Laurie Ruettimann: Hey everybody. I’m Laurie Ruettimann, and this is LinkedIn Live. I’m just kidding. I just always wanted to sound like a broadcaster. And here I am today on LinkedIn Live and we are talking to one of the greats, my new friend Blair Whitman, about a really important topic today, which is work, life and loss. And before we get started with Blair, I just to thank everybody for being here and reintroduce myself.

I am indeed, Laurie Ruman. I’m a writer, speaker and author. I started out in human resources and I can’t quit HR unfortunately, but I talk about the world of work, labor in the economy, and caregiving, the theme that we’re talking about today, is right at the center of that. So let’s get started. Blair. Hello and welcome to LinkedIn Live.

Blair Whitman: Thanks, Laurie. It’s great to be here.

Laurie: Oh, I’m so pleased to have you here. Listen, before we talk about all things caregiving, why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you’re all about?

Blair: Yeah, I would love to thank you for that. So caregiving has always been important to me. I come from a long line of caregivers.

My mom cares for my dad and she donated a kidney to him. I’ve done caregiving for my brother as he battled addiction, now five plus years sober. Now caregiving being intertwined with my life, a couple years ago I was approached by Homethrive to build out a client success department.

And I thought, gosh, I’ve been in employee benefits my whole professional career. How did I not think about caregiving as a benefit? And the light went on. So I love to advocate for what we do and just building better workforces that focus on caregiving.

Laurie: Well, before we get started talking about the issues that are really important to caregiving today, let’s talk a little bit about Homethrive and Level Set, because they are our host today.

So what exactly does Homethrive try to accomplish, and what problem does it solve in the marketplace?

Blair: Yep. Homethrive is a caregiving benefit, from the high chair to the rocking chair. We help families and people navigate caregiving challenges. We help that in a digital format with a product that helps people navigate caregiving needs at any time of day.

We also help with our social workers that help people navigate more complex solutions. We help people care for their children. If it is getting an IEP in place, an individual education plan and advocating for it to partners that might be caring for somebody with a chronic condition or a new diagnosis.

And then there is the big ever growing sandwich generation of people that are caregiving for not only children, but at the same time their aging parents. And that’s how we started out. Our focus in caring for aging loved ones, and it is continuing to grow as the sandwich generation grows and as people are living longer lives and taking care of their families.

And we also help people with the inevitable after loss support. So what happens when you lose somebody? How do you navigate that? And hopefully be healthier people in not only their lives outside of work, but inside of work at the same time.

Laurie: Well, I really appreciate you kind of grounding us in who you are and what you do.

And just so you know, everybody, if you’re out there and you want to say hello to myself or to Blair, this is a very interactive format, right? We’re talking about all things human. So leave a comment. We’ve got a few already, and we’re so glad to see you here today. Listen, Blair, you used a phrase that I think is really important, overused and maybe not defined very well, which is caregiver.

So can you tell us a little bit about what the word caregiver is and maybe what it isn’t like? How do you define it?

Blair: Yeah. It’s really tough for people to define themselves as caregivers. So I want to start there. Oftentimes you define yourself as being a good daughter, a good mother, a good friend, even a good neighbor, and helping somebody that is aging.

Maybe taken their groceries or pick up groceries for them. And oftentimes people find themselves in caregiving situations where they’re slowly taking on responsibilities so they don’t identify as fully stepping into that caregiver role. I think it’s personally important to identify as a caregiver, but some people think that there’s a little bit of a stigma with it too.

They associate caregivers with being paid. There are a lot of unpaid family caregivers out there and people that might have a stigma with the word caregiver, I encourage them to think about how they are taking care of others, and providing support. So there are different words that people can use.

I think to take care of yourself, it’s important to recognize that you are and have stepped into a caregiver role. What caregiving isn’t, that’s probably even harder to define. I look at what we do here at Homethrive and come into us for many of different things.

I always love to use the example in the winter, here in Colorado we had somebody, come to us that needed snow shoveling. So that’s caregiving, finding support.

Laurie: I think that’s so interesting and so wise. I mean, you made two cool points. One is that sometimes there’s a stigma around caregiving, and that’s what we’re here to kind of demystify today.

Before we move on, have you felt that stigma in your own life?

Blair: Oh yeah, of course. Of course. You know, it’s stigmatized and hard to talk about. At the ripe age of 24, I left Chicago to go back to Nebraska to help take care of my dad as a caregiver. And I didn’t identify as a caregiver at that time, nor did I want to talk about it with people.

So I think that it’s stigmatized, but the more that we are open and honest and talk about caregiving, and how it impacts us mentally and physically, the better off as a society will be and the better off as employees and friends and family, we become.

Laurie: Yeah, you know, I have that experience myself where I took care of my mom at a young adult age as well.

