Where to Start with Family Benefits for Employee Caregivers

On a daily basis, modern employee caregivers address a host of issues, details, and other challenges related to their families’ needs. They often feel overwhelmed and unsure what to do or where to start…

This is because each family’s issues or particular circumstances are unique in some way. When someone asks, “What do I do?”, the correct—although frustrating—answer is, “It depends.” A family’s financial situation, their greater support system, the location of the employee and the loved one, the age of loved one, and a host of other specific, situational nuances – it all impacts the path to answers and resolution to any caregiving issue.

What does this mean and how do you, as an employer, manage that? We have one easy suggestion for answering this.

The Misunderstood Impact of Caregiving

Harvard Business School (HBS) recently released a new report, which has many people talking about caregiving and the workplace at the moment. Similar to our report released in November 2018, HBS describes the caregiving situation in the United States as a crisis, for employers, as well as for citizens. In their study, 73% of employees report having some type of current situation occurring, yet over half of employers are unaware of the caregiving situations at hand within their workforce.

Similar to our findings, HBS recognized that employers aren’t understanding the vast spectrum and frequency of family care responsibilities and challenges that occur across their workforce. Some people are facing issues that fall under the traditional definition of caregiving – care for an aging loved one or a child with a diagnosis or disability. Other struggles fall under our new definition of “modern caregiving.” People are simply navigating the daily family life challenges that require care and attention.

Both HBS and we agree that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to solving the employee caregiving challenge.

How to Solve “It Depends”

How do you offer appropriate and impactful family benefits?

Our suggestion – it’s important to understand of the crisis at hand and to become familiar with what caregiving – both traditional and modern – really means. This is the foundation for knowing what actionable steps can be taken to address the growing crisis within your workforce.

We invite you to sign up for our blog to learn what caregiving truly is. We will introduce some of our users’ experiences, illustrate modern and traditional caregiving challenges, as well as offer actionable tips and downloadable tools for employers and their Human Resources departments.

We are all caregivers…join the journey.