A FRAMEWORK FOR MANAGING THE ELDERCARE-WORK BALANCING ACT
By JOHN PAUL MAROSY
Family caregiving has a way of sneaking up on most of us. Years of experience as a homecare executive did not prepare me for the emotional impact of my father telling me that his prostate cancer--in remission for two years--had spread to other parts of his body. As he slipped into a deep depression, I suddenly found myself in the role of long-distance caregiver. Twice a week I made the two-hour drive to his home to help him with bill-paying and other tasks that he normally performed on his own. I helped him find more suitable housing and made frequent telephone calls--often during working hours--to provide emotional support and to find the services he needed in order to fulfill his wish to die at home. Overnight, I had become a family caregiver.
Arranging my father's care motivated me to write A Manager's Guide to Elder Care and Work (Westport, Conn.: Quorum Books, 1998). I discovered that effective caregiving draws heavily on such management skills as communicating, coordinating, directing activities and overseeing finances. I also found that most managers and business owners do not understand how to effectively respond to the growing phenomenon of eldercare-work conflicts.
CAREGIVER GLASS CEILING
There are 14.4 million family caregivers now juggling work and eldercare responsibilities in the United States, according to the National Alliance for Caregiving (NAC), Bethesda, Md. Three-quarters of the caregivers are women. Unlike my situation, in which I engaged paid personal-care help, about half of all employed caregivers provide hands-on personal care for an elder. Employees who provide personal care to a family member tend to endure much higher levels of physical and emotional stress than those who are involved in the less-demanding role of arranging care. With the aging of the boomer generation, the number of family caregivers is growing rapidly.
The cost to businesses in lost productivity related to eldercare is conservatively estimated at $11.4 billion per year, according to "The MetLife Study of Employer Costs for Working Caregivers," a 1997 report by the MetLife Mature Market Institute, Westport, Conn., and the NAC. A new study undertaken for MetLife and the NAC by the Center for Women and Aging at Brandeis University, Waltham, Mass., shows that employed caregivers often pay a steep price for providing eldercare. They average a loss of $659,000 in lifetime earnings due to taking time off, being passed over for promotions and "plum" assignments, or quitting their jobs. "We call it the caregiver's glass ceiling," said Sandra Timmermann, director of the Mature Market Institute.
Leading employers have found that by taking a comprehensive approach to work-life balance issues, they can help minimize turnover and productivity losses related to eldercare--which will deliver a return of several times their investment in this area. Effective initiatives start with an understanding of employed caregivers' top four needs: time, timely information, financial advice and emotional support. Time needs include both scheduling flexibility and respite time (time away from work and caregiving to replenish energy). Timely information is provided through consultation and referral services and, increasingly, via inhouse intranet or outside Web-based services, all of which help employees meet the challenge of quickly finding the right help at the right time. Financial advice often involves helping the employee creatively combine publicly funded services with the resources of the elder and the caregiver. Emotional support includes a caring attitude on the part of family members, supervisors, and coworkers--and sometimes the assistance of a professional counselor--to sustain the caregiver through stressful choices and trade-offs.
Regardless of company size or type, employers can reap the benefits of encouraging work-life balance among employees. A Midwest manufacturer boasts half the turnover rate of its rivals, due in part to its dependent-care benefits. On the production line, worker teams can "flex" the start and end times of their team members' shifts to accommodate the demands of childcare and eldercare. At Harvard University, employees can tap into an emergency backup care service that provides access to in-home help, delivered on short notice at a prenegotiated discount price. The impact: fewer missed meetings and reduced absenteeism. Similarly, a group of smaller employers clustered in a downtown Boston location have pooled their resources to create an association that arranges backup in-home care. Fannie Mae, based in Washington, D.C., recently hired an on-site care manager to assist employed caregivers in its 3,900-person workforce.
Every employer faces a unique combination of factors when mapping a strategy for human resources. The following guidelines, listed in order of priority, provide a framework for action:
The reality of the aging of the American population--and workforce--will affect every employer. The U.S. Department of Labor predicts there will be 151 million jobs in the nation by 2006, but only 141 million workers to fill them. Employers who invest now in making the workplace eldercare-friendly can avoid the loss of valuable, hard-to-replace employees with caregiving responsibilities.
John Paul Marosy is president of Bringing Elder Care Home, a consulting firm in Worcester, Mass., specializing in eldercare-work balance solutions.
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