And you know, I didn’t quite see myself as a caregiver. To your earlier point, I saw myself as like the eldest daughter, which I think many can relate to, and it was my duty, it was my obligation to stop what I was doing, and my employer didn’t necessarily agree with me at that time. And so I think it was a very difficult moment for me to see myself in a lot of different ways.

I was a caregiver, I was a full-time corporate recruiter and I was also a daughter and an older sister and I carried a lot of these different roles. And mentally it was absolutely challenging. And you know, I think about your other point around what isn’t caregiving. You know, snow shoveling is a really great example.

There are these small micro things we do for one another or we need from other people that fall into this caregiving bucket that I think would surprise us if we really thought about that. What do you, what do you think about that?

Blair: And think of that, and it’s a story that I hear often when you talk about, you just assume the role of being the eldest daughter.

And I want to bring up that 61% of caregivers are women. So it is something that we naturally fall into. We also see a lot of that, but we work with a lot of health systems and we see a lot of healthcare workers that are tasked with being caregivers on top of their day jobs because of the nature that they’re providing care within what they do.

I also want to shout out though, if 61% of caregivers are women, we are in Men’s Health Month in June, it’s important to acknowledge that the men that go through the primary caregiving should be acknowledged because they’re suffering in silence. And, you know, they need a blueprint and a path and a helping partner, like Homethrive, to help them navigate it. I’m always pro-women.

Laurie: Shout out to the dudes out there. I think it’s really important. You know, there are some stories in our chat right now in the comments and we would encourage you to leave them, people saying, we’re glad to be here.

They’re sharing their own individual stories around caring for parents, caring for loved ones, and it’s this universal experience that I think more and more we’re feeling comfortable discussing. So let’s talk about like the stages of care, because very early on we think of caregiving as caring for your parents or caring for your children, but it can start at a lot of different places.

So when someone contacts you for help, for assistance, what’s the vector that they normally come in through? Are they looking for help for their parents, or are they looking for help for their children? What’s that like?

Blair: It’s a split in both, I will say, some growing areas that we are helping out with. I want to start with the parents, children with individual education plans. Parents that have or suspect that their child might be neurodiverse. Where to start with that? Even what kind of provider makes a diagnosis that gets the ball rolling with all of this?

But we are also seeing a high amount of people coming in for support of parents that are suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s and how to navigate that, how to divide up duties between family or other part of their care circle and loved ones. We see people that come in for support widely with the aging loved ones.

Also backup care. So, you know, how do you show up and go to work when your child is sick or there’s mismatched schedules. And then the growing support of after loss and death support. Someone has this need for caregiving support, and it’s serious and it’s important, and it may be rocking their world or not.

What do we expect as employees from our companies and from our leaders? And are those expectations even realistic in this marketplace? So I think a lot of companies that haven’t adopted a program like Homethrive think that coverage like an EAP or a leave policy might help their employee navigate something.

And while those are good to have, sometimes they’re very surface level. Or on the topic of leave management. You’re given this time off, whether it is FMLA or short-term disability, to provide care for somebody that you love or provide care for yourself, but you’re not given a steward.

You don’t know how to navigate it. So the efficiency and use and time that you have off isn’t always there for people to navigate. Or the companies that do provide our service, it’s usually modeled at the top from leadership and when it is modeled at the top that caregiving is important and caregiver support and providing support for yourself, that’s where we see a lot of fantastic stories, fantastic utilization.

And let’s just say what it is: it’s life changing for people.

Laurie: Yeah, that absolutely makes sense. You know, I feel like so many companies right now are jumping on the caregiver bandwagon and are being performative, but at the end of the day, companies exist for one of two reasons: to make money and to be profitable and return an investment to shareholders or premium members.

And I think caregiving is something that they feel is a nice to have, but not a need to have. Can you speak to that?

Blair: Yeah. I want to touch on what you said about performative. Because I think about this often. Talking about caregiving at work is not the opposite of performative.

It’s raw, it’s real. It’s no longer a nice to have. It is a need to have because it’s the number two reason people are leaving the workforce behind retirement. It is a hard fact with that. It’s a hard fact that it impacts women.

There are studies that estimate that women who leave the workforce for caregiving personally lose 140ish thousand dollars in wages and 130ish thousand dollars in social security benefits. So any company that has any type of initiative to support women in leadership should realize that this is the need to have. Any company that is promoting mental health and well-being.

There are great programs out there and employee benefits that are helping supplement it, but it’s not solving the full story that over 70% of your workforce is caregiving in some aspect and you need to support them.

Laurie: You know, I think about the role of a manager here, not even just a high-level leader, but a role of a manager.

