Connor Toomy: Hello everyone, and thank you for joining us for this presentation, the Hidden Cost of Employee Caregiving. This program is part of the SHRM webinar series. You can learn about upcoming and on demand events from our users and the SHRM webinar homepage at shrm.org/webinars.shrm. Thanks to Homethrive for sponsoring this program and a series of free webinars for the HR community.

Before you hear from today’s speakers, we want to provide you with guidance on using the SHRM webinar interface. To the right of your screen is where you’ll be able to submit questions to the speakers. Under the video window, you can find the program resources for this presentation.

After this webinar, you’ll receive an email with the SHR M recertification code viewing. This full program qualifies for one PDC towards SHRM CP and SHRM SCP Recertification. You can claim the program for the kinds of HR recertification credit, but you’ll need to provide the details to your certifying body. We only had pre-approval for SHRM certification.

Now about today’s program. As economic pressures intensify, family caregivers are being hit particularly hard, and this panel conversation explores the real world impact of rising costs and caregiving expenses on your employee’s well-being and job performance.

To lead our presentation, we’re pleased to welcome Blair Whitman with Homethrive, Cindy Perry with PwC, Becky Thomas with Piper Jordan, and Jennifer Spence with Alliant Insurance Services. Here’s more information about our presenters.

Blair Whitman is the Vice President of Client Success at Homethrive. Cindy Perry is the Senior Managing Director of the National Benefits Team at PwC. Becky Thomas is Senior Associate and Population Health at Piper Jordan. And Jennifer Spence is the Senior Vice President and National Director of Health and Productivity at Alliant Insurance Services. I’m now pleased to turn over the webinar microphone to PwC’s Cindy Perry.

Cindy Perry: Hi. Good afternoon everyone. I’m Cindy Perry, Senior Managing Director of National Benefits at PwC. I have the honor of having the firm as my client, so me and my dynamic team are responsible for the strategy and operations for our employees, our partners, retirees. And so I’m happy to speak with you today.

I’m not only a managing director at PwC. I’m the mother of triplets. The caretaker of my elderly father. So this topic is extremely important to me on a personal level as well as important to me on a professional level as I think through how we support our amazing colleagues at PwC. Great to be with you today.

Blair Whitman: Thank you, Cindy. Becky, can you introduce yourself please?

Becky Thomas: Yeah, my pleasure. I’m Becky Thomas. I lead population health strategy at Piper Jordan, where we believe there’s a better way to manage complex employee benefits, one that puts people first. For nearly two decades, our team has partnered with global employers to shape smart health decisions by combining cutting edge data insights with a human touch.

Like so many employees, I’m a caregiver myself. For me, caregiving means showing up every day in two roles. One at work where I help support organizations to take care of their people, and one at home where I’m supporting my own family. I know what it feels like to juggle both. I know how much stability and peace of mind the right benefits can bring.
At Piper Jordan, we don’t just see claims and metrics. We see people and I’m excited to share what we’ve seen, work in supporting caregivers like me and maybe like you too.
Blair Whitman: Thank you, Becky. Jennifer, can you introduce yourself please?

Jennifer Spence: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Good afternoon. I’m Jen Spence at Alliant Benefit Insurances.

And in my role I support our clients in delivering best benefit packages to support all things, to create a healthy and well life of the employee population. And so we really look at how best to craft strategies that support caregivers in any of the roles that have already been mentioned here before.

Parents, pet lovers, managers, leaders, and everything in between. And I look forward to today’s conversation. I similarly have a pet, have aging parents, have a team of several people, two kids who are away at college but need help and support in their own way. And so looking forward to really talking about how this impacts really all of us.
This isn’t a small segment of the population. It’s a really big topic for us to be digging into today. So thank you.

Blair Whitman: Yeah. Thank you all. And I’m Blair Whitman. I lead client success here at Homethrive. I’ve been in the benefits industry about 20 years now and have touched many different parts of it.

Working for a place like Homethrive is really fulfilling for me because not only do we help make a difference in companies and HR teams and leave teams and resource groups, but we also really, truly make a difference in people’s lives. And I feel fortunate that I get to sit on the front line and see and hear those stories and share them back with clients and brokers, like the wonderful people that we have today.

We have an exceptional panel and let’s dive into everything. Next slide, please. So before we get started, I wanted to quickly call attention to the source of information for today’s presentation, which is largely derived from Homethrive’s Financial State of Family Caregiver Survey in partnership with YouGov and Homethrive’s corresponding white paper.
The survey received more than 2000 responses, 500 of which were from employed caregivers providing care for adults and children. Additionally, the data is segmented by respondents caring for one individual versus those caring for multiple people. In the context of this survey, a caregiving benefit is an employer-sponsored program that provides support for employees who are balancing their professional responsibilities with the demands of caring for a loved one.

This can include children, aging parents, a partner with a chronic health condition, or a family member with a disability. Think of it as a comprehensive support system to help employees navigate complex and often overwhelming challenges that come with being a caregiver. In addition to the caregiving benefits, we’ll also be discussing caregiving policies that employers are enacting to support employee caregivers.

