The Business Case For Care in the Workplace

With 73% of the workforce managing diverse caregiving responsibilities, employers must prioritize support for their employees. Employee caregivers play a vital role in today's workforce, even as they balance professional responsibilities with the demands of caring for loved ones. Recognizing and supporting these individuals and their families can significantly improve company culture. This session will delve into the complex landscape of caregiving, covering challenges related to childcare, eldercare, and supporting family members with special needs. What you'll learn In-Depth Understanding of Caregiver Dynamics Elevating the Business Case for Comprehensive Care In the Workplace Cultivating and Promoting Workplace Inclusivity and Employee Well-being

Transcription:

Lee Hafner (00:09):

Okay. Good morning everyone. It is awesome to see you all here. Thank you for joining us today for this panel, which personally I am stoked about. There's four amazing professionals up here. I hope you get a chance to talk to all of them at some point in the next day. So this is the Business Case for Care in the Workplace building the modern family. And I'm going to start all the way down at the end. That is Wes Burke. He is the CHRO of Care.com. Erika Ensign is the Senior Benefits Consultant for Leavitt Group. Yvette Marsh is the Assistant Vice President, Talent Management at LSU Foundation. And Lynn Perkins, CEO, and Co-founder of UrbanSitter. Okay, so we're going to jump right in because we have a lot to talk about. And first I'm going to take a quick poll. Please raise your hand if you're among the 73% of people who are caregivers that can be for children, for parents, or anyone else that you care for majority of the room. Awesome. Okay, thank you. So Yvette, I'm going to kick it off with you. What caregiver needs and challenges are you seeing among your workforce, and why is it so important to stay tuned in to this ever-changing employee situation?

Yvette Marsh (01:29):

So first the challenges of which at the LSU Foundation, we had many, and I could air our dirty laundry about all of the things that we didn't do because I know from once we came, so to speak, and the challenge that we were kind of blind to was we were defining caregiver in a very narrow way. So we kind of placed it on these extreme poles that are very traditional. So it starts at the beginning of the lifecycle that you're either a caregiver of a child or you're at the other end of the lifecycle. You're the caregiver of an elderly parent. And so what we were blind to is that there's a whole lot of life that happens in between those two poles. And just for kicks and giggles, most of those things are unexpected. So I think of one of our employees when I talk about that middle piece, because her mother was in a pretty serious accident and she was by no means an elderly parent.

(02:31):

She was in her early fifties, but had some very challenging health issues because of that accident. And our employee became the caregiver. She was the only relative that lived there. Lots of family, but no one local. So that experience really helped us to expand the concept of caregiver. So we were not going to hold hard and fast to a traditional application of, say, for example, leave policies. That employee was really deficient in her leave. So were we going to apply or try to apply a policy that really didn't fit that situation to the detriment of that employee? No, we were not. Were we going to hold her to job responsibilities even though she had to be with her mother to care for her and sorry, you can't leave early, or you can't not meet this deadline. And the answer is no to that as well. So we became a flexible, adaptable workplace. We drew in team members to fill the gap where that employee did not. That broadened mindset helped us create policy and to apply existing policy differently. So that's a greatly different organization that we used to be, and I really see the benefits from a culture perspective of making that shift to redefining what a caregiver is.

Lee Hafner (04:02):

So inclusivity is tremendously important to your organization, obviously. And the other thing I'd like you to follow up on, please is how you keep a pulse on your employees so that when things like this happen and people aren't trying to just manage it on their own.

Yvette Marsh (04:18):

So my title as Lee shared is Assistant Vice President, but I like to say I'm actually chief getting your business officer. And that's on a very micro level because I get into our employee's business, I find out that yes, this employee has a child in the NICU or this employee's father fell and broke his hip and that they need that extra understanding and empathy and that care on a more macro level as an organization. And we talked about this earlier today, the target representative mentioned this surveys. So canned surveys, not canned in a negative way, but a standard survey that we administer every year so that we can take a look at patterns and trends as they develop year over year is something that is really important to us. So open, transparent feedback when we not only give those surveys, but communicate the results of those surveys, good and bad results.

