The crisis affecting employees that they're too afraid to speak up about

It’s estimated that more than 41.8 million Americans are unpaid caregivers for another adult, according to a recently released AARP report. There are 8 million more caregivers today compared to five years prior. The COVID-19 pandemic has made caregiving for an ageing reality a new reality for even more Americans. After being isolated within long-term care facilities and unable to see family members due to safety precautions, older Americans are embracing another option — aging in place, often bringing along more responsibility to their adult children. For many families, this means that family homes are once again multi-generation, putting even more strain on caregivers who are now balancing caring for their kids and their parents.

Read more: Now is the time for employers to invest in caregiver benefits

Caregiving for an aging loved one can be time-consuming and emotionally-taxing. Often overlooked is that these family caregivers are also employees and they are suffering in silence. AARP estimates that 61% of caregivers are also employed. Only half of caregivers report that their supervisors are aware of their caregiving responsibilities. These working caregivers report spending an average of 20.8 hours a week on care duties. As a result, these employees improvise — trying to stretch their focus, productivity, and mental bandwidth across the responsibilities of their jobs, and their caregiving responsibilities. It’s unrealistic that these caregiving responsibilities happen only during the nights and weekends. They spend tremendous amounts of time dedicated to checking on the loved one, making sure they are safe, making doctor appointments, researching new specialists who are covered by insurance, and ensuring that their loved one isn’t lonely, depressed, or frustrated.

This creates a hidden, slowly-building crisis at work that impacts the bottom line: 61% of caregivers have reported that their caregiving responsibilities have impacted their work. One in 10 working caregivers have had to give up work entirely. The average age of the working caregiver is 48 and often among the more senior levels of a company. Six in 10 working caregivers report having experienced at least one impact or change to their employment situation as a result of caregiving, such as going in late/leaving early, cutting back on their working hours, taking a leave of absence, receiving a warning about performance or attendance, turning down a promotion, or other such impacts.

Read more: Fidelity Investments creates program to support women and caregivers

This has particularly been felt by women who make up 60% of caregivers. According to a recent McKinsey Women in the Workplace study, more than 1 in 4 women are contemplating downshifting their careers or leaving the workforce altogether to make room for all the additional responsibilities at home. This could mean as many as 2 million women forced to leave the workplace due to the pandemic and associated stress.

Here's why employees aren’t talking about it

I talk to Heads of human resources, chief talent officers, and chief people officers on most days. In our conversations, we talk about how much has changed in 2020 and how it is beyond anything we could have ever fathomed. I usually have the same two takeaways from these frequent conversations. First, businesses and the incredible people who keep them going at all levels are incredibly resilient. People are making work from home work in truly innovative ways. Second, employees are juggling a lot more than we realize in their new WFH realities.

The chief people officers I speak with know that caregiving is a growing issue and concern, but have less confidential conversations about it than they would like. It doesn’t show up in employee surveys. It doesn’t come up in Town Hall style meetings. They aren’t hearing about it from their employees. Why would they?

It’s one thing to share about how you’re having a hard time adjusting to being a new parent. So many people can relate or empathize with what it’s like to power through a workday on less than three hours of sleep. This isn’t the case with caregiving for an aging parent. It’s extremely difficult and potentially embarrassing to share that your mother in-law fell and shattered her hip bone, or your father is showing early signs of dementia and cannot recognize you. These situations often don’t get better with time, often getting more complicated and time-intensive during the healing or treatment stages. Caregivers typically feel like it is their responsibility to deal with these situations — and take them on alone. It’s also frightening to reveal these diagnoses to share because of how much they could potentially reveal about the future of the employee, both personally and professionally. The employee is frantically cycling through questions like:

• Is it hereditary?
• Could this happen to me?
• Will I need to switch to part-time?
• Will my employer even let me work part-time?

Here’s how companies can step up — recognize that caregiving for aging loved ones is just as crucial, and demanding as childcare and provide relevant benefits accordingly. Organizations realize the importance, both for employee wellness and for their compensation packages to be competitive, that offering caregiving support is more relevant and impactful for most employees than a discounted gym membership or a generous variety of snacks.

As we are seeing once-popular workplace benefits become all but moot (goodbye free lunches, free flowing beer, and the brand-new coffee machine), those budgets can be completely reimagined with new benefits that address the unique ways that the lives of our employees have changed — such as elder care caregiver support and benefits. Perhaps a portion of the budgets can be leveraged to adapt to how WFH can be more tenable for all employees, including those who are adjusting to a newly multigenerational household. Maybe work parties, understandably canceled, will be scrapped in the post-pandemic future and most of the budget will be rededicated to something that will make a significant difference in the daily lives of employees and their families.

Your employees likely won’t miss the small talk and appetizers at a party. But precious time with aging parents? Help when you feel like you’re drowning in responsibilities? Your employees will definitely miss those.