I’ve been a caregiver my whole life. Personally, I’ve helped family members through addiction, through cancer, through end of life, through kidney disease. Currently looking for a living kidney donor for my brother. And it’s a proud part of what I do, but also what we see. So thank you for joining us here today. Next slide please.

So I first want to start with the financial impact of caregiving and then dive into the economic pressures that disproportionately impact caregivers. To say anyone isn’t concerned about the rising cost in the economy would not be surprising, so it’s shouldn’t come as a shock to anybody listening that 92% of caregivers say they share those same concerns, especially given the extra financial burdens they shoulder, which in a recent AARP study estimated that $7,200 a year people are spending specifically on caregiving expenses.
This could be out-of-pocket healthcare costs, household contributions, travel and legal costs. Next slide, please. Those economic concerns are often compounded when employees are forced to make decisions that negatively impact their financial well-being. For example, 75% of respondents to the YouGov survey said they have or are considering taking actions that could negatively impact their financial well-being.

This could look like taking on debt, leveraging emergency funds if they have them, and even turning down promotions. It’s no surprise to see that 69% of caregivers delayed their own personal goals like buying a home, taking a vacation to afford the care, or be present for somebody they are caring for. Rather than taking a financial hit, or perhaps just a lessen it, 62% of caregivers have considered or taken an extra job to afford their expenses, and that 62% jumps to 78% when the caregiver is responsible for providing some type of caregiving for more than one person.

These stats to me just really start to outline the impacts of caregiving of employed caregivers. I’ve felt it, everybody on the panel has felt it. I’m sure that this resonates with some of you that are tuning in right now. I know that we usually think about the big ones like insurance premiums, 401Ks, and leave policies, but caregiving is at the core of that and overlaps with almost every other benefit and policy in the way that your people show up.

So I want to take this time and turn to the panel. In thinking about this and preparing these opening slides really speak to financial well-being, which has numerous downstream, which we’ll get to shortly. But Jen, I want to call on you. I’m curious to know when it comes into focus in developing a benefits package that addresses whole person support. I know you and Alliant have done a lot of great work here holding projects. I would love for you to weigh in.

Jennifer Spence: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. We have recently done some projects for some large organizations and really took a look at what the business impact is for caregivers and really understanding absenteeism, medical cost impact, as well as presenteeism and found that, on average, an employee with family caregiving responsibilities takes about 11 more days of unplanned absences. And depending on what type of work you are doing, that can mean no pay.

That doesn’t mean you’re just using your PTO and it’s part of the package Sometimes that has financial impact to the person as well as to the team. You know, if somebody’s out because of caregiving, it does have consequences to teammates and other members.

Additionally, we see impact on personal health, both physical and mental. Twenty-five percent of caregivers report having poor impact on their personal health. Oftentimes the people that are in the caregiving crunch are in the height of their chronic conditions. They’re in their mid forties and fifties, they’ve been giving to their children, they now are taking care of parents, and maybe they have their own personal health conditions.

And so there’s medical costs or delayed medical costs that they’re experiencing. And then there’s also the mental health toll of just anxiety, depression, and stress that takes its toll on his caregiver and ultimately the organization.

And last, just that presentee piece, it’s upwards of 20 hours a week that a caregiver, and maybe this isn’t an everyday parent, but someone that’s taking on a significant caregiving responsibility, spending many hours (10, 20 hours a week) just trying to navigate what to do next. And that also has an impact on the organization.
So it’s bigger than I think most people think and something to really dig into when we talk about resources and support.

Blair Whitman: I love that you share that. And at my last role, I worked for a great preventive health company and we saw that and I saw that myself personally. When you’re caregiving, sometimes you come last.

So I love that. That’s something that we really focus on is putting your oxygen mask on first and taking care of yourself before you can take care of others. And I’m going to ask to go to the next slide because, you know, you hit on some statistics that you found that also overlap with what we’ve found on the emotional effects of caregiving and that 20 plus hours per week that you see there.

So the physical and emotional toll of caregiving can have on an individual, they’re stretched thin by their existing responsibilities and their need to make financial ends meet. You bring up important points, Jen, about sometimes that time off doesn’t always equate to paid time off for people.

So it’s something that is very, very impactful for people financially with caregiving already taking up an extra 20 plus hours per week, we found in this study that caregivers have less time to recharge than other employees. It shouldn’t come as a shock, but 92% are considering taking actions that will mean even less personal time to recharge.

That could be in taking on a second job, like we mentioned in the last slide, or just adding additional caregiving responsibilities. Once people become a caregiver, they become a beacon for other people that need help. And oftentimes are designated that in the family, and nearly half of all of those surveys said that juggling work and caregiving responsibilities made it hard to take care of their own health and well-being.

So that really does match up, Jen, with what you shared. It’s underscored by research from AARP that 60% of caregivers report clinical levels of stress and 40% experience depression. With all of this in mind, Cindy, I’d love to talk to you. You know, there’s been a huge emphasis on mental health and emotional support, and I know PwC does a wonderful job at addressing caregivers, not only in benefits, but policies.

