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There are multiple proactive steps employers can take to help their employees who are caregiving for elders, and foster a caregiving-aware atmosphere in the workplace.
In the United States, we are approaching a tipping point with caregiving: the need for family caregiving continues to rise and threatens to trigger nothing short of an employment crisis. If we fail to find new ways for "employee caregivers" to manage work and caregiving duties, we will-by default-threaten the careers of millions of American employees. The consequences would be devastating for individuals and families. For employers, eldercare responsibilities could become the leading threat to managing talent.
However, this result is not inevitable. Forward-looking organizations such as ReACT (Respect a Caregiver's Time), a corporate coalition launched at The World Economic Forum as the first baby boomers were turning age 65, and the leading business voice on elder caregiving, are now identifying and developing insights and actions that could allow businesses to better navigate this mounting challenge.
The scope of the problem is vastly underappreciated. Across the United States, approximately 34 million Americans provide care for older adult dependents, according to a study by the National Alliance for Caregiving (NAC) and AARP Public Policy Institute (2015). A MetLife study (2011) of caregiving's costs found that, from 1994 to 2008, the percentage of people ages 50 and older providing informal eldercare increased by almost 300 percent. And with the demographic of people ages 80 and older growing faster than any other, we have seen only the tip of the iceberg. The Aging of the Baby Boom and the Growing Care Gap (Redfoot, Feinberg, and Houser, 2013) estimates that by 2030, there will only be four potential caregivers for every person older than age 80. This ratio is nearly half of what it was just a few years ago, but still substantially higher than the 3:1 ratio predicted by mid-century.
This "caregiving crisis" is a business issue. A Pfizer-ReACTGallup study (2011) found that an employee caregiver misses, on average, nearly seven more workdays per year than a non-caregiving peer. And the NAC-AARP 2015 study found that nearly half of employee caregivers arrive late or leave early to care for an older adult dependent. Also, the PfizerReACT-Gallup study found that one in four...