Eldercare Is the New Childcare: Are You Ready?
We’ve come a long way, baby, in making the workplace more supportive for employees raising children.
In the last twenty years, I’ve witnessed not just policies, but also perspectives that have made it easier to balance working and childcare. Supporting working mothers shifted to supporting parents, and paid leave policies became more widespread. Flexible work schedules became more common, accelerated in part by the pandemic. Even backup childcare is becoming a standard benefit in many organizations.
But while these necessary shifts were happening, another significant demographic shift was quietly underway. And we still have a long way to go.
More employees are now caring for aging or ill family members than for young children.
Recent data reveal that about 23 million American workers are caring for aging parents or other adults, compared to 21 million caring for kids.
This is a big deal, and the modern workplace still has work to do, or face:
Lost Productivity: According to the AARP Public Policy Institute, U.S. employers lose an estimated $33.6 billion annually due to lost productivity from employees managing eldercare. This includes absenteeism, tardiness, and decreased work output.
Turnover Expenses: Caregivers are more likely to leave their jobs due to stress and burnout. The Center for American Progress estimates the average cost of replacing an employee is about 20 percent of their annual salary, including recruiting, hiring, and training expenses.
Presenteeism Costs: Employees who are physically on the job but distracted by caregiving worries can cost employers nearly $1,500 to $3,000 per employee per year in lost productivity, according to Gallup.
The good news: supporting caregivers at work doesn’t need to be costly or complex. Some of the most meaningful support is simple:
Add, expand, and protect flexible work policies. Flexibility, including working from home, adjusting hours, and balancing work and family responsibilities, is the number one request of working caregivers, based on surveys conducted by Working Daughter.
Broaden parental leave programs to become family leave programs, and adapt them for adult care. Many employers conflate childcare and eldercare responsibilities, but they are quite different and require different supports. Childcare generally follows a timeline. Parents are aware of well-child visits, school schedules, and vacations, which allows them to plan time off or backup care. Eldercare, however, is unpredictable. Family members may get sudden calls that a loved one has fallen or been hospitalized. Even after a serious diagnosis, disease progression is uncertain, making planning difficult. Leave policies that allow small increments of time off can make a huge difference for adult caregivers.
Create community. Research from Working Daughter also shows that most family caregivers feel invisible and unsupported at work. But when employers acknowledge caregiving employees, it can make a huge difference both at home and on the job. Eldercare can be lonely and isolating—workplace caregiver communities go a long way toward support.
Now is the time to address adult care in the workplace.
With 11,000 people turning 65 every day in the U.S., and demand for paid caregivers outpacing supply, we are facing an eldercare crisis that threatens to impact the workforce significantly.
We don’t have twenty more years to get this right.