How to Improve Work-life Balance for Caregiving Employees

How Caregiving Affects Work-life Balance

Stephanie Creary: Hello, my name is Stephanie Creary, and I’m an assistant professor of management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. And I’m delighted to welcome you to today’s episode of the Knowledge at Wharton Leading Diversity at Work podcast series, which is focused on supporting caregivers in the workplace. Joining me today are two very special guests. First, we have Jennifer Andrews, who is head of equity and inclusion at Guardian Life. Prior to Guardian, Jennifer led the diversity and inclusion efforts for the Americas region at Credit Suisse. She is also University of Penn alumnus.

Jennifer is here to talk about “Standing Up and Stepping In: A Modern Look at Caregivers in the U.S.,” which is a report that has insights based on responses from Guardian’s annual Workplace Benefits Study. And this report explores the remarkable rise in the number of caregivers in the country in the U.S., the profound impact caregiving responsibilities have on their lives mentally, physically, and financially, as well as the crucial role of employers in supporting their caregiving workforce amid this societal trend and workplace dynamic.

Next, we have Dr. Ellen Ernst Kossek, who is the Basil S. Turner Distinguished Professor of Management at Purdue University’s Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. School of Business. Her current research examines strategic and leadership initiatives to advance gender and work life equality, and improve the implementation of flexibility and work life, work family life policies to foster diversity and inclusion in employment.

Dr. Kossek has won numerous national and international scholarly awards for research and service excellence to advance gender and work life understanding. Now recently, she served on a National Academies of Sciences committee focused on family policies for the STEMM workforce. She will share insights from the recently released report supporting family caregivers in STEMM, “A Call to Action,” in addition to her years of research on these topics.

Welcome, Jennifer and Ellen, I’m so delighted to have you here today to join with me in a conversation on supporting caregivers in the workplace. So I want to start us off by talking about Guardian’s report, “Standing Up and Stepping In: A Modern Look at Caregivers in the U.S.,” and what was learned from that work. Jennifer, can you please share with us a little bit about the report, including how the data were collected, and the top three takeaways from the report?

Jennifer Andrews: Sure. And thanks so much for inviting me to share the insights from this report. So we started with surveying about 2,000 employers and American workers. And we use an expansive definition of caregiving. Basically, anyone who provides care for another. So whether that be elder care, child care, caring for a sick or disabled person, or some combination. I’d say my top three takeaways, first, this may surprise your listeners, but we discovered that about seven out of ten workers have some level of caregiving responsibilities.

You know, most employers can’t even fathom this. And we know that the caregiving responsibilities disproportionately impact historically underrepresented groups. Second, there’s a stigma around the word caregiver. So ironically, we spoke to some of our own Guardian colleagues who happened to be parents, and they said they did not want to be labeled as a caregiver for their children. However, the reality is that as well as, you know, parents, as well as caring for kind of sick or elderly loved ones, they really have similar needs.

So looking at caregiving holistically will allow employers to really provide more comprehensive benefits and accommodations that really will support all types of caregiving. The third and final takeaway is that caregiving — caregivers, sorry, are more likely to have negative impacts on their physical, financial, and mental well-being. As well as potentially they will kind of diminish some of their career growth opportunities.

So if we think specifically, so, you know, about 25% of the caregiving population say that they don’t keep up with their health checkups, they don’t exercise regularly, and they don’t really practice healthy eating habits. 40% say that they are caregiving responsibilities have somehow negatively impacted their household finances. 41% say that they have overall low mental well-being, and that’s compared to 32% of folks who are not caregivers. And then finally, 20% of caregivers have taken a leave of absence, or stepped back in their career responsibilities accommodate their caregiving duties. Now, this one really resonates with me, because about 20 years ago I actually took a career break to care for my kids, because at the time I really didn’t feel that I could balance both, and there really was not a lot of support for a working parent. So that’s a little bit about our study overall.

Creary: Super interesting results. What popped in my head as I was listening to you talk is how I think many people didn’t hear a lot about caregiving and trends until we were in the midst of a pandemic. And then we started hearing a lot. And I started thinking that some listeners might be wondering [about] the relationship between the things that you’re saying and the pandemic. Are these issues that are, you know, a function of the pandemic, or were they always there?

So I’m going to turn to Ellen. And, Ellen, you know, certainly you’ve been doing research on this topic for a long time, and you understand the trends with things that are happening in society. I am curious about your perspective on is this a pandemic aftermath thing or not, or is this sort of how it’s always been. But I also want to know what you think about this idea that, you know, Guardian has found that there’s been a sharp rise in workers providing care, in addition to working full time. So how does that relate? How do these ideas relate to the things that you’re seeing in your own research and practice?

Ellen Ernst Kossek: Well, Stephanie, I think regarding the pandemic, these demands were already there, but [were] not always visible to the employer. And when daycare centers closed, nursing homes closed, or wouldn’t let families in, people had to work from home if they were able to do remote work. And there were still, let’s not forget the frontline workers that were figuring out how to juggle care. It became more visible.

And I did do a report for the National Academy of Sciences. I’ve done a couple of reports, but I did a study that looked at how STEMM academic faculty manage this change. And we call it Pushing the Boundaries, because there were all of these very highly educated women at home, from all the STEMM fields of — you know, from aerospace engineering to electrical engineering. And they basically were very frustrated at how their organizations, to combine with what Jennifer said, responded to [how] their needs mattered and how well they dealt with the stress.

