Excerpted from New York Employment Law Letter, written by attorneys at the law firm Epstein Becker & Green, P.C.

You've probably heard the term "sandwich generation" - you might even be a member of it. Today's employees are increasingly feeling the crunch of working more hours while caring for more family members, both young and old.

People in the prime of their working lives are "sandwiched" between caring for young children and elderly parents. You would be wise to consider how the increasing outside obligations of your workers may affect your company's bottom line.

All Work and no play

The 1950s archetype of working husband and stay-at-home wife currently accounts for less than 15 percent of American households. According to recent studies, nearly 64 percent of American households are dual-income families with children. In addition, researchers estimate that in the next 10 to 15 years at least 40 percent of all workers will be caring for at least one elderly relative.

Add to that the increasing time demands of the global economy, in which virtually no one works 9:00 to 5:00. Indeed, the United States recently surpassed Japan in the number of hours worked per year per employee, and the average American works hundreds of hours more each year than his closest European counterpart. It's no wonder that many companies are dealing with tardiness, absenteeism, substance abuse, stress, and turnover.

In addition, today's workforce is far more fluid than it was even in the 1980s. Newspaper articles and commentators have long noted the end of the Baby Boom era and with it the demise of the expectation that someone would join a company out of school and then stay with the same employer until retirement.

As the Baby Boomers retire, you will have to select more and more of your workers from Generation X and Generation Y, workers who are often far more aggressive and vocal about job satisfaction, professional advancement, and that elusive work/life balance in the face of increased personal and professional demands.

To maintain or achieve your competitive advantage, you will have to address the demands and problems of that new generation of workers. After all, the first of the "Gen Xers" turn 40 this year.

All that has led some commentators to suggest that the government or private employers should be required to allow workers partially paid leaves under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) in a manner akin to the current unemployment insurance programs. They note how proportionately few workers, particularly those holding lower-paying jobs, take unpaid leaves under the FMLA for the simple reason that they can't afford to go without a paycheck.

The economic burden of such legislation on you, particularly if you're a small or midsize company, makes its passage unlikely. Nonetheless, the underlying problem and its negative impact on employers remain.

Child, elder care

The idea of employer-supported child care is hardly new. The U.S. government sponsored child-care programs during World War II to allow Rosie the Riveter and her compatriots to support the war effort. Those programs were quickly disbanded after the war, however, as women retreated from the workforce and the traditional 1950s household emerged.

It wasn't until more than 20 years later, in 1971, that Stride Rite Corporation reset the stage for private employer-supported child-care programs by creating an on-site child-care facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Despite substantial growth since then, employer-sponsored child-care programs, particularly on-site facilities, have been primarily limited to governmental employers and large corporations with sufficient resources and employee participation to fund them.

The concept of employer-sponsored elder care is a much more recent phenomenon - perhaps for the simple reason that until relatively recently there has been little demand for it. But enormous demographic changes are occurring.

The mid- and senior-level managers you rely on today are the same ones researchers predict will be reducing their hours, relocating, or dropping out of the workforce altogether to deal with aging parents, particularly those over 85 whose ranks have increased nearly 300 percent over the last 35 years.

Hence, there has been a movement, typically limited to large employers, to institute programs to help employees address some of those issues.

Aren't all those extra benefits expensive?

Employer-supported child- and elder-care programs need not be the exclusive province of government employers and Fortune 500 companies. While the most elaborate programs can certainly be expensive, many support systems and referral programs entail relatively little expense.

In addition, the money saved in terms of lost productivity, absenteeism, worker turnover, and training costs can be significant.

Indeed, studies suggest that employers' economic costs of the elder-care problems faced by employees currently far exceed that of child-care issues.

A 1997 study estimated that the cost of lost productivity related to elder care was between $11 and $29 billion a year, while a similar study suggested that lack of adequate child care was responsible for only a $3 billion loss.

Implementing child care and elder care solutions

Read next week's HR Hero Line for part 2 of this series, including concrete ideas for helping workers balance work and family and a discussion of what really works.

Copyright © 2005 M. Lee Smith Publishers LLC. This article is an excerpt from NEW YORK EMPLOYMENT LAW LETTER. New York Employment Law Letter does not attempt to offer solutions to individual problems but rather to provide information about current developments in New York employment law. Questions about individual problems should be addressed to the employment law attorney of your choice