An online employee work/life management tool is helping employees of United Services Automobile Association (USAA) effectively manage a variety of concerns while reducing headaches for HR.

The Personal Balance Tool (PBT), developed in 2006 by USAA, Harris, Rothenberg International (HRI) and ValueOptions, is a web resource that more than half of USAA employees use to address a variety of personal concerns that will impact their work life. At USAA, these concerns range from a name or title change to a military deployment.

The online tool allows an employee to select an area of concern (such as family changes, workplace stress or conflicts, and financial or retirement planning), then provides insight and a personal action plan for the user. The plan points the user toward a variety of company resources, such as employee assistance programs (EAPs) and USAA's own financial products and services. Employee use of EAPs and USAA products has increased by 23 and 20 percent respectively since the implementation of the PBT, said Jim Moon, USAA's work/life director.

"[The PBT] actually facilitates the other [HR] functions by giving the employee an additional resource of information for them to better understand how to solve…the challenge they might have," he said.

For example, if an unmarried HR representative is asked to address an employee's marital concerns, the PBT can provide the employee with the knowledge the HR representative may lack, Moon said.

The accessibility of the online resource is important for USAA, which has employees working in eight different locations and out of their homes.

"It brings all the different human resources elements into a single source location," Moon said.

By helping to prevent minor issues from growing into major problems, the tool has also cut back on the number of days of work employees have missed in order to deal with personal concerns, Moon said.

The PBT also helps streamline the employee-HR relationship by bringing related concerns to the users' attention that they might not have accounted for.

"It's got another function as a very positive managerial resource," said Dr. Edward Trieber, managing director of HRI and one of the tool's developers. "It really does become part of the [company] culture, and it has a very significant positive effect."