(05:21):

I mean, there have been some results that have hurt to share them with our staff, with our team, but we're going to be transparent. And so we're not going to stop there. We're going to highlight what you said we're asking, we're listening and we're going to do something about it. So how valuable is it? And I think this engenders a great deal of trust in the organization that we asked you, you told us, and then the next year or even earlier, here's what we did about it instead of just an exercise in administering a survey that you never saw the results of. So we also do unique surveys as well in response to what's going on in the landscape of benefits, what's going on with our employees. And that's difficult because if you ask, you better be ready to respond to these unique surveys. So now we've kind of created a little bit of a monster. Our employees ask for everything now. So oh, you want your dry cleaning delivered to the office? Okay, you look into that, right? So whether it's in the caregiver sphere or everything else, I have to sometimes step if I'm being vulnerable outside of my typical, maybe more traditional mindset and open myself up to the needs of our employees from a caregiving perspective. And anything else may not fit what I need, but that's okay. I'm listening to our employees and responding in kind.

Lee Hafner (06:52):

And one of the things I've also heard you say is that you attend ERG meetings. You're trying to get a read on what's going on with very specific groups as well. And that helps to be present right there with them instead of just an open door policy. You also approach them too. And Erika, I want to transfer over to you with, you work with all types of different groups. So what are some of the challenges that clients are coming to you with in the world of caregiving saying, we really want to provide this, we need to figure out a way how?

Erika Ensign (07:24):

Well, first off, I will just say that Yvette is the employer's dream as a benefit broker because in the groups that we have, employer groups are like anything else. They don't know what they don't know, and so they don't know how to approach their employees. So you have different demographics. You have those, we'll say folks who are essentially identifying benefit packages and possibilities for a demographic that sees benefits in a completely different lens. What is beneficial to them? The folks who are making the decisions, the folks at the table, they value benefits in a different way than the population who's actually consuming those benefits because some of those folks at the table aren't on those plans at all. And so living and breathing it with them is a little bit different. So for us, the challenge oftentimes is we are typically the things that Yvette was mentioning about being vulnerable and understanding where people are.

(08:37):

My team and I are those people when our employer groups aren't there for them. So it's helpful for us to be like a liaison because guess what? We know what Johnny's doing or son is doing because we are getting calls for claims. Or a lot of times they'll call us because we are a safe space for them because they don't want whatever is going on in their life to be sent to the HR department because they feel that that's going to be detrimental to their performance or they're going to get in trouble. Or they're going to say like, okay, well great, now you have to take care of this. And so now your work performance, we just already assume is going to take a nose dive. And so employees are fearful, and so it's helpful for our team to see what's going on so we can be that liaison and champion.

(09:28):

So when we are sitting at the table with folks like Yvette and the employer groups that are making those decisions or essentially evaluating what is a really good benefit, what is a good benefit package? Because a good benefit package today will look different than a good benefit package next year because the needs and the desires are different. So to your point, looking at the demographics and saying, okay, are these baby making ages? Are these folks who have even the socioeconomic status? Are these parents living in the homes with these employees? Are those employees having to take on multiple roles? For me, I've done the single mom thing where I've had to do dual roles in the house, and then as of early this year, I'm now caretaking from my dad, which has taken on a life of its own. And so now I'm able to see those from a different lens.

(10:27):

So I would see that that would be the challenge. One of the challenges is despite the fact that in this world we go through a lot of different things from having children to taking care of our parents, employees don't know either what they don't know and they don't know what they need. And so being an employer, and if you're a benefit broker, having that vulnerability to say, let us meet you where you are and let's figure this out and what it is that you need, because they don't know what they need, they don't know what kind of support they need. They don't know that maybe their work schedule can be flexible. They maybe were working 80 hours a week and now that the season of life is going to take its own life for the next eight to nine months, whatever it may be. Okay, well now you can't work 80 hours a week because you'll die. So I don't know if that answered all the questions. Okay.