And our managers are asked to do so much right now. They have their own full-time jobs. They have to manage the performance and the motivation of their workforce. Make sure communication is up and down the career ladder. And then on top of that, they’re like, “What? You want me to help somebody who’s going through grief or is dealing with the after effect of loss?”

They’re just not equipped and not trained. So I wonder what messages you have for managers out there right now who are truly good people, but they’re just overwhelmed and undertrained at this point. I don’t know. Blair, what are your thoughts?

Blair: Yeah. It is a great question to bring up and I think the managers need to be vulnerable and model behavior that it is okay to have a psychologically safe conversation about what you’re going through.

You know, we often see it. Sometimes I can say personally for myself, you are great at work, you’re doing great at work, and then all of a sudden something starts being a little off and oftentimes it’s not a skillset thing. It is something that’s impacting an employee from the outside. And if you can identify that and help direct them to a partner that is going to help them navigate the process, you at the core are building a non-performative loyalty partnership and really transforming the workforce into what it should be, about people and getting away from that capitalism that you spoke to. You’re doing the right thing.

Laurie: Yeah. I mean, we can integrate capitalism and care. And I think that’s ultimately the goal here, to make money and to satisfy all the different constituencies who benefit from an organization and including the workforce.

And, you know, you brought up a really interesting point around the early signs that caregiving is taking a toll on a worker and how managers can be a little bit more attuned to that. I think about my own circumstance, just even the first time I had to leave the workforce and care for my mom, it’s not like she wasn’t sick leading up to this moment where she had a catastrophic event.

It was something that was weighing on me. But you know, I never had a manager who said, “I see something’s on your mind. Do you want to talk about it?” And, I think fair. You know, it was 1998. We didn’t have these conversations, but I think now we’re a little bit more mature and a little bit more sophisticated, and managers have permission to talk about these things, and I just wish my leader would’ve been a little bit braver and a little bit bolder and taken a risk with me.

I don’t know. Do you have any reflections on that? And do you have an experience like that?

Blair: I have reflection on that and the fact that we offer to our clients management training and how have these conversations and how to be vulnerable, and how to uncover when somebody might be in need of caregiving help and it could show up in something as simple as somebody continues to be late for work because they’re taking somebody they love to dialysis and they can’t get back to clock in on time.

So there are many different ways that it surfaces and ways that you can train your management teams on how to help uncover and facilitate conversations that lead to productive growth in the relationship and also something that you can solve.

Laurie: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I was thinking as you were talking how in the past if a manager did kind of get clued into these things, or if an employee raised their hand and said, I’m currently struggling, the answer was first to go to HR, and then to go to EAP and oftentimes HR myself would work with the EAP because I wasn’t necessarily trained in how to address this.

So how is the experience different with Homethrive? Because there are so many people who have joined us today who are HR business partners, or HR generalists or leaders of small businesses, and they’re like, “I don’t know. That’s what I have an EAP for.”

Blair: Yeah, yeah, it’s a great question. EAPs, I want to say are good partners for us. So part of the implementation process is understanding what benefits we can cross referral into each other. And EAPs do a nice job in some areas, but we find that they kind of scratch the surface with caregiving, where we go really deep with resolution and one-on-one deep support.

And there’s no limit of times that people can work with us because I look at it this way too, Laurie, caregiving is very episodic for some, so things are great. Mom might have a fall. You need to help out intensively for three months, and then things are great again for another year.

There are other types of caregiving that are less episodic and more ongoing. And you know, that’s where a program like ours works great because they support you through the process and the deep dive that we go into. I can tell you everybody comes to us with one thing on their mind, and as we start to work with our members, we uncover many more caregiving paths.

I can guarantee if you’re caregiving for one person, for one situation, you are the designated caregiver for somebody else at some other time. And you need to make sure that you navigate that correctly to help the people that you love, but also to protect your mental health and support yourself as the caregiver.

Laurie: Hmm, that’s so well said. You know, we talked about the vector, the way in which people often interact with Homethrive. They’ll come in either for an issue with their child or an issue with their parents. But caregiving is so nuanced, right? And I think about the partner who’s supporting their spouse or their loved one who’s lost a pregnancy, or someone who’s supporting a partner who’s currently going through menopause.

And things are a little hectic around the house, and they’re confused. I want to get to the nuances of caregiving because I think, like right now, a lot of organizations are like, “Okay, yeah, childcare, we’re talking about it.

Parental support with the sandwich generation. We’re starting to have the conversations.” But in between are all these aspects of caregiving that I think are getting lost in the conversation. Are you tracking with me here?

Blair: Yeah, yeah, I am. They are getting lost, so I’ll give you an example.

