Your First Issue Of Working Caregivers-The Invisible Employees Newsletter

by Selma Archer & Zack Demopoulos of ieadvocates

Author

ieadvocates
September 12, 2024

Working Caregivers-The Invisible Employees Newsletter

Brought to you by ieadvocates (invisible employee advocates)

Welcome and how is your day going?

Thank you for being here! Our newsletter is written to shed light on employees who juggle professional responsibilities with the demanding role of caring for family members. This employee segment, although large in numbers, has remained silent and hidden in the workplace. We need to help them be more visible and supported.

Whether you’re an employer, business manager, HR, or a working caregiver, this newsletter offers valuable insights along with win-win-win simple solutions to help implement meaningful change for organizations, employees who are caregivers, and their care recipients.

Table of Contents

In the news:

Latest research, events, and articles that are making an impact for working caregivers and their employers.

Benefits advisors' key role in supporting caregivers in the workplace

Employers and benefits advisors can help minimize caregiving’s impact on the work place by providing employee benefits that will meet the growing needs of working caregivers. Needs that 1 in 5 Americans, who are working jobs and trying to balance caregiving responsibilities for a child or adult, may not be speaking up about nor have the time to do so. These employees are dedicating 26 hours a week to caregiving. This is a true crisis, and it is not going away. In fact, it is forecasted to just get worse.  Benefits Pro/Best Practices July 24, 2024

Employee Caregivers: A Silent Pandemic CEOs Must Pay Attention To

Julian Hayes II is a Forbes contributor who writes about “the intersection of wellness, business, and leadership”. In this article, he makes a good case on how companies can be difference makers in the war for talent by addressing working caregiver needs. He shares an abundance of statistics that all leaders need to take note.

Some of these stats are:

→only 56% of caregivers informed their managers of their caregiver responsibilities

→up to an 18.5 % reduction in employee productivity due to caregiving has been found

→absenteeism from caregiving costs the U.S. economy an estimated $25.2 billion in lost productivity

He also shares a couple of options to improve your caregiver employee strategy. Forbes, June 29th, 2024

Did you know? (Read our blog):

Our blog brings you knowledge, personal and researched, to raise your awareness and empathy about working caregivers and caregiving.

We thought it only appropriate that our first blog should share with you our reasons for writing the book: Working Caregivers – The Invisible Employees. Whether you have had an opportunity to read our book, or even if you have not, it might be helpful to give some of the background regarding how this book came about, and our goals for wanting to offer our insights around the working caregiver journey. 

People and Companies In the spotlight:

Our podcast puts a spotlight on guests who are making a significant difference in the working caregiver space.

Episode 1: Building Caregiver-Friendly Workplaces with Donna Thomson. Donna Thomson is a caregiver advocate, author, and Advisory Board Member on the Canadian Centre For Caregiving Excellence.

Stories From Real Working Caregivers:

Actual working caregivers share their stories.

Renee Fry is the Co-Founder and CEO of Gentreo, an online platform offering affordable, state-specific estate planning tools for families. Previously, she led sustainability and healthcare tech startups, and spearheaded new business initiatives at Philips Lighting North America. Renee also held key roles in the Massachusetts government, serving in and overseeing Gov. Mitt Romney's cabinet. Renee is a graduate of Penn State and has an MBA from the Harvard Business School and is recognized as a Rock 100 Entrepreneur. She was also highlighted in an EBN article 4/22 that you can find here .  

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Caring for an adult is something that takes just a lot out of you. It's very time consuming and emotionally consuming. And you see this person who  coached softball games for you,  led the bank, did all these great things, and now you're there trying to say, okay, we're going to eat dinner now. I'm going to have to help you, and you have to feed that person. And so that's where it's not the nice story like caring for a baby. It's a unique situation.  And for those who are caregivers, I think they can appreciate that.  

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The one thing we learned too, especially during this caregiving process, is that not making a decision still is a decision. It just means you didn't make the choice.

Renee Fry

Recommended media content:

We explore and share with you diverse media illuminating the dynamics and narratives within the care economy - from insightful podcasts to thought-provoking books and engaging videos.

PODCASTS

“Raising ‘Rents (as in paRents)” Podcast

Raising ‘Rents (as in paRents): Host Zack Demopoulos. Subscribe for yourself or recommend to another employee this podcast  as a resource for education, support and inspiration. This is helpful content wherever you are on the caregiver journey-before, during or after.

VIDEOS

“Caregiving is real work-let’s treat it that way” TED talk.

Caregiving is real work-let’s treat it that way. TED Talk by Sharmi Surianarain as part of The Way We Work series. October 2023. Every day, people around the world spend 16 billion hours on unpaid care work — cooking for families, caring for children and older relatives and other routine household tasks — often in addition to other jobs. Sharmi Surianarain, employment advocate says we need to not only acknowledge this labor but also build supportive workplaces that put policies with care work top of mind.

BOOKS

“The Unexpected Journey Of Caring”

The Unexpected Journey Of Caring-The Transformation From Loved One To Caregiver. Authors Donna Thomson and Zachary White.  Informed by original caregiver research and proven advocacy strategies, this book speaks to caregiving as it unfolds, in all of its confusion, chaos, and messiness. Readers won’t find well-intentioned clichés or care stereotypes in this book. There are no promises to help caregivers return to a life they knew before caregiving. No, this book greets caregivers where they are in their journey—new or chronic—not where others expect (or want) them to be.

With gratitude, we share a book review:

We want to thank KimA who took the time to read our book and provide a thoughtful review!

This book checks all the boxes for me. As a former HR Leader, and a long-distance part-time caregiver to my parents was one reason I left corporate was to have the time and flexibility to travel to help care for them. This book enlightened me to everything I went through. It's like a beacon of hope and brings a needed awareness that could very well change in how companies set employee policies, determine benefits, cost of turnover & recruitment, etc. The book says it all.
I love how the book is "creatively" written by approaching this topic in a unique way. You experience two "fictional" story's that grab you, then you get supporting data and insights on the topic. Selma and Zack bring these two together very nicely to give us, the reader, a full picture of what is really going-on with so many employees & how its time to pay attention to the "working caregiver". A MUST Read!!! KimA

Order your copy of Working Caregivers-The Invisible Employees book here. If you want to order a quantity of books for your leadership team and employees, contact us directly about discount pricing.

Order Working Caregivers-The Invisible Employees Book here

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