Can you weigh in here on how you think about this at PwC?

Cindy Perry: Sure. I think given the stats, what’s really important for benefit leaders and how we think about it as well is this impacts the whole person. So we can see the financial impact that Jen alluded to and the stats show, but we also see in our data, and our mental health data, that this is driving stress, anxiety, and burnout with our people.

So when we think about how we’re going to address this, it’s beyond having an EAP program, even though we do see in our own population that about 10% of all of our presenting reasons were focused on caregiving. The stress, the pressures of providing care to family members, whether it’s our children, whether they’re family issues or adult and elder care.
And so one of the things that we’ve implemented within our EAP program is an enhanced elder care. So it’s not just about the physical act of caregiving, but it is how do you find support for housing, respite care, Medicare, Medicaid support, transportation, long distance caregiving.

And we made sure that we built programs around those solutions to support our people. So we have up to six hours of support with onsite assessments, personalized care planning, support, and some coaching and coordination support. We also included in our program 60 minutes of free consultation with a credentialed financial specialist.
And from a policy perspective, for those of our population who are maybe out on parental leave, we know making the transition from being out on parental leave to coming back full-time in the workplace can also add to a level of stress as people start to transition. So we have a phased return to work policy for our people.

We give them paid caregiver leave. In a lot of organizations, you may qualify for FMLA, you go out, it’s unpaid. But we think about the toll on our people when they’re out on caregiving leave, and we offer that paid parental leave as well, and that paid caregiver leave.

Blair Whitman: I love the way that you guys are thinking about this from a lot of different ways for members of the firm and how important that retention is.

And I know when we were preparing, especially, women in the workforce that, you know, we all are passionate about supporting and retaining. So thank you for sharing that. Becky, I wanted you to chime in on this too, because I know that we had some interesting conversations as we spoke about this slide in preparing.

Becky Thomas: I think it’s important to recognize that burnout doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a slow accumulation of responsibilities that outpaces the money, energy, and time that the caregiver has. And yet most organizations tend to intervene too late when the symptoms are occurring. When they’re overwhelmed, they’re providing reactive solutions like counseling or stress apps or things like that.

And while a lot of those strategies can help, they don’t really get to the root cause of the scenario. And to prevent burnout, we’re really looking at trying to reduce the load, specifically often the mental load for caregivers before crisis level occurs. You know, think about things like flexible scheduling, paid care, caregiving leave, to Cindy’s point concierge style navigation that reduce the hours that employees are spending on managing care and giving them the time and space to recharge.

We’re really considering setting up benefits that are preventing versus reacting. And again, while those are important things, that’s not how we solve the problem.

Blair Whitman: Yeah. Thank you for that. And when I think of burnout, I often think of it holistically, but in the context of what we’re talking about today, there is a financial impact.

When you are not operating at a hundred percent, there’s a financial impact there in many different ways. And the speed that you get things done at work, the speed that you get things done at home and the downstream impacts that has too on your health and the costs that can come in there.

So thank you for sharing that. You know, I think that that dovetails well into the next slide. As the financial and emotional burden of caregiving increases for employed individuals, it can affect their job satisfaction and take a toll on their career progression.

Something that we talk about a lot: caregiving is the number two reason why employees are leaving their job behind, number one being retirement. So it’s not a surprise that 66% of working caregivers felt their caregiving responsibilities negatively impacted their career or advancement opportunities.

We’re starting fall onsites with clients right now, and I heard these stories straight from employees’ mouths last week. Their partner or their spouse has left their job because they need to care for a loved one. I mean, these are real life things that are happening that you see in these numbers.

When you drill down a little bit further, you can see how caregiving has a real impact on job satisfaction, and it’s often looked to as a leading indicator of turnover. Can you go to the next slide, please? So, caregivers themselves point to their responsibilities and lack of benefits and policies as a reason to change jobs or exit the workforce.

You know, speaking to what everybody has shared here on the panel today, 57% wish that their company offered caregiving benefits. And in what’s become a consistent theme throughout this presentation, that pressure really grows when people are providing care for more than one person. I think one of the more alarming statistics from the survey found that 75% said they would leave their current role for an employee that offered caregiving benefits.

And 51% of employees have considered leaving the workforce entirely to find a new job with more flexibility. And really, they’re not just thinking about it, they’re acting on it. According to a study by Harvard Business School, it says that 32% of employees have already left a job due to their caregiving responsibilities.

Surprisingly, among younger workers we see that number rise to 50%. And I think that we all know the younger workers and the childbearing age, that’s probably a leading indicator in the younger workers that we have there. So caregivers are saying that they need more support.

They are considering leaving their jobs, for one that offers more support and they’ve left when they don’t feel supported. I want to ask all the panelists here giving these statistics of career impact, how do you look at this and how do you tackle it and what statistics and or anecdotal stories are you seeing?

Cindy Perry: I’m happy to jump in. I was pausing, but, I mentioned, when I spoke earlier, just about taking a holistic approach. And understanding that this is a multifaceted issue, and oftentimes it’ll present itself. If we’re waiting for it to present itself as specifically caregiving, then we might miss the boat here.