Lee Hafner (11:23):

Yeah, no, absolutely. And so Yvette's talking about the need for approachability, building that within the workforce, but then also having this incredible person in your corner as a more neutral party, someone who can just focus on these types of benefits is so wonderful. I want to take a quick pause for any q and a that we have at this point. Does anybody have any questions for Yvette or Erika before we move forward? Okay. So one more audience question. How many of your organizations offer some kind of caregiving benefit support? And this could be a platform, it could be an ERG, it could be flexibility with your work schedule. Seriously, none. Come on guys. Okay. Okay. So let's move into talking about some of these specific platforms especially that can support employees. So Lynn, I'm going to start with you. Why is it important to offer a workforce not just, oh, this is a caregiving platform, here you are, but a very quality, well vetted offering that covers multiple caregiving needs versus offering many, many, many resources that may cover may not.

Lynn Perkins (12:45):

I think I'll play off of what Yvette was mentioning, that you have employees that have many, many different needs and it's hard to address getting a point solution for each of those ends up, meaning that the person who's on the HR team ends up having to make sure everybody has visibility into each of those, otherwise it won't get utilized. And so I think finding a solution that offers the majority of your employees the caregiving solution that they need can be really beneficial. I really am a big fan of visibility throughout the whole process, so I love what Yvette was mentioning about serving your employees. I think it starts with visibility into what your employee's needs are and making sure that you have not just sort of your assumption about what caregiving needs they have, but actually understand from data what it is they're looking for.

(13:38):

And then I think as you set out to look for the solution, visibility comes in a different form. You want to find a partner that is not only transparent and upfront about the pricing and how their program will work, but we're talking about caregiving here, and you have to have trust to bring somebody either into your home or into a center to help your family member. It is not as easy as just ordering a pair of shoes. You really need to have the ultimate and trust. And so making sure that the services that you're looking at, check those boxes for your employees. Are you able to see the credentials that the people who are offering the services or the centers that offer the services have? Are you able to see that other employees at your company have used this person so that when you're in that last minute pinch, there's another trust component there that these caregivers have not only worked for a family once, but they have repeat visits as well.

(14:30):

And then I think once you've selected that solution, it's really on you. Not everybody is fortunate enough to have an vet in their company who can get in to know everybody, but you need to have alignment from the management team that not only will you model the behavior, you don't want people like Erika mentioned, to feel bad about telling their HR team when they're in need. When you have c-suite and managers modeling behavior and saying, I found myself in a crisis. My mom had a stroke and I was looking for care. Or you know what? Last night my school decided that there were too many kids with the flu. They're shutting down and I had to scramble to find help. I think it's really important that people in the company model the behaviors of getting help themselves because it makes it a lot less intimidating, a lot more tangible for somebody to use the benefit.

(15:21):

And then I think once your employees are up and running on it, make sure that you have visibility into when you're presenting it to them. So making sure that it's not just, it's really easy to check the box and say, okay, we have a care benefit and introduce it at re-enrollment time, but these needs come up. Again, most people don't know that they have a caregiving need until all of a sudden they find themselves in that situation. And so make sure that your managers who are working with their employees every day know that this is a benefit that's available. If somebody is going out on parental leave, make sure they know that there is a caregiving benefit for when they return. I think that visibility is really important throughout the process. And then ultimately you want to make sure that you're working with a partner that's providing you visibility on the results. So we know that people who have a caregiving benefit, especially people with children, people without a benefit miss on average 14 days a year, people with a benefit miss four days a year and make sure that you're looking at that data and understanding are your employees using it? What can you do to increase utilization? So I think visibility throughout the process really promotes the benefit, hones it into the right audience and makes sure that it gets utilized.

Lee Hafner (16:34):

And I love what you said about leadership being an example and making it okay using their personal stories to make sure that employees know they can actually use the benefits that they're offered. Can

Yvette Marsh (16:46):

I champion? Absolutely. A bit what Lynn said, I don't know if I mentioned the size of our organization. We're fairly small. It's right at a hundred employees. We do not have a formal caregiving benefit. So I'm really looking forward to talking to Lynn and y'all are here from Wes and his organization because right now it's just hand to hand combat. It's just, well, do you know anybody and who do you know? Who did you use? And we also have a very robust parents, ERG. I mean that team's channel is just crazy. There's a lot of resources, kids camp summer camps and things like that. So I drive a lot of that, but I'm tired, so I need a more formal, I think we're ripe for a more formal offering care.com or Urban Sitter to offer to our employees so that they're not just sort of doing this informal passing of information. So that's incredibly important.

