MINES & Associates makes human resources, EAP, and organizational development affordable for small business owners with its first of a kind SBA program.

DENVER, CO – February 27, 2006 – MINES & Associates (MINES), a nationally recognized provider of business psychology services and employee assistance programs (EAP), is pleased to introduce the Small Business Asset (SBA) program. This unique program is the first human asset management program of its kind and was exclusively developed and priced for the millions of small businesses in the United States. The SBA program bundles together all the necessary services needed to assist the small business owner in managing the human side of their employees' lives and is exclusively offered by MINES & Associates (http://www.minesandassociates.com).

Large companies have long had access to or have developed their own in-house human resources (HR), legal/financial, work/life, EAP, training, and organizational psychology services. Most small businesses cannot justify the costs to develop these resources in-house and have thus generally gone without. Now with the offering of the MINES SBA program small business owners can take advantage of these time and cost savings programs with the same level of professional service larger companies enjoy in one affordable and easy to use program.

A Case for Using the Small Business Asset Program

The small business is particularly vulnerable to lost productivity from its employees. Reasons for this can vary from employee problems with their aging parents to problems with drug or alcohol addiction to problems dealing with a chronic illness. Even the more common everyday problems employees face such as dealing with marital issues, divorce, legal/financial problems, and child care all ultimately affect an employees work performance and productivity. Dealing with these day-to-day issues can put a lot of stress on the personnel within a small business and most do not have the capacity, training, or experience to deal with or resolve these types of problems.

On top of all this, small business owners or their managers are asked to lead their teams, set up HR policies, develop succession and exit strategies, mediate conflicts among employees, do strategic planning, minimize behavior risk such as theft, fraud, violence in the workplace, mitigate hostile work environments due to sexual harassment, and contend with EEOC and regulations.

Large companies have enough employees to justify the hiring of separate companies to deal with all these various issues, however small businesses do not. With the introduction of the MINES SBA program all this has changed and the small business owner can now compete with the larger companies on a more equal footing.

How Does the SBA Program Work

The SBA program from MINES provides the resources the small business owner needs to effectively manage his/her business. This in turn creates a huge cost savings to the small business by helping the employees be more productive and allowing the owners and managers of the company to concentrate on what they do best, running their company. Never before have these services been so affordable and so conveniently bundled into one program for the small business owner.

Benefits of the SBA program for employers and owners include:
• A one-hour business consultation with our organizational psychology specialists.
• Unlimited use of online human resource policies templates.
• Unlimited online supervisor training.
• Conflict resolution between employees and / or between employees and supervisors/managers who have not been able to reconcile their differences through other strategies.
• Debriefing of employees on worksite deaths, accidents, or loss of employees through an illness such as cancer (CISM services).
• Onsite and online employee training sessions.
• Wellness program.
• Work performance interventions and management consultation on work performance issues.
• Organizational development.
• MINES monthly training series and newsletter.
• In addition to these services, the same benefits described below for the employees would also be available to the employer.

Benefits of the SBA program for employees include:
• One free face-to-face counseling session with a therapist for individual, couples or family therapy.
• Employees and their household members can elect at their own expense to purchase additional counseling, therapy or coaching sessions.
• In place of counseling, Work/Life coaching sessions are available for individual employees.
• Legal/Financial services including discounted legal fees.
• Childcare/Eldercare
• Work/Life programs
• Online education, informational self-assessment tools, locator for childcare/eldercare.

For more information on how to take advantage of this unique and new program small business owners can log on to http://www.minesandassociates.com or contact Judy Braun at 1-800-873-7138 extension 4980.

About MINES & Associates

For over 25 years MINES & Associates (http://www.minesandassociates.com ) has been a nationally recognized business psychology firm that provides a variety of services to corporate employers including employee assistance programs (EAP), managed mental healthcare, organizational development and psychology services, wellness programs, behavioral risk management, disease management, PPO services, and a number of other technology based services. MINES & Associates is divided into two main divisions, Organizational Psychology and Health Psychology, and currently serves a diverse portfolio of clients in all 50 states, Canada, Mexico, and the UK. Please log on to www.minesandassociates.com for the latest news and information on MINES & Associates.

Contact:

Robert A. Mines, Ph.D.
CEO
Tel: 1-800-873-7138 ext. 4982
ramines@minesandassociates.com

or

Judy Braun
VP Organizational Services
Tel: 1-800-873-7138 ext. 4980
jgbraun@minesandassociates.com

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