I think there are a lot of opportunities for employers to turn this around in multiple ways and think about how do you define a family member, right? And so making sure as we’re thinking about this, that we put holistic policies in place that address the mental health needs, the financial needs, the emotional needs.

And even Becky mentioned the navigational support and concierge needs because you may have a caregiving policy, but people don’t know how to navigate that. So making sure you have adequate support there, I think that’s that’s important.

And I would also when I think about this, I just think about my personal situation where we know of people who may not live in a traditional kind of nuclear family. You may be living with grandparents, or there may be aunts who serve as parents, right? So how do you make sure you put a broader lens on as you’re thinking about this, to meet the variety of needs of a diverse population?

Blair Whitman: Yeah. I love that you say that, Cindy, the way that we call it at Homethrive is a Care Circle. And it’s just exactly because of what you mean, because family should be defined by the person and who they’re caregiving for. And even if you’re providing care to your elderly neighbor and that’s taking time out of your day and we can help support, we’re going to help support you.

So I love that a great organization like PwC is thinking about that for people at the firm.

Jennifer Spence: I’ll hop in real quick too, if that’s okay. I think from our perspective, you know, we’re talking to employers and oftentimes the HR person is hearing the pain points from the employees day in and day out around caregiving.

But we run into this wall when it comes to getting the approval for the benefits because leaders and managers and supervisors often don’t see it the same way. Don’t experience what these pain points are for these caregivers.

And so for me, when I’m thinking about talking to our clients, it’s about explaining if we have this high turnover, we’re losing critical knowledge workers that we spend a lot of time hiring and training and there’s a cost to that and there’s a really high cost to that. And a very remote hybrid workforce where training and hiring and culture building, I think is even harder than it’s ever been.

So building that business case and training and educating supervisors and managers on how to talk about this and as well as how to be empathetic and compassionate and understanding of the challenges a caregiver may have. No one’s trying to get out of work. Everybody’s trying to figure out what that work/life blend is to take care of all the priorities on their plate.

And sometimes I think we have to take a step back and help everybody understand what we’re trying to accomplish and what the true organizational impacts short-term and long-term are when it comes to caregiving.

Blair Whitman: Go ahead, Becky.

Becky Thomas: I just want to add one more thing to Jennifer and Cindy because I am in complete agreement, but I think retention isn’t just about pay anymore.

Employees are looking at whether they can sustain their career without sacrificing families. And so caregiving benefits is one of the clearest signals that an employer can leverage to say we value both and we’re here to support both for you. And I’ve seen many organizations turn retention numbers around just by offering a benefit like Homethrive that supports the whole picture for them.

However, they specifically define themselves as a caregiver.

Blair Whitman: I agree with everybody and what you guys are saying here, and it makes me think back to the way that I look at it, is that a lot of our job duties are performative and caregiving is very not performative at all.

It’s very raw. It’s very real. So when all of you kind of touch on that cultural piece, especially Becky, it makes me think about the culture levers and changes that you see too when you have this benefit. And let me tell you, when you have a senior leader stand up and talk about this benefit and how it’s impacted them in caregiving, those enrollment numbers just go through the roof.

So, thank you guys all for putting in your input there. Let’s move on to the next slide where we’re going to talk about productivity and impact employee caregiving has on employers, on the HR leaders that are joining us today. The fact is that time commitment and burnout from caregiving can result in thousands of hours and trillions of dollars lost each year.

Unsurprisingly, more than half of those surveyed said that they had spent time on caregiving tasks during work hours. And I really say unsurprisingly there because, let’s think about it, a caregiver outside of direct one-to-one care, it often involves working with agencies and organizations that are only available during the workday.

And that can include things like setting up doctor’s appointments, arranging transportation, managing bank and investment accounts, locating community resources, and perhaps one of the most time consuming activities and one of the biggest areas of help that we help people with is navigating Medicare.

So the numbers here further emphasize the impact to productivity. You see that 70% of respondents submitted that caregiving responsibilities impacted their ability to be present and focused at work, and almost half considered taking time off from work altogether to manage their caregiving responsibilities. And according to the Harvard Business School, 80% of working caregivers say that their caregiving responsibilities have a negative impact on productivity.

Jen, I know you talked about this before, but you really do have some powerful stats around some consulting work that you’ve done here. Can you speak to a few of these for productivity?

Jennifer Spence: Yeah. I mean, I think one of the biggest things to consider is the type of organization you are these statistics may mean different things.

For example, if you have hourly workers, them not being able to juggle a call with a doctor at the same time during their workday and it puts extraordinary stress on them. The other thing is it creates a lot of distraction. And so I think when you’re dealing with organizations that maybe have pilots, flight attendants, truck drivers, things of that nature, it can create safety problems and occupational health challenges.

When people are just constantly worried and stressed about something else, they’re not focused on what’s at hand and that has significant implications to the organization. We’ve even seen it impacts their physical ability to do their job up to 18%. So we’re not talking just little numbers.