Lynn Perkins (17:48):

I think it's great you have an ERG because I do think that's one of the best ways within your organization to model the fact that people need help because you can find people who are in your same situation there, whether it's people who are caring for kids or I've also seen ERGs with people who are maybe have somebody in the home that has a special need. I think offering the ERG creates that community. I was trying to illustrate where you want to make it for your employees to know that, hey, we get that people need help.

Yvette Marsh (18:15):

Absolutely.

Lee Hafner (18:18):

So Wes, I'm going to kick it all the way down to you and if you could just add anything that you want to lens what she was talking about in reference to the benefit of having a single point solution or fewer resources, not in the sense of limiting, but in the sense of there's less to navigate and that's for hr. It's easier to swallow for the c-suite and also for employees. We don't have 10 different things that we have to figure out. We might have two or three, and I know care.com covers an amazing broad spectrum just like Urban Sitter does, and then we can get into that C-suite issue.

Wes Burke (18:58):

Yeah, sure. So this really builds, I think on the previous presentation with Target, which is around personalization, connectivity. One of the things I think that Quantum talked about, and it's one of the things we spend a lot of time with our specialists, is this fully integrated solution where we can pull you in and point you to variety of resources. When I think about that today as an HR leader, a one-stop shop is probably one of the most critical things that I look at, especially when selling to customers and sorry, selling to my internal customers and thinking about utilization specifically. The thing I'll tell you too that just to kind of build on this that you'll continue to see become more and more part of our normal day-to-day is this need on both sides of care from the senior to the senior pet and adult, but especially with the sandwich generation that we have, you've got millennials who are coming in with their parents retiring, they've got kids in the workplace, and it creates a lot of stress on the employee.

(19:54):

If you can find a place or a solution that can solve multiple things at one time, that's perfect. And so you will see this with a lot of the platforms out there today, but very few have sort of mastered the whole ecosystem. And the way I jokingly talk about this in the business case is that you've got sort of a broken flywheel. If we can figure out how to fit it all together, it works really well. But I think this is the challenge all of us are trying to solve. It's great to be on the stage with Lynn today. We view Urban and SIT are not as a competitor, but as a partner in this space. So it's great to be solving this problem together.

Lynn Perkins (20:25):

And I should say, I mean this is something people probably don't know, but there are several of us that are in this space and we actually meet together, it started about 10 years ago. We meet together regularly to talk about best technologies, trust and safety because it's best for the industry if we can all work together to create more trusted services. And I think we see there are so many opportunities out there for companies to improve and add to how they support their caregiving employees, which is about 80%.

Wes Burke (20:56):

It's interesting. The trust and safety thing is one of the biggest conversations I think we're engaged in right now. And how do we make sure as you think about the offerings, that we're really building confidence for all of our consumers. So it's a great call out.

Lee Hafner (21:07):

Yeah, absolutely. And part of what helps then make it a permanent solution in companies is to know that detail as well. So let's talk about the really fun job that HR has of going into their executives offices and saying, we've got this really great solution. We have a need. How can we make this work? And then where do we go from here?

Wes Burke (21:29):

So we are at this really interesting intersection right now. I think if you look at even five years ago talking about family care benefits and the workplace was very taboo, and I would say two data points to point you to. So there was a McKinsey study recently that we lose around 800 billion a year in productivity as a business intersect that with the cost of care is around 25% of a family's budget today in terms of take home, what that does is move means you're having a conversation both in the living room and in the conference room. So when we start to think about just the impact on the family and on the business, it's no longer a family issue. It's a business problem. The third dimension that I would add into this, and it may be a little taboo to mention, but we are in a place right now where both of our political parties in the United States recognize that childcare is in a crisis stage, but we're in a stalemate based off of our own politics.