You know, seeing which caregiver comes in for help with their parents, but we find out their child is neurodivergent. We also find out that that a parent might be going through menopause. You know, that’s a perfect time for us. I view our program as a navigator to look into the benefits guide that their employer is using and potentially find a menopause support partner that is already within their benefits ecosystem to help them navigate over.

It becomes less overwhelming when you have that strategic guide that helps you plug and play into those other things that you wouldn’t traditionally associate with caregiving.

But you need to support yourself, emotionally, physically, spiritually, to be able to continue to provide care for others.

Laurie: Yeah. Well, you know, you mentioned your own caregiving journey and I think about mine and whether you’re supporting someone in the midst of a chronic condition or addiction or whatever the case, there’s also this element of finance that gets involved.

You know, most of us are working for a reason. We’re not born with a silver spoons in our mouths, right? We’re working to support ourselves to build wealth, to save for retirement, to support our families, and then a critical or catastrophic event happens in our life that may be chronic and ongoing, and suddenly it’s not just that we’re caring for another person, but we’re thinking about our own finances in the mix.

So I want to talk a little bit about you and how you’ve seen this play out, either in your own life or with clients, and maybe how Homethrive addresses that issue as well.

Blair: I can tell you I’ve seen it play out in myself personally, taking PTO days to take care of loved ones. Caregiving is expensive too.

When my brother started addressing his addiction, he would live with me. So, you know, I’m paying his rent, I’m paying his bills, everything that he eats, his groceries and those things add up. And I wouldn’t change it for the world. I absolutely loved being there to support him.

But as a single income, that starts to add up for you. And I think about this and I hear, because I travel quite often for my job, I eavesdrop in the airport and every time I’m there, I hear somebody talking about caregiving and you think about how costly does it get when you have to get on a plane to travel across country to care for a loved one, and how often are you doing that?

And where is your support system there? So it can manifest in many different ways. I also think about doctor’s appointments, you know? What if you have to see a specialist that is out of network and how are you going to pay for that? Who is going to pay for that? We work with a lot of people that finances is a huge issue for their loved ones.

Like where are the community resources that we can help you uncover for lower or no cost options and what support is available, because caregiving gets costly very quick.

Laurie: It sure does, and many of us don’t have this concierge style approach to navigating the ins and outs of Medicare, Medicaid, social security, employer benefits, like there is a web of benefits along with our normal employer benefits that are out there, and it can be very confusing and very overwhelming. And can you talk a little bit about how Homethrive tries to help their clients navigate all this?

Blair: Yeah, I want to talk on Medicare real quick. Because it’s a gray area for us.

Medicare is one of our biggest funnels. People come in to work with our Medicare team for their loved ones or themselves, if they’re getting close to Medicare eligibility age, and then they find all the other resources that we offer and do, and start working with us in other ways.

But, you said it, and I think coming from an HR space, Medicare is something that benefits teams are not really versed in. There’s also a liability for them to give guidance information. So whenever somebody, at any of our clients, an employee goes to their HR team and says “Medicare,” they just basically pass them directly over to Homethrive.

So I wanted to make sure that I share that because we haven’t touched on Medicare yet, and our Medicare team is phenomenal. The stories that they do. Going back to cost with helping people’s loved ones compare plans and understand different prescriptions they’re on and what makes the most sense for them.

I get calls and people, very tearful about how they save their parents X amount and this helps them in their caregiving journey, and they’re grateful.

Laurie: Yeah, that absolutely makes sense. You know, I think most people hear the word Medicare or Medicaid or Social Security and start to black out at this point.

So it’s amazing that you offer that kind of benefit. I’m thinking about the small business owner or the HR leader, who knows they have this need in their workforce to wrap their arms around caregiving because you know, it’s happening piecemeal and they’re doing their level best. I think all of us, when faced with workers who are struggling, really try, we really do.

When they come to Homethrive and say, “We need help as an organization.” What’s that experience like?

Blair: It’s understanding what we need help means to them. It could be manifesting in, leave issues that they’re seeing. It could be manifesting in turnover issues. So it’s really understanding where that’s at. And we dig in on multiple levels, not only with the benefits teams, the HR teams, but we sit with employee resource groups and affinity groups and listen to the themes and needs that are there and build out a custom plan and messaging.

Really learning how to connect people into our program that would be meaningful not only to the employees, but make a business impact at the end of the day.

Laurie: Well, yeah, I mean, ultimately that’s what this is all about. Making sure that people feel cared for, they feel productive as well. When they do return to work, they feel supported, they feel cared for. Can you talk a little bit about the ROI of caregiving because again, a lot of cynical people out there who are like, yeah, this is all well and good, but even if we do bring this program in, it’s just for employer branding.

This doesn’t really work. And I want to know, is there an ROI to really prioritizing caregiving?

