ELDER CARE BENEFITS : HOW EMPLOYERS CAN HELP EMPLOYEES WITH AGING PARENTS

 The elderly population worldwide is growing at a significant rate, leaving workers with aging parents with the difficult challenge of providing them care. In today’s economic climate, employees have a choice to make: take time off to support their loved ones, leading to lower performance, or leave the workforce altogether to become full-time caregivers (Greve et al., 2020). It’s not a fun choice for employees—or employers. But there is good news: employers can help employees so they don’t have to choose. Providing employees with elder care benefits is one of the best ways you can support your team with these needs while keeping them highly engaged, motivated, and able to put their best foot forward. Let’s walk through five elder care benefits and policies you can put in place to help your employees do their best at home so that they can do their best at work (Bainbridge and Townsend, 2020)

What are elder care employee benefits?

Eldercare employee benefits are benefits employers offer to help support employees with their caregiving responsibilities. This might be for their parents, grandparents, or other aging loved ones who need extra support at home. These types of benefits and policies can include in-home care services, private medical insurance, paid time off, and much more (Henle et al., 2019).

Why should employers offer elder care benefits to employees?

Offering elder care benefits to employees not only improves employee retention and increases productivity—it also allows your employees to maintain a sense of work-life harmony (Greve et al., 2020). The rigid separation between work and life often means that employees are put in the difficult decision of choosing which part of their life they should give more attention to, often at the expense of the other. So when employees have pressing needs at home, like taking care of an aging parent, their personal life takes precedence, putting work on the back burner—or off the burner entirely (Henle et al., 2019).

In fact, according to a recent study from TakingCare, one in three adults in the UK would consider leaving their job to care for an aging parent, with one of the top reasons being a lack of support (Greve et al., 2020).

This, of course, is a concern to both employees and employers alike. For employees, it means becoming carers at their own expense—physically, emotionally, and financially (Greve et al., 2020). Employers face losing star players on their team due to full-time care needs, and the employees may not be able to afford to outsource.

And if you’re thinking it’s only middle-aged team members you need to worry about, think again; Gen Z are already helping to support their parents financially, and this will remain top of mind as their parents age (Henle et al., 2019).

In other words, when employees feel seen as people, not just as employees, they feel more connected to their role, team, and company. In return, they give back much more, building a world that is working at its best.

How can elder care benefits help employees?

What, specifically, can you do to help employees support their elder care costs and needs so they can bring their best foot forward? Here are five benefits you can offer.

1.    1.    Private medical insurance  - Private medical insurance covers healthcare expenses, including prescriptions, tests, hospital stays, medical appointments, and more. This type of benefit is quickly becoming an expectation of employers by job seekers in countries with both state-funded and privatized healthcare alike (Greve et al., 2020). PMI is beneficial to the employee and also to their aging parents, as some policies allow one to add elderly dependents under their plan. Not only does this alleviate the financial burden associated with certain healthcare costs as parents get older, like expensive medications, but it can also ensure they’re able to see specialists as soon as the need arises (Wright, 2022).

2.     2.    In-home care - Eventually, the needs of aging parents may come to a point where they need more help than one can provide alone, especially while working full-time. That’s where in-home care services can help (Greve et al., 2020). These services can help with Bathing, Preparing meals, Cleaning, Dressing, Getting in and out of bed and Other needs. These services can be cost-prohibitive for the average person to afford on their own, sometimes forcing employees to choose between working full-time or caretaking full-time. Partnering with an in-home elder care provider like Gubbe for your benefits program can help alleviate the financial and physical burden for your employees so they can work without wondering how their parents are getting on at home.

3.      3.  Mental health support - It’s not only financial considerations employees face while providing care for their loved ones—it’s emotional (Saks, 2021). Caretakers to elderly parents and loved ones often neglect their own needs to provide care, leaving them feeling drained and unsupported. Mental health benefits mean they can get some care, too (Wright, 2022).

4.        4.Flexible working arrangements - While not technically considered benefits, this is an extra policy you can put in place to help ease your employees’ home burdens so that they can show up each morning as their best selves (Greve et al., 2020). Flexible working arrangements can help with those extra challenging days when employees might not be able to work regular hours without interruption or have to run from appointment to appointment (Saks, 2021).

Elder care benefits benefit employers.

Though work-life balance is a popular topic in the post-pandemic world, it doesn’t take into account that we can’t always separate these facets of our lives—and nor should we. Benefits allow employers to meaningfully bridge the gap by helping employees in their personal lives so that they can show up to work to their full potential (Greve et al., 2020). That’s why, at Ben, our focus is on shaping the lives of employees everywhere. See how Ben works to support your employees, from elder care to health insurance. (Wright, 2022)

References

•        Bainbridge, H.T.J. and Townsend, K. (2020). The effects of offering flexible work practices to employees with unpaid caregiving responsibilities for elderly or disabled family members. Human Resource Management, 59(5). doi:https://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.22007.

•        Greve, B., Blomquist, P., Hvinden, B. and van Gerven, M. (2020). Nordic welfare states—still standing or changed by the COVID ‐19 crisis? Social Policy & Administration, 55(2). doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12675.

•        Henle, C.A., Fisher, G.G., McCarthy, J., Prince, M.A., Mattingly, V.P. and Clancy, R.L. (2019). Eldercare and Childcare: How Does Caregiving Responsibility Affect Job Discrimination? Journal of Business and Psychology, 35(1), pp.59–83. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-019-09618-x.

•        Saks, A.M. (2021). Caring human resources management and employee engagement. Human Resource Management Review, [online] 32(3), p.100835. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2021.100835.

•        Wright, F. (2022). Single carers. Routledge eBooks, pp.89–105. doi:https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003303930-8.