It’s significant. And that is really at all ages, all types of care, whether you’re dealing with an elder parent, a friend, a family member, a young child, just trying to deal with a sick daycare person called in and you don’t know what to do and you’re juggling all your schedule around and it’s just significant all the way around.

And employers are taking a hit for it. So I think benefits like this can really come in and provide a bigger benefit than what traditionally people have seen is just finding a babysitter. This is so far beyond childcare. It’s really a broader support. And the other piece that I think hasn’t been mentioned that I just want to call out, that these types of tools do help is they connect family members so they can share the load in caregiving.

So it’s not an isolated, I have to do it all myself event. My brother can help me with mom, my sister-in-law can help me with our father-in-law, or whatever the case may be. I think that’s a really important piece. And bringing people together to collectively support the family unit or the family circle with these issues so everyone’s more productive. And it’s not a burden on just one person.

Blair Whitman: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for calling that out. These are conversations I had last week with employees and I think that that really hits home the impact to productivity. That when somebody has a benefit like ours, they don’t need to take on a hundred percent of the caregiving responsibility that they can assign and delegate different things to different people and share information, across their family, their circle, their chosen group of people that’s helping with this.

I think that that’s really important. Cindy, I want to ask you when we think about productivity and where you sit at PwC. It’s often a bottom line, ROI measure, especially in organizations with billable hours. But what about the impact that stretch employees have on the rest of the organization? How do you think about that?

Cindy Perry: I think it’s more of a cultural question, right? So we want to make sure that we have policies, and a culture that is designed to support our people. Because for us, our people, that is our business. We have experts in various fields, and when they’re not available or they’re distracted because they have to take care of other needs, they need to have that culture of support around them.

If they take a day off, they certainly need to have protected time. So they need to have the ability to handle what they need to handle. So that they’re able to come back and focus on work to the degree that they can. And so for us, when we think about that, we build the culture of support around our caregivers to make sure that they have what they need.
I think it’s also about helping them get to the resource that they need to utilize in the fastest and quickest way. So we think, what mechanisms do we have in place that can help facilitate our people getting to where they need and find the resources that they need very quickly so that they’re not spending the extra time trying to navigate through a plethora of benefits to find what they need.

And so we invest a lot of energy and effort there around the experience and that wraparound support to help our people find what they need very quickly.

Blair Whitman: I love that. So it’s a multifaceted, layered support that is culturally driven, that helps productivity. I think that’s the best way to look at it. And I appreciate your input here.

Becky Thomas: Can I add one more thing? I’ll be quick. I promise. I know we’ve talked about productivity really broadly, but there’s one small thing I think that is impactful for most people and they could probably feel it immediately. Think about when an employee is stretched too thin.

The impact doesn’t just stop with them. It affects their team dynamic as well. You know, workloads that spill over onto colleagues, pick up the phone and it all comes out. Slow projects, morale that’s tanking. And over time it erodes the trust of team members. The balance starts to come off kilter, and sometimes that alone can be more damaging than just the reduced output.

So I think there’s also the hidden cost to pay attention to in that sense that caregiving stress also undermines culture overall, but also collaboration amongst team members.
Blair Whitman: I’m so grateful that you brought that up, Becky. I think that’s really important. A lot of what we’re talking about here is the caregiver, but the impact it has on other team members isn’t something small and isn’t something that should be overlooked.

So thank you very much for bringing that up. I would love to move to potential outcomes for us. So if we look at some numbers that show impact for caregiving benefits and what they can have on your workforce. Admittedly these numbers come from Homethrive data, given that we can’t readily analyze data from our competitors, but they do reflect the success an organization can expect when offering a comprehensive suite of caregiving benefits.

You saw on an earlier slide that EAPs average roughly 5% utilization. We see roughly 25% utilization when employers offer our full solution. And when I think about this, because EAPs are great referral partners for us that we help onboard in the implementation process to get people over to us.

I find that, I hear from EAPs a lot of employees are using that for mental health and or caregiving surface issues, whereas we’re able to help them on a much deeper level when that referral takes place and comes over to us and we’re able to help more than just the employee in the family care circle, if you will.

So, this supports the result and average of 16.4 hours saved per employee per month. And so we often get asked from prospects and clients to translate our outcomes to ROI. And these are one of the numbers that you as an HR leader can readily use to calculate the monetary impact of an employee caregiving solution.

We have a number of organizations like law firms that operate on billable hours, and they often use this as a direct calculation for ROI. And beyond the recapture productivity, we’ve seen significant impact to employee well-being and find that it’s equally as important as ROI for organizations that prioritize mental health and employee well-being.
This tracks significantly well with all of the cultural aspects that we have been talking about today. Finally, our clients are reporting an average of 80% reduction in voluntary turnover. And as some of the panelists have pointed out, it costs a lot to hire, to recruit, to train new employees in this economy, and especially in this hybrid economy that a lot of us work in.

So questions over for the great panelists today. What outcomes are large employers measuring or looking at, to impact offering caregiving benefits, or developing internal policies that support caregivers? What are you looking for in an outcome?

