How Caring For Aging Parents Places An Invisible Burden On Employees

Here's how employers can support employees who are caregivers

Last June, as my mom was being taken into the operating room, I settled into a seat in the waiting room and pulled out my laptop computer. My plan was to get some work done because I had a deadline for an article that I needed to meet. 

I had taken my laptop with me the previous year when my mom had surgery -- and several times before when she had ended up in the hospital after falls while wandering at night at the memory care facility where she lived. As a journalist, I always had deadlines to meet. I also always was the one to be there with my mom when anything went wrong because I had been her primary caregiver since she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2008.
 

For 12 years, I did my best to juggle work and caregiving responsibilities. The editors at the publications I wrote for knew about my situation. But I didn’t want to be that person—the one always asking for deadline extensions or for time off—whenever there was an emergency with my mom (and there were a lot of emergencies). So my laptop was with me even when I was at the hospital finding out that the cancer that had been removed from my mom’s body had returned and couldn’t be treated. 

Something’s wrong with that picture. Work should not be the priority in a situation like that. Family should be.

The Prevalence of Caregiving

My situation is not at all unique. An estimated 53 million Americans are caregivers to an adult or child with special needs, according to the 2020 Caregiving in the U.S. report by AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving. Of those, 41.8 million are caring for a family member or friend age 50 or older.

The number of caregivers for older adults—typically parents—has been steadily rising over the past several years, according to the report. And they’re providing care for people with increasingly complex needs, often without adequate services and supports in place to help them. In fact, the amount of time caregivers said they spend providing care, on average, is 24 hours a week, the equivalent of a part-time job. Yet, most—6 in 10—work full-time in addition to providing care for a family member or friend, according to the AARP/NAC report.

Slightly more than half—53%—of working caregivers said they have had to go in late, leave early or take time off to help their care recipient. However, that doesn’t mean caregiving responsibilities aren’t having an impact on the other half of working caregivers who aren’t taking time off. Like myself and other caregivers I know, they might just be silently finding ways to juggle their responsibilities. And it’s taking a heavy toll. 

Caregiving while at work can take many forms:
 

• Health care coordination that includes calls and emails to manage doctor visits, insurance and prescriptions.
• Financial caregiving that includes managing daily money issues for a loved one, such as paying bills, monitoring accounts, handling insurance claims, preparing taxes and guarding against scams and fraud.
• Task coordination that involves help with housework, transportation, grocery shopping and arranging outside services.
• Hands-on care that includes assistance with the daily activities of living, such as dressing, eating, bathing and going to the bathroom.

Most don’t have paid help for their care recipient, so caregivers take on the above responsibilities entirely on their own or get support from other family members, including their own young children who have to pitch in and help. Caregivers surveyed by AARP reported physical, emotional and financial strain. And that stress has exacerbated declines in their own health. In fact, younger caregivers are more likely to say they are in worse health now.

Chances are, employers might not even be aware of these impacts on their employees who are caregivers until it’s too late … until employees have to quit or retire early because they can’t handle the responsibilities of work and caregiving. The AARP/NAC report found that only half of working caregivers said their employers knew about their situation. That’s because all of the caregivers I have known and interviewed over the years usually don’t like to talk about the burdens of caregiving. They don’t want to be seen as complainers, as unable to handle the situation, as burdens themselves.  

How Employers Can Support Employees Who Are Caregivers

The truth is, employers could and should be doing more to support employees who are caregivers to help retain them in the workplace, to limit the financial loss due to caregiver absenteeism, to appeal to potential employees (who increasingly will be looking for workplaces that support caregiving) and, simply put, to do the right thing. Here are several ways employers can provide that support to a demographic of workers that will only continue to grow and need increasing assistance.
 

• Provide paid family leave for caregivers. 
• Provide flexible work options, such as telecommuting, compressed workweeks and shift flexibility.
• Subsidize technology that will enable caregivers to spend fewer hours on caregiving duties or to make caregiving easier, such as 
  • Medical alert systems, medication reminders, wearable sensors for remote monitoring 
  • Financial caregiving services to automate the work of organizing and protecting aging loved ones’ finances.
• Offer access to attorneys and legal resources at a reduced cost to help caregivers get the necessary legal documentation to assist their care recipients.
• Offer access to financial counseling services to help caregivers insulate their own finances from the financial toll that caregiving takes.
• Offer caregiving assistance services to help caregivers find home health aides or long-term care facilities.
• Create a caregiving support group at the workplace and provide access to information and educational resources that can help guide caregivers.

The more employers who are willing to support working caregivers, the fewer the caregivers, who will have to make the choice between family and work.

Cameron Huddleston is a Family Finances Expert at Carefull. She is an award-winning personal finance journalist and author of Mom and Dad, We Need to Talk: How to Have Essential Conversations With Your Parents About Their Finances. Cameron currently is the Director of Education and Content for Carefull, the first service built to protect and organize day-to-day finances for older adults. Connect Cameron Huddleston Follow @CHLebedinsky