About the author: Emily Rose is the President of Business Solutions at LegalShield
Caregiving for an aging parent used to be treated as a personal matter employees dealt with quietly, on their own time. That's no longer realistic. Most companies don't realize how many employees are managing it right now, during work hours and it's starting to show up in the numbers that matter to benefits teams: absenteeism, productivity, and retention.
We recently spoke with more than 1,000 HR executives about how they're approaching benefits planning, and the disconnect was hard to miss: 86% say caregiving is hammering absenteeism and productivity, 77% say it's hurting retention, and yet they still rank eldercare 10th out of 12 on their own list of top benefit priorities for the next two years.
That gap gets harder to justify when you look at what employees are facing. Over half of Sandwich Generation employees expect the parent's care to get significantly worse within a year or two, as measured in our companion survey of more than 1,100 Sandwich Generation employees, working adults ages 40 to 60 managing a parent's care.
Eldercare is getting relegated behind mental health support, financial wellness, caregiving leave, childcare support and identity theft protection. Those are all important issues for employees, but the impact of eldercare is clear and prioritization hasn't caught up to it yet.
The tide is turning, though. 81% of HR executives say they're likely to add or expand senior care advisory benefits in the next 12 to 24 months. And when we gave HR leaders a real-world example of what a comprehensive eldercare benefit could include, 77% said they'd be interested in adding one.
Employees aren't waiting for a crisis to want this benefit. They're waiting for it to be offered, affordable and easy to use, which is exactly what offering eldercare benefits during open enrollment is meant to solve.
When asked what would make an employee most likely to use a caregiving benefit, Sandwich Generation employees said cost and simplicity topped the list by a wide margin; about half said they'd use it if it were included at no extra cost, and over a third pointed to ease of access. Being in the middle of a caregiving crisis ranked last, at just 7%.
Acting now on offering an eldercare benefit is a way for employers to boost employee recruiting and retention. Every employer who ranks eldercare as 10th out of 12 on the list of priorities this year is leaving the door open in a competitive talent environment for the competition to act, at a moment when employees say acess to this benefit would factor into their decision to stay. Nearly half of employees (49%) say access to this benefit would affect their decision to stay with their employer a great deal while 84% say this benefit would have some impact on their decision. That is something employers cannot afford to ignore.
More than half of employees between 40 and 60 are managing a parent's care right now, often without ever raising it with HR. The data on absenteeism, productivity and retention already answer whether this belongs on the priority list. Simply put, it does.
Methodology: Findings are drawn from two LegalShield-commissioned surveys: "The Sandwich Generation Squeeze," surveying 1,106 working adults ages 40-60 currently or recently involved in caring for an aging parent or relative, and a companion survey of 1,049 HR executives on benefits strategy and eldercare, conducted via Centiment.
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