Xero Assistance Programme FAQs

The Xero Assistance Programme (XAP) is a pilot programme brought to you by Xero providing Kiwi small businesses with access to free face-to-face, telephone, live chat and online counselling. It’s available free of charge through Xero’s global provider, Benestar, and offered to Xero starter, standard and premium subscribers, their employees, and their families.

Part of our culture is supporting each other. Benestar is our EAP provider and we’ve offered this service to Xero employees with great results. Because of this, we wanted to roll it out to our customers too, so they can experience the same positive impact. 

We also know that there’s a growing need for mental health support in small businesses, with 80 percent of small business owners naming isolation as their main concern. We have a collective responsibility and this is our opportunity to step up, not to solve the problem, but to help.

Our mental health statistics in New Zealand are truly awful. Too many Kiwis are struggling and often don’t know where or who to turn to. There’s a growing need for mental health support in small businesses, with 80 percent of small business owners reporting that isolation is their main concern.

Xero subscribers on a starter, standard or premium plan are able to access three counselling sessions per issue free of charge.

It depends on the uptake of the services. This expansion of the pilot programme will give us a good indication of costs.

The 5,000 participants in the initial pilot programme were randomly selected from our customers, and accounting and bookkeeping partners. We have since expanded the pilot programme to include all starter, standard and premium plan customers, their employees and their families.

The initial pilot programme ran for about seven months. We’ve since extended who can participate in it, and it will run for an additional 12 months.

We hope that as many people as possible take up the opportunity to talk to someone if they need to. Within Xero we have a high uptake of our own EAP offering and it’s great to see so many people feeling comfortable about addressing the challenges they’re facing. We hope the same goes for those in the XAP pilot programme. 

I think it’s best to quote a small business in the pilot programme here.  Here’s what the team at Red Rabbit Cafe and Bar have said. 

“We’re a small team who spend a huge amount of time together and can sometimes struggle to get the space we need. We also know that sometimes the stress and workload associated with running a small business wears down your coping mechanisms so when something happens out of the blue that you’re unprepared for, you might not respond as well as you would’ve wanted. Having the opportunity to speak with someone with an outside perspective would be hugely valuable.”

No, this service is completely anonymous, as it is for any EAP offering. 

We will receive anonymous, aggregate data to highlight key details including regional breakdown of uptake and usage levels. We will not be able to determine individual usage from any of the data provided to us. Both Xero and Benestar adhere to strict privacy standards.

Our dream is to get support to every business when they need it, but until we complete this extended pilot programme we can’t commit to any outcome. We remain open-minded and are very excited that Kiwi small businesses will be able to get access to services that could really help them.

We’ll be communicating on a regular basis with the business owners included in the pilot programme and providing them with information and materials that they can share with their team and families. Benestar is also on hand to provide support and information on the services available.

Once the year-long pilot has finished, we’ll evaluate how it went and determine the next steps. Our main priority is to support the mental health of small business so ultimately we would like to see the programme continue, but that will be determined by the pilot programme results.

We’d encourage any businesses who aren’t able to access XAP services but may need help to get in touch with us to discuss options.