(22:24):

So what does that mean when government doesn't step in business has to solve it? And so this ends up being an ongoing discussion I think we talk about, and for HR leaders, what I find to be sort of the best way to discuss this is pull it back to the data. What are we looking at? We have a very large retailer that we work with. We are able to show them the ROI around absenteeism when hourly workers can't show up for the shift, they're not delivering to the customer. And so there's a lot of value conversation there. And that in the space that I'm in, which is the tech space I always like to talk about we're our company is 65% female, 70% of our employees have kids at home. This is a very real issue to our demographic. And so showing that in our engagement survey, showing that, which we've heard a lot about today in our listening tours, but then also going to back and talk about how we recruit.

(23:11):

I know today if you were between the age of 35 and 44, you're female and you have kids at home, you're my prime target to recruit and this shows up in my data. You can design targeted benefits programs around that. And so it's all about that, the way I call those our personas. The other thing I would add is kind of moving away from that demographic I just mentioned, we're talking a lot about Gen Z today and what Gen Z is looking for and needs in the workplace. It's very different than what I just mentioned, but there are important caregiving solutions that you have to be thinking about, especially for aging parents.

Lee Hafner (23:41):

Yeah, absolutely. Yes.

Yvette Marsh (23:43):

So as I hear Wes talking about words that just live in my head, like recruiting and ROI in the business case, yes, there is the case to be made for decreased absenteeism, but all of the increase factors as well, increased productivity. But the one that stands out is it increases our brand. You become known over time, and it does take time. It is not microwave stuff. You become known as an organization who cares about its employees and let's policy be driven by their needs versus the other way around. So our current employees go out and tell our story past employees who no longer work for us, they go out and tell our story. And so that's the best recruiting tool I have as they go out and tell.

Wes Burke (24:32):

Well, and especially if you consider post pandemic the amount of people who've dropped out of the workplace because of one, the cost of care or the dynamics of the workplace changing. We were talking about this last night, there was an interesting HBR Harvard Business Review study that talked about the investment in care and what it does for overall business results because of the amount of diversity and talent that you attract. And as we talk more and more about DE and I like table stake benefits in terms of just medical, dental, life insurance, those don't work anymore. We have to continue to think about competitiveness in the workplace, and you'll never win the DEI game if you're just playing the planet safe, I should say.

Lee Hafner (25:12):

Yeah. And one of the things too that it's so important for employees to have at this point is just their time, their time back. We all wish we had more of it during the day. And it's something that Erika mentioned a while back when we were talking about what problems are we trying to solve? So if you're trying to solve problems within your workforce, one of the biggest things that I've heard HR people talk about is how can we give employees a little bit more time in their day? And Erika, can you just talk a little bit about some of the things that you're seeing employers in your HR people that you're working with pull into their organization, whether it be a platform, what are some of the resources that they're starting to offer to give folks back some time within their day?

Erika Ensign (25:54):

So to Wes' point, the basic traditional medical, dental, vision, blah, blah, blah, while they are important, they have become desensitized essentially in the workforce. And so while it is important, it's become so wash, rinse, repeat, and transactional that it's an expectation that, yeah, yeah, we have it. I don't really feel like it benefits me if the employer is contributing to it or making it voluntary. The employees feel somewhat the same about it. They're somewhat indifferent. They're like, yeah, okay, whatever. I don't really know how it works. Also, when I need to activate it, I don't know who to call when I need it because, so really at that point, it becomes an irritant in their payroll deduction, but also it's kind of at a sight of mine if it's payroll deducted too. So having those conversations sitting at the table with the employer groups, with the hr, as much as we advocate and we are there, our team supporting the employees because they will call us.

(27:05):

Our groups have more boots on the ground than we do, so we would love to be there every day in and day out. But it's impossible to have 20,000 of us in every single employer group hearing everything that's going on. I mean, you all will know when things are coming in your organization or dealing with it, especially in a size you are, you're large, but you're still a big family essentially. And so when Johnny's wife has cancer or you just know because you hear it, and that's a lot of our employer groups as well. And so going back to identifying what's the end result we're trying to get to, and then back out of that, a lot of times we'll start with, okay, we have this number, this budget that you guys have for benefits. What if it looks completely different than what medical, dental vision looks like?