I’ll ask Becky. I’m going to ask you. I know that you just contributed, but I would love your input here.

Becky Thomas: I think there’s a couple that come to mind and they may be a little less obvious, and I’ll preface this by saying sometimes they can be a little hard to measure, but are still a value in importance to large employer leaders.

And the first would be presenteeism. And specifically, looking at the fact that yes, maybe an employee is physically at work, but they’re mentally consumed by all of their caregiving responsibilities. And again, I know it’s hard to measure, but it’s important because it drains the focus and performance of that employee every day.

And so if they can make a difference and see the clarity come back in the employee, whether they’re seeing that through surveys or anecdotally or performance reviews, that’s important for our large employer leaders. The second is also maybe something that a lot of people forget about, but it’s career growth opportunities and specifically around succession planning.

You know, when employees are turning down promotions or professional development opportunities because of their caregiving responsibilities, that cost doesn’t just immediately show up, but it shows up later down the road. And leadership gaps, succession challenges, and these hidden costs are often bigger than the obvious ones like absenteeism or Aleve numbers or something like that.

And then, if you could think about it like this, there’s a lot of hidden costs, such as energy issues with employees, which lead to health claim issues down the line and supporting caregivers protects the team dynamic that I talked about, the silent productivity loss, its safeguards, long-term talent development.

And then of course, there’s the well-being aspect that you talked about, Blair. Stress reduction, job satisfaction, engagement. All of these things can be measured even if it’s through surveys. So while some of these might look soft on the outside, they’re definitely areas of focus for many innovative leaders that I work with.

Cindy Perry: Can I add something very quickly, Blair? I agree with Becky and I also agree that sometimes these things are very hard to measure. It’s hard to measure, do you feel supported? I mean, there are surveys and things that you can do of your population, but one of the things that we look at, after we make a significant investment in our people in terms of making sure we have the right suite of benefits that are available to support them.

We actually want to know that people are using them. So, one of the things that we can measure is our utilization increasing. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because there are issues and things that are happening beyond our employees control and beyond our own personal control.

What we want to know is if we’ve invested millions of dollars in a solution or a support system, we want to know, are people using it? Are they able to find it? How long does it take them to find it? And did they get what they needed? And I think being able to measure those things is equally is as important as measuring, Hey, did you show up to work today?
Or, did you feel stressed or not? We want to know that after we make that investment that you’re able to find it. We want to know that you’re able to use it. So utilization for us is a metric that we use to evaluate the success of our programs.

Blair Whitman: I love that Cindy and I want to add on, because I have a favorite chart for our clients and it’s not only new utilization, but active in returning because some caregiving is episodic and some caregiving is ongoing.

So I get excited when I see not only that 25% utilization with people joining the program, but also the returning and ongoing users is really encouraging to make sure that not only is it a success from initial signup or with your caregiving benefit or your caregiving policy, but it’s also actively being utilized to show continuous return.
Anybody else want to weigh in before we turn to the next slide?

Jennifer Spence: I just want to add one piece and probably more on the direct cost, but I think one thing that employers are looking at, at least through my experience, is the interdependencies of all of these components. So, when someone goes out on leave for caregiving, we’ve seen the likelihood of a follow-up mental health leave to be 15 to 20% of the time within the next year or two.

And so understanding if you have a caregiving benefit and you avoid a leave or you shorten a leave, and you also have those mental health resources to provide coping and other support, can you reduce subsequent leaves?

And that impact that Becky was talking about on the team. Like, that’s when the team really starts to hit the morale and defeat and everybody’s just constantly being gritty and that creates burnout and overwhelm. And so I think that is an element where employers are saying, Hey, how can we connect the dots between all of these different things? How do we support the caregiver with their chronic health while they’re going through caregiving? So it’s treating that whole person back to a lot of what we said, being really dynamic in providing the support mechanisms and information to the employee at the right time for all these different benefits is really key.

Blair Whitman: Yeah, I mean, I’m so passionate about us being involved with leave teams and all of our clients as intensive as they want us as even making phone calls out to people on leave to make sure they think about caregiving leave. Everybody always thinks about FMLA, but the truth is, if you’re taking any type of disability leave too, either you, yourself, or somebody in your household you’re caregiving for.

So the interdependency is so smart and meeting them at the right time when they truly, truly need us hopefully to circumvent the leave. But, the great policies that companies put in play help supplement with the full suite of caregiving benefits as well too. Let’s move on to the next slide.

And we’re talking about the demand of caregiving benefits here. So the good news for employed caregivers is that we’re steadily seeing a shift towards normalization of caregiving benefits. I like to say, the way that we saw mental health emerge in the past decade, we’re seeing caregiving emerge in the same way.

Caregiving benefits are the second most popular family independent care benefit, and it’s sandwiched between family leave and standalone childcare. That was underscored during a recent brand health survey that we did, where we found that 44% of respondents already worked for organizations with caregiver-specific employee resource groups and forward-thinking organizations are starting to take notice.

