- author, Alice Hart
- role, File on 4
A BBC investigation has found that the UK’s largest provider of workplace mental health services allowed its corporate clients to listen in on confidential helpline calls without the callers’ knowledge or permission.
Counsellors who worked for Health Assured told BBC’s File on 4 the practice was “grossly inappropriate” and “unethical”, and lawyers said it also risked breaching privacy and data protection laws.
Health Assured told the BBC that the behaviour was “against company policy” and that it had “taken steps to prevent this from happening in the future”.
The company strongly denied allegations that its actions violated users’ confidentiality or privacy.
Health Assured provides Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) services, including helplines and short-term counselling, to 13 million workers across the UK and Ireland.
EAPs are designed to help employees deal with personal issues that may be affecting their well-being and performance at work.
A number of people, including 30 current and former employees of Health Assured and its parent company, were contacted by the BBC after it reported allegations in March that calls from vulnerable people to the helpline were not always answered appropriately.
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Health Assured denied the allegations at the time, saying it maintained the highest standards and that “people are at the heart of the care we provide”. It also said it used a range of methods to support callers, with the most appropriate method determined by detailed clinical assessment.
In addition to the wiretapping of secret calls, new allegations made to the BBC about Health Assured include:
- Non-clinically trained staff are being mobilised to clear the backlog of first line helpline calls.
- Non-disclosure agreements are used to prevent former employees from speaking out about allegations of mistreatment or discrimination.
- Some former staff have been threatened with legal action if they do not remove negative online reviews about Health Assured.
- One former employee, who had no clinical training, said she had to search for advice online while waiting for a call from a suicidal person to be transferred to a counselor.
“I don’t know who called.”
Maria (not her real name) worked as a counselor at Health Assured for several years.
She said it was not unusual for representatives of corporate clients – companies that already contract with Health Assured to provide services for their employees – to be allowed to wiretap helpline calls to see how the service was operating.
“The premise of the helpline is confidentiality, [callers] “I had no idea,” she said. “It was never made public. It’s very unethical.”
Another former employee said corporate clients were offered the opportunity to listen to calls that might contain confidential information in order to “defuse the situation” following complaints.
“That’s what I was told. [a corporate client] It was going to be wiretapped. In that case, the counselor knew because they wanted to make sure she was doing her best, but the person who called was never informed.”
The helpline is designed to offer support to employees experiencing personal issues such as bullying, bereavement or depression.
Sources said there were multiple cases where corporate clients themselves were confused by the calls and sought support from Health Assured’s counselors.
“If there was a high-risk call or a suicidal call, [the person listening in] In the end, it was traumatic.”
Health Assured’s website says it is committed to privacy and data protection principles and that these helplines are “necessarily confidential due to privacy laws and ethics”.
The caller also said, “No matter what you say, rest assured that you will not be told anything beyond the advisor you spoke to.”
In a statement, Health Assured told the BBC that its practice of listening to “part of the initial helpline call” for corporate clients was done in good faith “to demonstrate quality assurance”, but acknowledged it was not company policy and would not do it again.
The company strongly denied the allegations that it had breached caller confidentiality, adding that “appropriate… agreements had been in place.” [those] People who listened to parts of the call live.”
The company did not say whether consent was sought, nor did it comment on whether any sensitive personal information was disclosed during the call.
In addition to corporate clients, counsellors applying to work for Health Assured were allowed to listen in on live helpline calls without the callers’ knowledge or permission as part of an open recruitment day. This happened as recently as February this year.
Image source, HEALTH ASSURANCE LIMITED.
Terry Hanley, professor of counselling psychology at the University of Manchester, told the BBC he thought the practice was “highly questionable” and “unnecessary” given how easy it would be to adopt a “more sensitive” alternative.
Health Assured told the BBC that this was to ensure candidates were “able to deal effectively with the types of calls we handle” and that it was “totally appropriate” as they were qualified counsellors and would follow ethical standards and “strict confidentiality agreements”.
Health Assured is part of the Peninsula Group, a Manchester-based HR, employment law and health and safety consultancy whose founder and group CEO is Peter Done, founder of gambling giant Betfred.
Health Assured was awarded a £2 million contract in February to provide emotional support services to the UK COVID-19 Inquiry Committee. The Inquiry committee terminated the contract in March 2024, two weeks after the BBC’s initial investigation. The Inquiry committee told the BBC it had exercised an option, which is common in these types of contracts.
“I swear to secrecy.”
The Health Assured helpline was marketed to customers as a “fourth emergency service”, but former employees told the BBC that demand often vastly outstripped supply, particularly during the pandemic. As a result, staff with no clinical training were sometimes mobilised at weekends, so-called “Super Saturdays”, to answer first calls and clear the backlog.
Separately, before the pandemic, “flooded” calls were sometimes routed to the phones of employees in other parts of the Peninsula Group, former employees at the companies said, who were employed to provide business advice but had no clinical training.
Former employees say they were expected to answer helpline inquiries and set up calls with counselors during overtime, but the content of the calls led them to give advice for which they were not trained.
Doctors explained that non-clinical staff were on the phone with helpline callers and searching for advice online at the same time, and at one point spent 15 minutes on the phone with a suicidal caller before a Health Assured representative became available.
“No one wants to Google ‘how to help someone who is about to commit suicide,'” they told us. “I’m not a therapist, so I don’t have the knowledge to do that.”
The former employee said she was forced to answer the phone, something that happened frequently during her time at the company and that she was “sworn to secrecy.”
Health Assured said that during an “exceptional surge in demand”, staff worked overtime to bring people back to provide a “path to rapid assistance”, but did not provide the assistance itself. The company added that this has not happened since 2022.
The company denied that the overflow of calls was ever redirected to other parts of the group and said it was wrong to suggest that Peninsula employees were instructed or authorised to screen and support counselling calls.
“Forced” non-disclosure agreements
Some former employees have told the BBC that non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) were used to stop them speaking out about allegations of mistreatment or discrimination.
One person said they felt pressured to sign a non-disclosure agreement when they were in poor health and unable to understand the consequences.
Several said they had been prescribed antidepressants or needed treatment after working with Health Assured.
The company said it maintains the highest standards in both the care it provides and the health and wellbeing of its employees.
The company said it could not comment on the use of NDAs due to “confidentiality obligations.”
“Threat of legal action”
When we contacted Health Assured about these allegations, the company referred us to positive online reviews.
For example, according to Glassdoor, a website that allows current and former employees to anonymously review their experience working for a company, more than 70% of Health Assured’s past and current employees would recommend working for the company to a friend.
But the BBC has seen emails from Health Assured and former Peninsula Group employees threatening legal action if the company did not remove what it said were false and malicious online reviews.
The BBC also found that the company regularly monitored negative online reviews, including those from people who had used its services.
Sources said senior management was very particular about how and when negative online reviews were removed or resolved.
Asked about the incident, Health Assured told the BBC that it had contacted customers who had expressed dissatisfaction to ask “what went wrong and how we can improve.” The company said it encourages all employees to leave honest reviews and that it only disputes false reviews.
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