(27:59):

So if something that we've identified in surveys or the demographics of the population based on the technology that we have, we can say, look, there's a need for something like childcare or the elderly parents now because people are needing that. Let's find those partners that are doing that. And what does that look like? There has been, oftentimes we've been able to package it within their medical plan or just a value add service of the company and is a tremendous perceived benefit. I mean, it's something simple like group life. You get a $25,000 group life policy if you work at this company, the employee doesn't know it costs $2 a month. They just know that if something happens to me, my family at least knows, has enough to take care of what needs to be taken care of because people think I'll die later or I'll deal with that later.

(28:56):

Well, when you're in that moment and you finally have to deal with it and you're like, I don't know where these resources are. And so being able to make that as a complete package, now you have 401k, you have everything that makes up this employee wellness. It's everything from benefits to 401k to time off to all of those things. And all of those things have money components to it, but it also has time. And so taking that and creating this comprehensive package that this year identifies what our employee base really needs, and then finding those partners that can help you from an administrative standpoint, streamline it, because benefits are only beneficial if your people can access 'em. And so having partners that are there when it's time to activate them to say, Hey, this is where you go. These are the things that you do.

(29:53):

So-and-so's going to help you here. Let us know if you have issues from start to finish because people, they need to know that you're there for them. I know in the nature of just on a personal note, earlier I mentioned I am now caregiving for my dad totally unexpectedly, and I'm, had I not been in the industry and have the language that I have, I wouldn't have even known where to start. And so I just think I'm grateful for where I sit. But it even made it more of a powerful point. So when this topic came up, I thought, oh my gosh, how perfect is this? Because I'm living in this world right now, so I can have that. I sit at the table with the employers and help them from a strategic standpoint plan their whole entire employee package. But then I'm also, as an employee looking at it going, okay, I'm still a mom.

(30:54):

I'm still a single mom that has to take care of a daughter. Now I have to take care of my dad. I need to make sure that his finances are in order and making sure that he's getting his doctor appointments and he's dealing with dementia. So you can't rely on his memory for anything. And so it's like, but I am having those resources and those partners to go, okay, Erika, these are the things that you need to do. Now they're calling me and going, okay, it's time to do these things. Oh, great. Thank God, because I did not have that in my calendar today.

Lee Hafner (31:22):

It is so essential that you brought up this point. And I think that with caregiving, it's so personal and maybe you don't necessarily want to share all the details with anybody really, and you're just trying to keep your head above water. But I love what you said about figuring out how to navigate is one of the biggest challenges. And it doesn't matter what kind of caregiving you're doing, and caregiving is different for everyone. Everyone's journey is different. But I've heard people even in the healthcare space, say, when my dad got sick, I still struggled because it wasn't my exact area. So Yvette, can you jump in here for a second? When it comes to how does your organization really let people know what's available to them to make sure that they know before they even need it? Yes, maybe they still come around, they forgot. But how do you make sure that your folks are aware of what they have access to?

Yvette Marsh (32:16):

So we do a couple of things, and it comes out of just breaking out of your own paradigm and your own assumption. So I got the sense that our employees needed to be informed about just the basic definitions of benefits, what is co-insurance and how premium works and deductibles, and they knew very little. So we now on a regular basis, have a little segment of our newsletter that educates them on very basic principles of the benefits that they have instead of just assuming, because I understand it, that they do as well. So that's been incredibly helpful. It has reduced the traffic that employees have made into our HR office because now they're informed. Another thing, and I hate to go back to this about listening, but I asking questions as people are exiting, the organization is incredibly important as well. You learn a whole lot of things that they would not have shared as an employee.

