By: Stephanie Erickson, MSW, PSW, LCSW
You get a message from your employee stating that he cannot make it into the office. His mother is in the hospital after falling in her home.
You notice that your employee seems to be spending excessive phone time speaking to her mother. It seems her mother calls her daily needing help or guidance with even small matters.
Your employee just put in a request to take 3 weeks off to help his father find a home for his mother whose Alzheimer’s is getting worse.
Does this sound familiar? How do you think caregiving issues are impacting the productivity of your company and the morale of your employees? Do you even know?
Most employers are aware that some of their employees are what are referred to as “working caregivers,” that is, employees who have the responsibility of assisting their parents, or another loved one, with financial, health and personal matters. These tasks can take just a few hours a week, or a few hours a day.
Most likely, there are more employees dealing with their aging parents’ needs than you are aware of. Many suffer with their dual responsibilities of work and family in silence, afraid that there jobs will be at risk.
Even more employees are part of the “sandwich generation,” those individuals providing care for aging parents AND children simultaneously. This matters to employers because business is directly impacted by the issues working caregivers face.
As our population ages, the negative fiscal impact on businesses will continue to grow as the baby boomers fall ill and the workforce is faced with the responsibility of caring for them and working for you.
Here are some clear facts about the impact of working caregivers on business:
- 87% of employed caregivers made telephone calls for caregiving responsibilities from work¹
- 64% arrived late or left early²
- 70% took time off²
- 20% reduced their hours¹
- 16% quit their jobs¹
- 13% retired early¹
- 56% developed health or stress problems that affected work productivity¹
- An estimated 46%-59% of caregivers are clinically depressed³
- 41% took time at work to discuss caregiving issues with colleagues²
(¹Advantage 50Plus magazine, ²LifeCare® Inc. February 2008, ³Family Caregiver Alliance 2000)
When employees are at work physically, but spending company time (and resources) researching placement facilities on-line, phoning financial institutions to assist their parents in making payments, or speaking with social workers to arrange for help in their parents’ home, this is “presenteeism.”
“Researchers say that presenteeism—the problem of workers’ being on the job but, because of illness or other medical conditions, not fully functioning—can cut individual productivity by one-third or more. In fact, presenteeism appears to be a much costlier problem than its productivity-reducing counterpart, absenteeism. And, unlike absenteeism, presenteeism isn’t always apparent” (2004 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation).
Here are other staggering statistics regarding the financial cost to businesses due to working caregivers:
- The estimated cost to employers for full-time employees with intense caregiving responsibilities is $17.1 billion.
- The average cost per employee for those with intense caregiving responsibilities is $2,441.
- The total estimated cost to employers for all full-time, employed caregivers is $33.6 billion.
- The average cost per employee for all full-time, employed caregivers is $2,110
(The MetLife Caregiver Cost Study: Productivity Losses to U.S. Business, July 2006, MetLife Mature Market Institute and National Alliance for Caregiving)
Research shows that those who used an Elder Care Program experienced dramatic changes in their ability to manage work and caregiving.
- Presenteeism improved overtime for users of the Geriatric Care Management Program
- Users of this program were less likely to report deterioration in their health over time
- Users of this program were less likely to report negative impacts on their work performance (LifeCare® Inc. February 2008)
The demographics of the population are shifting dramatically. In Canada:
- The number of seniors has more than doubled in the past 25 years¹ (Health Canada, July 2004)
- The proportion of Canadian seniors will grow from 17% in 2001 to 28.5% in 2031 (Conference Board of Canada 2001)
- Recent changes in the health care system have put further pressure on families (shorter hospital stays and more outpatient treatment) ¹
In the United States:
- In 2015, 78 million baby boomers will begin to turn 65
- The United States population aged 65 and over is expected to double in size within the next 25 years.
- By 2030, almost 1 out of every 5 Americans — some 72 million people — will be 65 years or older.
- The age group 85 and older is now the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population
(National Alliance for Caregiving, 2004, National Institutes of Health, 2006)
These population shifts will directly impact our workforce. “With the aging Baby Boomers and the natural growth of the “sandwich generation”, it’s equally obvious the caregiving phenomenon is here to stay.” (Family Caregiver Magazine Spring 2004)
Generally, EAP programs give out names and numbers of a local resource when an employee calls. These are not prevention programs, nor programs that provide a step by step guide to managing the problem. Companies like Erickson Resource Group can help. Erickson Resource Group provides information, resources and a wide range of comprehensive and simple tools to assist employees and employers in managing the many issues faced by caregivers, preventatively and reactively.
It’s not enough for businesses to sit and wait for the caregiving phenomenon to impact the bottom line. Being proactive in providing your employees with knowledge, insight and practical tools to address their current and future caregiving needs will assist in reducing the negative impact this issue will have on your company.
This approach to employee benefits should be adopted throughout workplaces in terms of working caregivers. Better informed and prepared working caregivers will be under less stress and be able to manage their work and life responsibilities more effectively.
The advantages of elder care training are numerous and include:
- Increase employee’s awareness of their current or future role of caregiving
- Increase employee productivity
- Decrease the number of employee absences
- Increase employee morale and concentration at work
- Equip employees with life-work balance skills
- Increase management’s ability to prepare and respond to employee work-life crises
- Meet company’s mission of being empathic to work-life balance and responsive to social trends
- Be progressive and innovative in employee training
“Demographics are critically important for business. They probably won’t alter a company’s financial results from one financial quarter to the next. But the management of a business that fails to pay attention to demographics for five years may wake up to find itself in a different business than it thought it was in – or not in business at all” (David K. Foot, Boom, Bust & Echo, 1996).
Contact Erickson Resource Group for more information on how you can offer this value added benefit for your employees at www.ericksonresource.com
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