Fifty percent of companies plan on expanding their caregiving benefits within the next three years. I think that tracks with how many people signed up for the webinar today and have joined us because it’s showing that you have an interest in understanding the financial impacts of caregiving and could be potentially considering adding on caregiving benefits and or policies.

To the panelist team, we see a significant number of companies that are planning to expand their caregiving benefits in the next three years. Jen, I’d love for you to weigh in on first steps you’d recommend when you are working as a consultant with your clients that are just beginning to explore the benefit.

How do you assure that it aligns with their overall benefit strategy?

Jennifer Spence: Yeah, that’s no easy task at times. We often say we’re CSI agents in the world of consulting just to understand all of the pieces. I was noticing in the notes from participants, it’s just half the battle is knowing what exists and how to get to it.

So I think, from my perspective, it is that discovery of what’s available. How do we best get the right information to employees and really understand what those caregiving needs are. The workforce demographics are incredibly important. And when you think about partnering with a vendor like Homethrive so that you really craft the right package that is most meaningful and beneficial and accessible to the end users.

And then the second piece is how is it going to be communicated? The age old buildup, they will come, never works. Even in today’s world, there’s more technology and communication than ever before, you still ask somebody in the elevator and they have no idea what’s available to them.

Making sure that you’ve really cascaded the information out to managers and leaders and those whether it’s wellness champs or HR folks in various locations or the employee resource groups and really expanding it to all of them is so critical.

In today’s environment, I feel like we expect our vendors to just magically be successful and drive participation and forget that it’s a partnership and everybody has to be willing to kind of roll up their sleeves and figure out how to get the right information to the users at the right time. And so that’s a really key piece of what we do and how we think about it.
Blair Whitman: You know, it makes me think back to the word we used in the last slide: interconnectivity. Because I think you nailed it with talking about rolling out the benefits.
But it also is, I had a client once asked me, do you play nice in the sandbox with others? So it’s making sure that benefits like ours communicate with EAPs and mental health resources and leave teams and employee resource groups because everybody is going to learn about their access to caregiving in different ways.

And it does take multiple touch points. As you said, when you ask somebody on the elevator what’s available to them, oftentimes it’s hard for people to recall all of the resources and navigation. And I think it falls on solutions like ours to help get people to the right places. So when somebody is working with us and we identify that they also have mental health needs, is there a mental health benefit in place?

Is there an EAP that we can direct them to work with? Because that’s how we’re going to be successful tackling this holistically. Becky, I’d love for your input on this too and evaluate caregiving benefits and how you ensure it fits in benefit strategy.

Becky Thomas: A lot of my clients come to the table, at renewal season, having childcare, subsidy or tuition benefits in place. And I often use that as an opportunity to expand the conversation into this cradle to rocking chair benefit structure. I think gone are the days where we can get away with just having childcare subsidy and that being enough, because our workforce has changed, and they require more comprehensive solutions.

So I start there and once the team has agreed that’s the direction they want to go, I find the most successful benefits, especially ones like Homethrive or caregiving benefits in general. Come from them being fully integrated into the culture of that organization. And that can only occur when the benefits team, the HR business partners, the ERGs, are constantly and consistently talking about the benefit and sharing the story about why they’ve put it in place.

I mean, what a wonderful story to tell your employees that we care about you so much, that we’ve invested this money and time and energy to select a partner that can help you in one of the most vulnerable and most important parts of your life. And if you keep telling that story in all of the opportunities available, eventually it becomes talked about amongst employees in the break room or colleague friends as they’re leaving the workday, and that’s how we know it’s successful.

Some of those milestones or opportunities are, do you have documents that you send out to your leaders during performance reviews? Can you put in a blurb that says talk about this with your employee at this time so they know what’s available and suggest looking at their benefits, resources, every year at least.

Do you have an annual PD professional development opportunity? Do you have physical time clocks that you can put business cards there that say you have this benefit available, scan this QR code, they can stick it in their pocket and walk out the door.

Do you have newsletters that you send out regularly, are there fun events that you host? Those sort of things where you’re bringing it up and talking about it. That’s how we see things become successful, and that’s how we get buy-in from the leaders. And we don’t have scenarios where the CEO doesn’t even know they have a benefit available to them.
Blair Whitman: Yeah, that’s great. Cindy, from your perspective, from PwC, where are you seeing the demand for caregiving surfacing within the firm?

Cindy Perry: One of the things we recently did, and this is a direct offshoot of some of the demands that we saw. I think to everybody’s point, having clear communication, being able to understand how your caregiving benefit fits within the overall construct of your benefits package is important.

I think it’s also important to make sure you have the right vendor. If you think about when COVID happened, we just kind of frontloaded, I mean it, everybody just threw everything in the kitchen sink at people because you just wanted to make sure people had access to whatever they needed, right?

The people were shifted to working from home. There were a lot of needs that, that surface that we didn’t know our people had. Now we’re taking a step back to say, let’s reevaluate this landscape and make sure we have the right partner. And so I think evaluating to make sure you have the right partner.