Blair: There is an ROI to prioritizing caregiving. So one thing that we offer all of our clients is, where I really see the magic of this is weaving in the benefit with leave management and really measuring how long people take off when they work with us benchmarked compared to when they’re not working with us.

And stories from that. There’s also an ROI that comes up with testimonials and people talking about saved time. I think about this too, because I’ve been a caregiver before, and you might be in a meeting physically, but mentally you’re not there. So there’s lost work there.

There’s ROI in a lot of different places. It’s depending on how you want to measure it. We have a lot of law firms. I mean, that’s the easiest ROI billable hours. So one of our great law firm partners shared a story with me recently about how one of the partners said, not only did Homethrive save me this much time that I could turn into billable hours, but they found resources I wouldn’t even think to have uncovered.

And so, that in itself pays for the program. When you have a time in that, and we see that too in our manufacturing clients with taking sick time off to take care of a child that, if there was a backup care option in place, or when we do put a backup care option in place that helps mitigate that loss.

I think about it too with after loss support, it takes up to 15 months to close out people’s estates, and the average bereavement time is three to five days. And we all know that when you are helping close out estate and taking care of loved ones after you lose somebody, that three to five days is nothing.

Laurie: You’re right. Absolutely. I think about in terms of ROI, just this overall feeling, not only of disconnection, but people who six months, eight months, 10 months down the road, are still kind of immersed in what happened to their story. So I wonder if part of the approach with caregiving at Homethrive is to recognize that a caregiving event, even if it’s a onetime event, doesn’t just happen today, but it can linger throughout an employee’s entire work experience. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Blair: Yeah. It can linger throughout the experience because it’s rarely a one-time event.

And as I’ve mentioned before, when you become a caregiver and you’re seen as a caregiver to your friends and family, they start coming to you for other things and care in general too. So it does linger, it does impact it. Caregiving is deeply intertwined with mental health. You can’t solve for mental health without solving for caregiving.

You can’t solve for caregiving without solving for mental health. So it is never a one-time thing.

Laurie: Yeah, absolutely. Makes sense. I’m looking at some of the comments in the chat and it is just absolutely popping with all of you who are sharing your very personal stories. Thank you so much. I mean, there’s a lot of different ways people have been caregivers or received care.

And I actually have two people who are currently participating in watching this LinkedIn Live, who are my bosses, who have been caregivers. And they were wonderful, compassionate bosses, but both are men. And so I think it’s really interesting to talk a little bit and go back to the earlier part of the conversation about how while caregiving is primarily done by women in our economy, the numbers for men aren’t insignificant either. Right, Blair?

Blair: They’re not. And I want to loudly say our company was founded by two male caregivers so they were going through caregiving themselves and very successful executives, and they were impacted by their caregiving journey and realized that there wasn’t something out there that was a solution and that inspired them to start Homethrive.

So, yeah, it’s not lost on me and I think about it often as much as I’m a big champion of helping women become greater leaders and achieve their goals. Again, I want to state it’s very important for us to acknowledge the men caregivers in our lives and make sure that they are not suffering in silence and they feel supported and have a path to help them in their caregiving journey as well.

Laurie: I think that’s right on the money. And you know, caregiving can be so isolating. We’ve had that comment in our chat over and over again repeatedly that this can be an isolating experience and then being told that you don’t look like a traditional caregiver can further that isolation.

So I like the idea that we are including men in this conversation, and that men are a part of not only the caregiving topic, but part of the solution as well.

I love a man who is involved in his family and what’s going on. I think that’s very noble and very wise, and the fact that there are examples, not only in our chat, but in our lives of that is really, really inspiring.

So I don’t know. Blair, any final thoughts on that?

Blair: Yeah, I have a great client that sees a need for this too, and they recently had a panel where they had fathers of autistic children speak. And it was just touching to see that and have their voices raised and I think about the more we talk about caregiving, the less stigmatized it becomes.

The more people realize that hey, everybody is going through some type of caregiving journey at some point in their life or they’re going to need a caregiver, the more we’ll be able to make an impact and help.

Laurie: Yeah. Well it, you’re right, it has been such a taboo topic for so long, and while I’m glad to see it out there in the media here on LinkedIn, people talking about caregiving all over.

Why do you think it’s taken until 2025 for many of these conversations to happen? Like why has it been taboo for so long?

Blair: I think one we go back to, people don’t recognize themselves as caregivers. And two, workforces are very performative. People are performative. The opposite of performative is being raw with your feelings and what you’re going through personally, and you know where your caregiving is at.

So it’s not always something easy for people to talk about. And it’s not always something that is modeled at the top. When it is modeled at the top, it changes workforce cultures, and it helps people.

Laurie: Well, you mentioned about the founders of Homethrive being two men, two individuals who really struggled with, uh, caregiving needs and caregiving resources.