(33:27):

And so one thing that I noticed people sharing is that they were leaving with a lot of sick leave in their balances, but very few leave hours in their vacation leave. Now, it would not be applicable to anyone who adopts PTO because you can kind of use that across the board. We're still a very, we're progressive, but we try to, again, stay affiliated with our university, which means that we have a lot of traditional benefits as well. So we still have, does anyone have just separate buckets of sick and vacation leave still? Yeah. Okay. So we noticed these really disparate balances. And so I said, why is that? And I said, well, I'll use all my leave taking my dad to the doctor or staying home with my child. So what I did is we created policy, which is, again, this is stepping outside of yourself and just letting policy creation be led by the needs of the employee.

(34:23):

So we took a segment of these large sick leave balances and called it family care leave. We give them 10 days a year, and they can now use the leave that was originally just for their own condition, health condition. And now they can use it for a broader spectrum of their eligible family members, spouse, children, and I think grandparents as well, that it was like, I felt like Oprah, you get a car, you get a car, you get a car. They just went nuts. And I like to think that they went nuts about the fact that we paid attention and we responded to what we saw. So that has gone a long way of

Erika Ensign (35:13):

Doing. Yeah. And I ask a question. Sorry, I'm going to go rogue for a second. So when you've done that, I'm curious, have you seen a shift in your FMLA requests too? Because you've given them that time for that so that now they're not, I know a lot of our employer groups will allow intermittent FMLA for those very things, right? I have to go take so-and-so here, so I have to take three hours. I have to take off early these days, and it's going to be for the next 10 weeks or whatever while my dad's going through cancer treatment or something, because these are the appointments.

Yvette Marsh (35:55):

Yeah, absolutely. It wasn't our intent. Sure. That is what we saw.

Erika Ensign (35:57):

Well, yeah, I'm just thinking I could easily see how that could replace the need for that, because I don't know about you guys, but if the employer groups that we deal with when they have to manage or administer FMLA, they hate it. Just keeping up with the time, especially if you're offering intermittent FMLA. So we have retail stores and so forth, and so variable hour folks, and it can be challenging. And so while it's a tremendous benefit to offer, it's also become more burdensome on the people who's administering the leave to keep up with it, because it's a lot of paperwork.

Lee Hafner (36:35):

Yeah, no, no, that was awesome. And I think I just wanted to circle back to what Yvette was saying, really, it sounds like building a sense of community within your organization and what Lynn was saying before about building that trust, and Erika, you've talked about that too, that just essential relationship to have within the workforce. And I know that with care.com, when you access that, you have a number of different ways to get information. And so if I'm confused and it's the middle of the night, I can still get information, which is amazing on certain caregiving journeys, babies and parents and everything. And Lynn, your organization has, or your platform has the ability to go on and look at reviews and talk about who I've used within my neighborhood and get feedback from that local source, which I think is amazing too, A platform that's enormous, but you can narrow it down to something so specific. And again, the resources that offers HR to take that off of your plate is incredible. So I want to just leave a couple minutes for any questions that anybody had for any of our panelists or something that we haven't addressed that is an issue in your organization that you think somebody up here might have some expertise on? Yes, Heather, hold on. We're going to get you a mic.

Audience Member 1 (37:56):

No, no, no. It's when they, the on demand video, it only shows you asking.

Audience Member 2 (38:01):

Okay, cool.

(38:03):

You mentioned that you put in 10 days a year for family care leave. How do you track that? I mean, are you requiring them to provide some kind of information that you're saying, yeah, it's legit, or you just flat out give them the 10 days to take it and they just take it?

Yvette Marsh (38:17):

They have to document that it is for the purposes that the policy outlines and our payroll system and our managers look at that and review it as well. They have to approve it. The only thing that we don't necessarily track or ask about, which is kind of in the same category, we offer mental health days now six a year. You don't have to tell us why. Tell us what you're doing. Just, Hey, I'm taking a day. But the family care, we do track and to make sure that you're taking the leave for the right reasons. I just found out recently that there was a need for that because employees were using the family care to take off to stay at home with their child because the school was closed. Well, that's not the intent

(39:05):

Family care. And so tracking it and asking and getting it approved highlights that, well, actually that's not, that's for,

Audience Member 2 (39:14):

So the managers are provided that document from the employees. They're kind of in confirming that they're approving that time. For one of those 10 days,

Yvette Marsh (39:25):

We just ask and they document, and that's it. We don't ask for any sort of

Audience Member 2 (39:29):

No paper documentation. Just ask the question that was asked. So it's 10 days of the family caregiving leave, four for mental health, 6, 6, 6, no questions asked. And then you have a separate vacation.

