November is National Family Caregivers Month!
Just last week, the White House released an official Proclamation celebrating this important month: “During National Family Caregivers Month, we recognize the love and sacrifice of more than 50 million Americans providing crucial care and medical assistance to parents, children, siblings, and other loved ones, ensuring their health and dignity.”
According to the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers, 1 in 5 full-time workers also cares for a love one, providing care on a regular basis for someone who’s aging, has a serious illness, or a disability. Many must go to part-time status or quit altogether due to caregiving responsibilities.
This month, Homethrive joins the White House in celebrating NFCM. Here are a few of our suggestions for how to celebrate NFCM across your company:
- Offer educational resources on caregiving. Employees across your organization, from individual contributors, all the way up to the C-Suite, would benefit from learning about what family caregiving is and how it can impact employees in the workplace.
- Highlight benefit offerings that support caregivers. Caregiving support benefits aren’t the only kinds of benefits that support employee caregivers. Pairing a caregiving support benefit with mental health support, for example, can be a great way to equip family caregivers with all the tools they need to succeed. By offering an integrated and holistic benefits package, your employees will feel supported, and therefore will be more engaged with their work and further committed to your organization.
- Share caregiving stories throughout your organization. Through a live platform such as an educational webinar, or through a company-wide newsletter, sharing the real stories of caregivers within your company can help create a sense of community and support for caregivers. This can be kickstarted by encouraging company leadership to share their stories, which grants permission for others to do the same. Providing space for company leadership to open up about their own caregiving experiences will lead to greater acceptance of caregiving responsibilities throughout your organization. By letting caregivers share their own triumphs and challenges, greater awareness and understanding of caregiving will grow.
- Share your celebrations and caregiver education via social media and other communication channels. Publicly showing support for family caregivers not only reassures current employees you’re serious about supporting caregivers – it also informs prospective employees about how much you value your teammates and their unique experiences. Representation and celebration of unique employee experiences will help you stand out as an empathetic and forward-thinking employer.
We’re excited to continue celebrating National Family Caregivers Month with you. To learn more about supporting family caregivers, check out more resources on our website. For weekly insights in your inbox, sign up for our newsletter!