Can we talk a little bit about how that. Modeling at the top truly makes a difference. Like, I don’t know that I’ve ever had at the executive level leaders talk about their caregiving needs. What happens when that conversation starts there?

Blair: So it is a great question. we were implementing a client and their chief people officer at a town hall meeting spoke about her child who had profound disabilities and navigating that.

And her child is now an adult, but all of what she had to go through on her own, and how if she had a program like Homethrive supporting her, how it would’ve, helped her immensely personally. Career growth, having boundaries.

And within that town hall hour, we had over 400 people sign up to become members. And that story still just gives me chills because that is somebody modeling vulnerability at top saying it’s okay to say that you need help. There is help out there that can help you navigate the situation that you’re in and we as an organization support you.

Laurie: Paige in our comments just left a comment and said, sometimes people don’t talk about this because they might be scared of death. Death is a taboo topic. So I don’t know. Blair, what do you think about that?

Blair: Yeah. Death is a very taboo topic.

It’s hard for people to talk about. it’s hard for people to be vulnerable about. The majority of us don’t even have wills in place. So the preparation for death as a society is not there. And I find it really interesting. Some of the resource groups that we work within have brought to my attention the cultural differences in how people approach death and culturally how people prepare or don’t prepare for death.

So it’s not uncommon for it to continue to not be something that people feel comfortable talking about. I think it just goes back to vulnerability and death is something that can’t be avoided. So the more we talk about shared experiences and that there are real solutions out there helping people, the less stigmatized it becomes.

You know, I also think we’re in a weird part of our global story with our economy where many people feel not psychologically safe at work. They feel like economic pressures are weird and to be vulnerable at work, especially around caregiving, means to put yourself in a situation where you’re not feeling like the dominant individual at the office.

Laurie: Right. So I wonder if we can talk a little bit about what’s happening in the world and maybe how that might be affecting what goes on with people feeling vulnerable and raising their hand and saying, I need care.

Blair: Yeah. Yeah. Well, one, I want to state because I’m a very vulnerable person about my caregiving journey, but members can work with us and not shout from the rooftop about it.

It’s modeling from the top that it’s there, but the reality of the economy that we’re in is that people are expected to do more, often with less pay or very little pay raises, less team, less resources. And so it is every factor outside of work that is stressing them, that there’s a solution for that helps them with that work-life balance is something worth investing and looking into.

Laurie: I really think I want to nail on this a little bit more, like drill down a little bit on this, because I think that intersection of financial stability and caregiving is really, really important to talk about. And so we’ve had a couple of comments. I’ve had some people ping me really talking about how it’s hard to raise your hand and say, “I need help when many of us are living paycheck to paycheck or really need our benefits, or we’re scared that if we take time off it somehow will ding us on our performance management program going forward.”

So when an organization has Homethrive in place, I think it’s really important to talk about the confidentiality of your experience with Homethrive and what’s being communicated to your employer. Can you speak to that?

Blair: I can speak to that since I run our client success department. Everything is confidential and private. We have people that will send us emails and say, I don’t want this to be private. I want to share my story. I want to scream it from the rooftop. And we’ll gladly take those testimonials in and work with people, because that becomes such a great driver for others to work with us, obviously.

But everything is completely confidential and it’s confidential within your family too. We have people that work with us that their loved ones don’t know they’re working with us for support. We have people that work with us that have the person they’re supporting on the phone with them. So there’s many different ways to approach how to tackle caregiving.

And there’s no correct way. It’s the correct way for the member, but everything is completely confidential. Aggregate wise, we love sharing data on how people are working with us. Because it shows employers where our message is resonating. And then it shows areas where we could potentially improve on messaging if we’re seeing gaps and how people are using us.

Laurie: I would imagine it’s a little bit more comfortable to work with Homethrive, just exist in an organization when you have that feeling of psychological safety. So talk about your experience actually being an employee at Homethrive. Like what does it feel like? Are you comfortable raising your hand?

Like what’s it like to walk the talk, to drink your own champagne?

Blair: Yeah. Yeah. I like that. I always say Kool-Aid, but I’m going to start saying champagne. Well, some people say eat your own dog food, and I don’t like that. I don’t think that sounds great. However you say it. I feel very fortunate to have landed here. I’ve been with Homethrive for a little bit over two years, and from day one, I’ve been given the space to grow out my department.

I’ve been given the opportunity to be a thought leader within the organization. Outside the organization. I love managing a team and building out psychological safety and helping them grow not only as Thrivers as we like to call it, but understanding how they each individually want to as people, what’s important to them.

All those good things. So I love people management and I’ve been very fortunate here at Homethrive. Well, it sounds like workers and employees are allowed to have this multidimensional life, and I think that’s so important with caregiving. When we stop talking about it as like this event and just start to have it in the conversation as a life experience, something we’ll either do for someone, we’ll be caregivers for someone, or we will receive care.

