Article
Article No.: 10-6
Article Title: The Impact of the Emerging Eldercare Challenge on the Mature Workforce
Author: Patricia Faust, Guest Columnist
America’s workforce has seen significant turmoil over recent
years. The mature workforce left standing is experiencing
stress effects from this turmoil. This has and continues to
have an impact on productivity levels within industries and
organizations. Senior management has begun to recognize the
problem. Chronic stress can lead to chronic health conditions
such as heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, and a lowered immune
system. All of these chronic conditions are prime sources for
increases in health care costs for employers.
There is a significant source of stress for mature workers that
still falls under the radar. 60% of the 50 million Americans
providing care for loved ones are employed outside the home.
Most of these caregivers have a full-time job. Diane Piktialis,
Vice President at Boston-based Ceridian Performance Partners, a
leading employee-benefits firm, states that “Eldercare is already a
big issue and a problem that will grow dramatically in the coming
decades. One of the problems is that it isn’t the kind of
issue employees talk about much in the workplace.” That
silence is costing companies. The University of Pennsylvania
calculated the loss to business at a whopping $33 billion for
Alzheimer’s disease alone (www.workforce.com,2010).
It is not only the lost productivity costs that businesses are
absorbing. The chronic stress of caregiving is taking an
immense health toll on these employee caregivers. The health
effects to caregivers cost US employers an additional 8% in health
care a year, or $13.4 billion annually according to the MetLife
Study of Working Caregivers and Employers Health Care Costs.
Working caregivers result in double jeopardy to employers – they
cost over $34 billion in lost productivity and $13.4 billion in
health care costs.
Large corporations such as IBM and AT&T have understood the impact
of eldercare on their employees and their bottom line. They
were the leaders in the development of eldercare programs in the
workplace. However, even at the highpoint of eldercare
programming in 2006, only 26% of corporations had eldercare referral
services according to the Society for Human Resource Management.
That percentage dropped to 11% by 2009. Most employers offer
their eldercare programs as part of their Employee Assistance
Programs (MetLife Mature Market Institute, 2010).
These national statistics tell a dire story. What does
eldercare look like in a Midwest region in small to medium size
companies? In March 2010, seven small to medium sized
companies in S.E. Indiana participated in a survey assessing the
impact of eldercare in the workplace. The results showed that
35% of the respondents self-identified as caregivers. As the
boomer generation gets older their parents are also getting older
and entering the age of more intense care – their mid-eighties.
The boomers themselves are beginning to experience chronic health
conditions so spousal caregiving is not uncommon. Of the
respondents who did not identify as caregivers, 68.2% believed they
would be in a caregiving situation within the next five years.
This response should give all companies notice that the eldercare
problem is going to reach crisis proportion unless it is addressed
right now.
In this survey the percentage of men self-identifying as caregivers
was higher than the percentage of women who self identified as
caregivers. This was an unusual finding although not totally
unexpected. Men have increasingly been more involved in
caregiving over the past few years. Men don’t normally
self-identify as caregivers in the workplace for fear of being
stigmatized for putting family duties before job duties. This
finding should alert companies that employ larger numbers of male
employees that they will not escape this eldercare phenomenon
unscathed.
Lastly and probably one of the more important findings of the
survey, caregivers used healthcare benefits at a statistically
significant higher rate than non-caregiving employees. This
correlates with national statistics but it is still a connection
that employers are missing. At a time when employers are
looking for any way to reduce their health care costs, this piece of
information is very critical. Steps need to be taken to reduce
the enormous stress that these working caregivers are under.
Linking wellness programs to corporate eldercare initiatives would
conceivably improve employee health and reduce health care costs.
These respondents were asked who the first person they would go to
when they felt they needed help. The top response was their
manager/supervisor. This underscores the fact that management
training in eldercare issues must be implemented to insure
that management and frontline supervisors know what to look for and
how to direct employees to appropriate sources for help. Only
6% of the respondents stated that they would see what their Employee
Assistance Program had to offer. As mentioned earlier, EAPs
are where most employers embed their eldercare program if they have
one. Currently employers are losing money on underutilized EAP
programs, increased health care costs, and lost productivity due to
unmanaged eldercare in the workplace.
The Hartford just released results from a survey they conducted on
the boomer workforce. “Our research found a troubling trend of
baby boomer caregivers being pushed to their limits.” Said Barbara
Campbell, regional vice president of the Group Benefits Division at
The Hartford Financial Services Group. “We hope to raise
awareness among employers about this risk to their employees’ health
and productivity because they play a key role in bringing workers’
lives back into balance.” Campbell said (The Hartford Courant, April
2010).
Eldercare in the workplace affects small, medium and large companies
the same way. It is the number of caregiving employees that
increase with the size of the company and the financial losses that
increase as the companies get bigger. It is a significant
problem that will affect health care costs and productivity levels.
Employers can not put an eldercare program in place and expect that
everything will be resolved. This is a complex problem.
Workforce Management reporting on the eldercare challenge referred
to experts in the industry saying that “companies that will thrive
in the future will adapt to this reality by implementing or
strengthening HR policies that improve the bottom line and the lives
of employees caregivers.” (www.workforce.com,
12/15/09). It is critical that employers pay attention to this
silent productivity killer and implement strategies to address
unmanaged caregiving within their companies and organizations.
Patricia Faust, MGS
Corporate Gerontologist
Eldercare Education Consultants, LLC
pcfaust@eldercareeducation.com
513-731-5400