Yvette Marsh (39:45):

Vacation and sick. Yeah.

Audience Member 2 (39:46):

Okay.

Yvette Marsh (39:47):

And volunteer leave.

Audience Member 2 (39:49):

Oh yeah. It's a lot. Yeah. Is we have PTO, but we also have something called catastrophic, which is if it's an FMLA eligible and you've been out for at least five days, then you can use your catastrophic time that gets applied. But we're trying to actually look for something for parental or family caregiving leave and just how do we incorporate that all with this and that. And we're real big about documenting everything. So it is a lot on the person that is tracking FMLA or proving this. So the managers don't really get involved. They're just get an email that says, yeah, this has been approved for cap time or FMLA. They don't know any of the personal details. It's more

Yvette Marsh (40:33):

Than hr. So we used to be that way. And I can tell you it really was a leap of faith to sort of let go of that. And when we made that leap, I mean, nothing burned to the ground. I mean, we're still functioning and nothing blew up. So there's a timing for that. I felt the time was right for us from a trust perspective in the organization, but we put a lot of trust in our employees to do the right thing for sure. Thank

Erika Ensign (40:59):

You. That's a really great point that you make though. Everything sounds great until you implement it and then you're like, what did we just do?

(41:06):

Right? From the employer's perspective, but also from the employees. So a lot of times we sit at the table and we go, these sound great, and maybe they fit within the budget, but let's play the if then this scenario. We do this a lot, so if we move this or if we change this, let's live this out in reality. So now how does the member access this? How does the member, I mean something as simple as making a health plan change. Like, ooh, new ID cards. What does that look like? Or instituting any kind of care like this of what does this look like in real life? Because on paper, it sounds magnificent, and we are sitting at the table with maybe a handful of people and we're like, this is a great idea. But then you have to get it to your employees in a way that they understand it, that they have access to it, that they can actually execute on it and go, I know this is valuable to me, and I know that my employer values me by putting this into place because this is how it's going to benefit my family.

(42:10):

So you bring up a good, everything is great until you're like, great, how do we do it?

Audience Member 2 (42:14):

Yeah, it's a lot on the, well, the person that's doing the actual work, it does, it seems used to do that. And we communicate. I think we do pretty, we might over communicate, but I feel like the employees don't read it, don't care to read it until it applies to them. And so I am constantly getting questions asked, do we have over 500 employees and is this covered or what are my rates? And we have an internet that you can go and do a search, and I'm constantly, okay, here on Compass, you can find, or here's the information found on Compass. So not your

Erika Ensign (42:57):

Employee. Don't have, we have about insurance out of the mandated time. Wow. Weird.

Audience Member 2 (43:01):

Yeah. I mean, we have monitors throughout the building. We send out a five for Friday. We do, I mean, sometimes I feel like it's a lot. It's either too much or not enough. But it all depends on the employees reading the stuff that, or I created an open enrollment video that's a quick five minute. You don't even have to read anything. You can just watch a video and they come back six months later, oh, my FSA card didn't work. Well, did you sign up again? So I feel like it's a lot of accountability on the employees, so thank you so much.

Lee Hafner (43:29):

No, I think you brought up an amazing point, which is that you cannot over communicate. That's not a thing, but two, making people aware, but all the different perspectives from all these, you guys are doing very different things, but with one common goal. And I think everyone in the room can agree with that, which is we just want to lead with empathy and figure out how to fix this issue for people and make their lives better. Thank you to my amazing four panelists. Track them down. They will not all be here throughout the entire conference, so track them down today. If you have any questions,

Lynn Perkins (44:01):

Yvette's going to have her jobs available posted because we all now want to come work for you.

Lee Hafner (44:05):

Yes. Yep. Thank you all so much for attending. I hope you're going to stick around for the parental leave, which is next, and then we've got lunch right after that. Thanks everyone.