisation, and the team includes practitioners experienced in working with culturally and linguistically diverse, First Nations, LGBTQIA+ and neurodivergent staff. Because profiles are visible before booking, staff choose the fit themselves rather than having it decided for them.

Yes. What an employee discusses with a counsellor stays between them and that practitioner. Your employer is never told who booked a session, when, or what was discussed.

Employers see aggregated, de-identified data only: overall usage levels, broad themes, and which teams or sites are under pressure. No names, no individual records, no session content. It's enough to act on patterns, never enough to identify a person. This information is only shown for businesses with sufficient headcount to protect anonymity.

No. Staff book directly, with no referral, no approval and no need to tell anyone. Removing that step is one of the biggest reasons people actually follow through.

Yes. Staff can raise concerns such as bullying, workload pressure or unsafe behaviour without attaching their name. The report reaches the right person and feeds into your risk register, so you can see and act on issues early, while the person who raised it stays unidentified.

Anonymity matters more in small teams, not less, which is why access sits entirely outside your organisation. Nobody internal sees bookings or usage at an individual level, and reporting thresholds mean small teams can't be reverse-engineered from the data. Staff can also view practitioner profiles before booking, so they can check they won't be matched with someone they know locally.

All data is stored on AWS servers located in Sydney. Foremind complies with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and is registered with the Employee Assistance Professionals Association of Australia.

At minimum, look for SOC 2 Type 2 certification, regular independent penetration testing, and Australian data residency. Foremind holds SOC 2 Type 2, is penetration tested annually, and publishes its security controls in a public trust centre.

Pricing is usually per employee per month, based on total headcount rather than how many people use the service. Costs vary widely depending on whether sessions are bundled in and whether compliance tooling is included. A more useful comparison is cost per employee who actually uses it: an EAP with 2% utilisation can work out several times more expensive per person helped than one that gets used.

On our inclusive plans, each employee has six sessions per year across all matters. Sessions run up to an hour. On pay-as-you-go, there's no set allocation and you're billed only for sessions used.

Yes. Some organisations want fewer sessions to keep costs predictable, others want more headroom. We'll set the allocation to suit your budget and workforce rather than holding you to a fixed number.

Pay-As-You-Go gives platform access with sessions billed as used. Inclusive EAP bundles a set number of sessions per employee. EAP & Compliance adds the psychosocial hazard portal, and Foremind 360 is the full platform, priced to your organisation. Discounted pricing is available for not-for-profits and charities.

With your approval, additional sessions can be arranged on a pay-as-you-go basis, or you can buy a session bundle the whole organisation draws from. If you'd rather not fund more, the employee can continue privately with the same practitioner, since our counsellors are independent practitioners.

Yes. Manager training is included, covering how to recognise when someone is struggling, how to have the conversation, and when to hand over to a professional. The aim is to make managers confident to respond, not to make them counsellors.

Critical incident response is available, including immediate access to counsellors, on-site support where needed, and follow-up for the team afterwards. Managers get a debrief too, since they're usually carrying the incident as well as managing it.

Very little. Staff self-register and self-book, so there's no referral process, no approvals and no case management on your side. Launch collateral and communications are done for you, and reporting is generated automatically.

A manager can point someone towards Foremind, but the employee books it themselves. Nothing comes back to the manager about whether they went or what was discussed. Keeping the referral informal is what protects confidentiality and keeps people willing to use it.

We handle it. You get onboarding collateral, staff communications and a live launch webinar introducing the platform and encouraging uptake, with in-person launch sessions available. A 90-day engagement campaign follows to build usage in the period that matters most.

Most organisations are live within 24 hours of signing, so there's no gap in cover. We handle setup and the launch to staff, and anyone mid-treatment with your current provider can continue that relationship separately while new bookings move across. Check your existing contract's notice period before you commit to a switch date.

Ask for actual utilisation rates, not the number of services offered. Ask how long someone waits for a first appointment, whether staff can choose their counsellor, where practitioners are based and what they're qualified in, how often you'll receive usage data, and whether the provider does anything to drive engagement after launch. Then ask whether it covers your psychosocial hazard obligations or only the support side.

Most organisations are live within 24 hours of signing. Setup is handled by us, and staff need nothing more than a link to get started.

Ours continues past go-live: a named contact, quarterly engagement reviews, ongoing communications collateral and a check-in through the first 90 days. The most common complaint we hear about previous providers is that they invoiced reliably and did nothing else.

You get a live dashboard rather than a report twice a year. It shows usage levels, presenting themes and where in the organisation pressure is building, all aggregated and de-identified. Quarterly reviews walk you through what it's telling you.

Utilisation is the first measure, since an unused EAP protects nobody. Beyond that: how quickly people are getting seen, whether usage spreads across the organisation or clusters in one team, and whether issues are surfacing early rather than as crises. Compare it against what your previous provider delivered, not against zero.

The question worth asking is what your current utilisation is. Most traditional EAPs sit in low single digits, which means you're paying for cover your people aren't reaching. If yours is being used, staff can get seen quickly, and it covers your psychosocial obligations, there's no reason to move. If not, it's worth knowing what you're actually getting for the spend.

Psychosocial hazards are aspects of work that can cause psychological harm: high workloads, low control, poor support, bullying and harassment, exposure to trauma or aggression, role conflict and job insecurity. They sit under the same WHS duty of care as physical hazards.

You must identify hazards, assess the risk, control it so far as is reasonably practicable, and review whether those controls are working. The duty is ongoing rather than a one-off assessment, and regulators expect documented evidence at each step.

The psychosocial hazard portal covers the full four-step cycle in one place: a risk register, a psychosocial safety survey, anonymous incident reporting, gap analysis templates and audit-ready exportable reports. Because it sits alongside the EAP, everyday support usage and incident reporting build the compliance record as you go. When a regulator or your board asks for evidence, it already exists.

No. An EAP is a control measure, and a valuable one, but it only addresses harm after it's occurred. It doesn't identify hazards, assess risk or evidence that controls are working. Offering counselling on its own leaves three of the four required steps undocumented.

Yes. The duty of care is the same whether you employ seven people or seven hundred, and there's no small-business exemption. The process is simpler at smaller scale, but it still needs to be done and documented.

Officers have a positive duty of due diligence under WHS law, which can carry personal liability. In practice this means being able to show you understood the risks and took reasonable steps to address them. Documented evidence is what discharges that duty.