Laurie: I think you’re on this really interesting mission to normalize the conversation, so I don’t know when it becomes part of a normal conversation. It seems less scary, it seems less daunting, and it seems like you have a team then to help you and support you. But I don’t know, am I just a dreamer? Am I crazy?

Blair: No, I think it’s a great point and it’s at the core it’s part of who we are. And I think about how we provide care for ourselves. We spend a lot of time talking about what to eat, to exercise, to grow ourselves. But on the opposite side of that coin is we are caregiving for others at the same time.

So, they go hand in hand and it’s part of who we are at our core. We’re caring people.

Laurie: Well, we’ve seen some comments and I’ve received some private pings that people are like, it’s great to talk about the ups of caregiving, but I’ve got a terrible story with my employer. I mean, we’re rife with those discussions, but I think it’s important to show when an employer does it right and what it can look like.

So do you have any really standout stories, other out stories that come to mind where, a company is doing it and they’ve maybe not nailed it, but they’re a model for what this could look like?

Blair: Yeah. I do, and I don’t want to share client names because of confidentiality, but the success stories that we have is when, like I said at the beginning, when we embed in different parts of the organization.

So not only in the benefits and leave management, but I’m a huge advocate for being involved in employee resource groups, affinity groups. I think caregiving is done at a community level. And I challenged myself when I started at Homethrive. What is the community level within these organizations? And they are these resource groups, whether they meet in person or hybrid or completely virtual.

There’s a lot of caregiving that intersects with all of these groups and how can we help them in their mission and in their topics they’re covering and in their growth in these resource groups, address the caregiving needs. Again, how can we sit with them and learn from them? Because oftentimes in the more diverse resource groups, people are disproportionately impacted by caregiving.

And we have one client that has us plugged into all of it. We’ve just become a fan. We have multiple clients, we’re plugged in all, but I’m thinking of one specific client where we’ve become a great partner. They even launched a new benefit about six months after us, and they asked if they could take our implementation blueprint and apply it to that benefit.

And we felt so honored when they said that because it’s reciprocal. We know it’s working for both of us. And I really hope that blueprint is working for them with their new benefit partner as well too.

Laurie: Yeah, I hope so as well. You had mentioned to me privately, offline, that you’ve worked in the benefit industry your whole career, and you were like, why have I not thought of Homethrive on my own?

It’s such a really good idea, but talk to me about the evolution of benefits because I started working in HR in 1995 and back then benefits was like healthcare, dental, and vision. And a pension if you worked in a union environment. So I’d love to know what you’ve seen as the trajectory and how this industry is changing and whether or not there’s more opportunity in the future to talk about caregiving and a whole host of other topics.

Blair: Yeah, I love that question because it’s so important and it was very plug and play. Back in the day when I started, and you see this evolution of benefits in the mental health space, in the well-being spaces. Another, in the women’s health space, you’re seeing benefits evolve in childcare space.

And I find, especially when you look at it generationally, younger generations are expecting more out of their employers in their benefits. And not only more in guidance, but more in specificity. In how companies are directing them and helping them with things that they are struggling with outside the traditional medical, dental, vision.

You know, those are core things that every company needs to have. But the ones that separate themselves from a cultural perspective really go above and beyond and look into the more bespoke benefits.

And it’s been an interesting evolution to see. And I honestly think caregiving is part of that pack of the evolution, and when you look at where mental health benefits were like five to 10 years ago, because that used to be taboo to talk about. Caregiving is following that trajectory, that path. I now no longer fear saying something to my manager about going to therapy where 10 years ago I probably wouldn’t have brought that up.

Laurie: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think like Gen X crawled, so Gen Z could walk. We talk a lot about these generational expectations around benefits around caregiving, and it’s not like previous generations didn’t have expectations and demands. We were just told, “Sorry, Charlie. You don’t get those benefits. That’s not what we’re here to do.”

And there’s been this really interesting evolution of what work means and what work should become for people. And this younger generation that’s emerging has just a different concept of what it means to show up regularly and contribute and what they should expect from an employer.

So caregiving, being part of the mix makes sense to me because they’re just brazen. They’re just saying it out loud, right? It’s just a different vibe that we get from these younger workers. But I just wanted to debunk this idea that older workers didn’t want this because we wanted it. We were just told no, that your caregiving is something that happens on your private time.

What do you think about that?

Blair: I think that, that’s so well said. And it was something that happened on your private time, but the reality is, is it’s not, it’s something that people are making phone calls to find housing options for their aging loved ones during the day, and placing calls, getting calls back, talking to healthcare providers.

