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While the need to offer holistic parental benefits has become table stakes for businesses, an area that gets less attention is offerings that
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After caring for her own parents, Liz O'Donnell founded Working Daughter to give women a peer community and guidance to manage their career and well-being while caring for older loved ones. It also works with employers to support, engage and retain their working caregiver population, in part by setting up a supportive network within the workplace.
"Women often plan to have children; they think about what it's going to do to their finances, their bodies, their relationships, their careers — they make space in their lives," she says. "[With kids,] it's about the future and possibility. With elder care, there's none of that. It's not something we plan for. It's grief. It's a series of losses. That is why having a community is so important."
Adding to the complexity of the situation, approximately a quarter of adults in the U.S. fall into the sandwich caregiver category — those caring for children and aging family members simultaneously — according to Pew Research Center.
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Ten years ago, O'Donnell was the mother of two school-aged children and caregiver to her mother and father, whose ability to do daily tasks was quickly diminishing. While balancing parenthood and spending an increasing amount of time at her parents' home on the weekends, she was also the breadwinner for her family. Everything came to a head when, about a year into this routine, her parents were both diagnosed with separate terminal illnesses on the same day.
"I had been traveling for work — it was a Saturday and I was home, kids were playing soccer, and I was excited that weekend just to be a mom," O'Donnell says. "And my sister called me and said, 'Something's really wrong at Mom and Dad's.' That was June 14, and by July 1, they were in two different hospitals. My dad was forgetful and really confused, so he was in a geriatric facility, and I met with his team that day, and they said he had Alzheimer's and could never move home. And before I even left the parking lot of the hospital, a doctor from the hospital my mom had been taken to with stomach pain called to say she had stage four ovarian cancer."
Feeling alone and unprepared to deal with all the steps that came next, the following six months were incredibly tough, O'Donnell says. Her time was spent navigating her parents' care, meeting with an attorney, sorting through paperwork, dealing with finances, all while trying to continue performing her duties as a PR professional and author.
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After starting as a private Facebook page to connect with others in similar situations, Working Daughter evolved into an expert support option for individuals and a resource for coaching, manager training, and turnkey employee resource group (ERG) solution for companies.
A strong, caring community within the workplace helps employees feel connected and maintain performance and productivity even through tough times, O'Donnell says. It also helps reduce the stigma around eldercare, something that was noted as a concern for many respondents in Working Daughter's 2024 survey of women caregivers in the workplace.
"It breaks my heart," says O'Donnell. "'I don't want to be the employee with issues' was one of the quotes I saw, and I felt that way."
Stress management resources, mental health support, flexibility and paid time off are also policies employers should consider when putting together benefits that can be most impactful to caregivers, she says. To increase employee comfort in speaking up and participation in things like caregiver ERGs, O'Donnell encourages leaders to get involved and share their own caregiving experiences if they have them.
"I just did something with [an ERG at a bank] recently, and the executive sponsor was a really senior guy, and he told his story before I told mine," she says. "When that happens in the company, [employees] know that they're going to keep talking about it, because a big senior- level guy just got really vulnerable. And I'm like, okay, good things are about to happen."