Maybe you don’t need five, maybe you just need the right one. So I think that’s important and assessing that to make sure you’re not cannibalizing your offering. But then, once we did that work, one of the things that we saw is within that kind of ecosystem, we needed to tweak, it was beyond the partnership, it was tweaking the benefit itself.

So we recently added pet care to our backup care. So it’s making sure not only is there awareness that we have the right partner, but then there are things that we can do within the benefit itself to make sure it’s meeting the evolving needs of our people. That’s one of the recent strategies that we took to just make sure that we were aligned with the needs of our people.

And not like pet discount care, but backup care for pets, right? Because you know, not everybody has children or maybe you’re not caring for a family member, but you most certainly might be taking care of your fur baby if you have to go on a business trip or your fur baby is sick or something like that, we have to think about that against the landscape of the evolving needs of the population that we serve.

Blair Whitman: I love that. I’m going to wrap it up with everything that you’ve said of equity. And so in our backup care program, we’ve got pet care too, because you have to think about not only is it from high chair to rocking chair and beyond with the caregiving spectrum that you’re helping, but people are caregiving for pets, for people, for themselves.
So it’s important to make sure that holistically you hit all of that from an equity perspective. I think that that is a wonderful place, with four minutes left, for us to conclude the presentation part and we will turn over to Q&A. I want to wholeheartedly thank the panelists again. This has been a pleasure, not only to prepare with you, but to learn from you and share this presentation with everybody else that has joined us today.

So in moving to the audience Q&A, I believe that Connor, you’re going to jump back in.

Connor Toomy: Yes, thank you. And we’ll turn to audience questions in just a moment. If you’re an HR, not a SHRM member yet, you’re leaving tools, answers and support on the table. Access 3,500 plus expert built templates, talk to certified HR pros, not bots, and get ahead with insider research and compliance tools, all designed to make your job easier and your impact bigger. Please scan the QR code or visit shrm.org/edge to see what you’re missing.

This webinar is sponsored by Homethrive. Homethrive offers a comprehensive caregiving solution with expert guidance and hands-on help for employees navigating caregiving challenges. From the high chair to the rocking chair and beyond, their solution combines live one-on-one support from care guides with a 24/7 digital platform that leverages predictive technology to anticipate needs, save time, and reduce stress.

Keep your people focused at work and present at home. From autism to Alzheimer’s, Homethrive support provides support for a wide range of needs, including childcare, elder care, after loss, and benefits navigation. To learn more about how Homethrive can support your organization and your employees, please visit homethrive.com.

Alright, before we turn to audience questions, here’s the information on the PDC you earned today towards MCP and SCP certification. You can claim your credit by using the number 2649VNQ. Again, that number is 2649VNQ. Regardless of the type of recertification you have, you must keep track of the SHRM webinars you’ve watched and keep a reliable record on your end.

All right. Our first question, how are caregiving benefits like Homethrive most often purchased?

Blair Whitman: Jen, I would love for you to weigh in on this to start off, and I know that time is dwindling down.

Jennifer Spence: Yeah, I was going to jump in and my mute wouldn’t come off. I was like trying to click it really fast. I think it depends on the size of the organization. Generally, really large organizations, sometimes these are kind of a joint decision between maybe your leave and disability team as well as employee benefits.

Generally, this is a conversation that is held on the employee benefits team. It’s driven by feedback from employees or stakeholders or sometimes a C-suite type person that says, Hey, this is something we need to pay attention to. And that really drives and kicks that off. But it can be a couple of different departments or key areas within the organization that really makes that decision.

Connor Toomy: Thank you. We’ve got time for just one more question. Do caregiving benefits replace the need for EAPs? What are some of the core differences and how do they work together if you offer both?

Blair Whitman: I think I touched on this a little bit, and Becky, I’ll ask for you to weigh in as well too. We do not replace EAPs. EAPs have their place. We go much deeper into caregiving than EAPs do, and they become great referral partners for us to make sure the people that contact them get the help they need. And we refer people to EAPs for, let’s say mental health, counseling resources that they provide as well too.

So they’re a great partner. But we’re not a replacement. Becky, would you like to plan?

Becky Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. They definitely compliment each other. And while many modern EAPs help with preventive tools and resources, often the core services of EAPs are considered crisis tools. Think counseling, referrals, short term support in the event of a crisis scenario.

Whereas benefits like caregiving reduce the day-to-day stressors that cause potentially the crisis to begin with. So I think they cover both prevention as well as response.
Blair Whitman: Yeah, I would agree with that. Thank you. All right.

Connor Toomy: Thank you so much. We’re coming to the end of this program and we’ve got about a minute before the program window closes.

You’ll receive the post-webinar survey as well as the SHRM recertification code. We hope to take a few moments to fill out the survey. It helps us assess this program and plan for future events. Before we send off, we want to thank our presenters, Blair Whitman with Homethrive, Cindy Perry with PwC, Becky Thomas with Piper Jordan, and Jennifer Spence with Alliant Insurance Services for the information they provided today.

And we also want to thank everyone tuning in for being with us. And for choosing SHRM for HR webinars. That concludes this program.