So there’s that time away that people are actually taking at work. But there’s also the distracted time at work. You know, as I’ve mentioned, there have been plenty of times when I’m thick in a caregiving journey personally, where I’m physically at work, I’m sitting in a meeting, I am in a room, but mentally I’m not there.

So I really want to shout loud that, yes, the way we used to view this was caregiving is done outside of work, outside of this time, but the reality is the complete opposite. It is done 24/7. It is nonstop.

Laurie: Well, as we start to wrap up the conversation, we’ve had just this robust chat that’s going on right now.

I mean, it’s really interesting. I’ve been getting pinged. I know Blair, you’re probably getting pinged. I want to talk a little bit about some of the resources that Homesthrive has for free on the website. So maybe you’re not a member of Homethrive. Maybe your employer doesn’t have it, but Homesthrive is still there for you.

So what’s up on the website?

Blair: Yeah, so we have different resources on how to elevate our conversation with your HR about our program. So I want to start there. I’m also available to have talks with how to elevate if you are not in the HR space on how to navigate that. We also have great webinars.

For our members and non-members that we host on a monthly basis that help people navigate. So I always encourage people, even if your employer doesn’t offer this join one of our webinars. Sign up. We always send recordings and we have very meaningful conversations from how to prepare for summer travel with a loved one that has disabilities to navigating Medicare, which is a very popular one. And the more sensitive topics that revolve around helping a loved one with memory loss, dementia, Alzheimer’s, et cetera. So the webinars are a great resource, even if you’re not a client personally for you and for your employees.

Laurie: Well, I want to, as we start to wrap up this conversation, make sure we also talk about some of the joy of caregiving, because we often frame this discussion as something that’s really painful. There’s a lot going on, there’s a ton of nuance, but there’s absolutely something really beautiful and lovely about either spending time with someone who needs us or reconnecting with a loved one, or being there in the moment that adds to the complexity and just the depth of the human experience. So as I say that, do you have any thoughts about that? Any reactions about how caregiving can be as beautiful as it is taxing?

Blair: It is beautiful and I encourage people to really sit with the beautifulness of being a caregiver and let Homethrive handle some of the operational stuff that isn’t beautiful or easy to navigate. It is part of the human experience to deepen relationships, and grow as people and continue to help others.

Laurie: I think about my own caregiving story with my mom and one of the things she said to me recently was just how grateful she was that when I was 23, I took time off work. And that even though she was very sick, we were able to have these moments of just quiet and being together in her hospital room.

It was tough. We connected on a deeper, much deeper level, and she’s incredibly grateful for it. And it makes me feel as if, okay, this was a tough experience to have, but I’m so grateful that I was there for her in those moments. It makes me feel proud. It makes me love her more.

It makes me grateful she survived that incident. So when you talk about your own caregiving stories, do you have any reflections like that?

Blair: I want to say first that that’s very beautiful and never underestimate your interactions in helping people and what they will mean to them and or yourselves when you look back.

So, I mentioned at the beginning of the call I helped my brother address his alcohol addiction and there were some tough love moments. There were some financial constraints, but now he is five plus years sober. He got a 4.0 in his master’s of healthcare administration program. He is my dog and cat sitter when I travel on the road.

And so, it adds a level of depth thinking about the caregiving that that we’ve gone through together and the beauty of where we’re at now.

Laurie: Yeah, well a lot of people are resonating with those comments saying soak up the one-on-one time, the stories and the love, and I think that’s absolutely true.

Before we leave, I want to talk about a white paper that’s absolutely interesting that I have downloaded, that I would encourage other people to download. It’s the ROI of Comprehensive Caregiving Support. Can you talk about that? I think we’re going to send that as a key takeaway to anybody who attended the webinar.

Blair: Yeah. so yes, we are going to follow up to everybody that has attended and or registered for the webinar with the ROI of Comprehensive Caregiving Support. It’s a white paper that we’ve put together, which helps, look at the ROI of caregiving, on a business level. And again, I’d be happy to take time with anybody that has follow-up questions.

With that, you can find me on LinkedIn. happy to set meetings and very passionate about how caregiving does have an ROI for your business and would welcome any type of meeting that somebody would like to have.

Laurie: Well, listen, Blair, it’s been a real joy to connect with you today, to hear your story, to learn about caregiving, to debunk some of the myths, and to actually talk about those good moments where we can reconnect with our family and take care of one another and not worry about the burden of work.

So thank you for being just so authentic and so transparent today.

Blair: Yeah. Thank you, Laurie. It’s been a pleasure.

Laurie: And listen, everybody, it’s been really great to connect with you today. Check us both out online, find Blair on LinkedIn and we’ll follow up with you with that ROI of Caregiving Support Whitepaper.

And thanks for your time and we’ll see you next time.