So many people love their jobs, and it’s part of their professional identity, just like their family. And yet, we found that, you know, just simple things like how do you manage Zoom during a call when your child needs help, or is there a — you know, some people had autistic children. One woman with a child was having challenges, and her boss is texting her, “Where’s this report?” So I think the pandemic made visible the need to respect work life boundaries.

And also I think the narrative that many women left the workforce is true. And men, some men are caregivers as well. But many people were frustrated because they love their careers, and it’s part of their identity. And to go to Guardian’s report, I think a lot of people feel stigma disclosing all the types of care they’re doing. And besides some of the caregiving background, as Jennifer mentioned, a lot of people providing adult care for children or people over 18. You know, a lot of people from college had returned to their parent’s home and we’re still feeling those effects. Spouses that are disabled.

And 30% of families in America today are people that are not married. They may not be living alone. This was a Pew Charitable Trust report. But 13% of people are living alone, and if they’re caring for others at a distance, or for themselves, these are things that we have not updated workplace policies to address the diversity and complexity of caregiving demands in our workforce.

Creary: But also how normal this is. If I combined [the] stats that Jennifer shared, and you said seven in ten people have some sort of caregiving responsibilities.

Andrews: Yes.

Supporting Caregivers in STEMM Is Essential for the Labor Force

Creary: And then what you’re saying, Ellen, it seems to me that, you know, workplaces and organizations are maybe operating in an alternative reality as compared to the lived experiences that most of us are having on any given day with respect to care. So I do find that interesting. Ellen, I want to dig a little bit more into the committee that you participated in, the National Academy of Sciences committee, that was focused on family policies for the STEMM workforce. And recently you released a rather extensive report. I started going through it and I thought, wow, there is a wealth of information in this report. So for those who haven’t read it yet, what would you say are some of your personal top two, top three takeaways from this report?

Kossek: Yes, and just be clear, there were two reports I did. I did one on STEMM, women, and particularly women across many backgrounds of ethnicity prior or during the pandemic. And then because of that, I get appointed to an expert committee. I was the only business school professor on this report called “Supporting Family Caregivers in STEMM: A Call to Action.” And it was a two-year Academy of Science Report. And we went to all the funding agencies in the U.S. We did extra focus groups with people that were underrepresented, of different sexuality, and other backgrounds.

And basically here is the top three takeaways. Number one, that support of the STEMM workforce and caregivers is a strategic labor force investment, and the issue of equity. But the U.S. in particular, but around the globe as well, this is not seen as a priority. The way we have policy set up today, other problems in implementation. And even taking a leave like Jennifer did, that’s a lot of courage. Many people can’t even afford to leave the labor force, if they’re the sole provider or in an expensive area with dual incomes.

So I think what we’re not prepared for, number one, is we’re going to have severe shortages of doctors, engineers. We need to have the people, if you think about our education workforce in STEMM, that over in some areas, so women are half of the people getting their STEMM degrees. If we’re not keeping people working, staying in STEMM, and many — we’re going to have shortages. And we need to keep people of all genders and backgrounds working longer.

And right now, not supporting family care, people are deciding to either cut back on their own or leave the workforce, or if they leave, they leave STEMM but not necessarily work. They leave masculine cultures that don’t support care. The other issues we found were availability. It’s a skyrocketing problem since the pandemic, the cost of care, the lack of policy awareness. People are not able to afford to even use some of the benefits available.

Or there’s, once again, stigma for using family and sick leave. There’s not enough staffing in some of our STEMM professions. And basically an overworked culture where when people signal that work is not their primary and only identity, it will cut them back. Solutions are pretty mundane, in terms of where we studied, a lot of the universities in this country. But simple things like a website with things easy to find, and having universal opt out policies so people don’t have to ask permission. But it might be in a certain stance of someone, you know, is hospitalized or something.

We make it really hard for people to use the policies we have, and there is bias in our workforce for using these policies. In terms of innovations, we need companies to partner with researchers to do a lot more to pilot interventions. And some of the innovative policies, there was one at Stanford where they would let people who wanted to work more hours, to bank some of their leave time and give to other people that might, you know, have had a catastrophe or needed care. That didn’t survive over the long term.

And I think we have a lot of pilot programs, but we don’t mainstream these. The way our jobs are designed to be a director, vice president. They’re huge jobs requiring much more than 40 hours a week. Innovations would be a job share. But we would think of that at the higher levels. We have a lot to go, long ways to go to integrate innovative work design, and supporting people having a life outside of work, and wanting to work longer for high-powered companies and firms.

Creary: So we’re going to dive a little bit more into some of the interventions that you’ve been raising in a few minutes. But I think one thing that came up for me as you were sharing this, and particularly, it was actually an intervention around websites, is I had — I have a friend who is expecting her second child, and she’s moved universities. And so she’s understood that the policies are drastically different in terms of leave, and do you have to teach, and how much do you have to teach even though — right? Which I do not have kids, so I’ve not spent any time looking at these policies.

But she asked me, because we used to work together at a different university. And she says to me, “Where’s all your information on this?” And I said, “There’s a website.” And I showed her our website. And she says, “We don’t even have anything that looks like that.” So people, I think, sometimes will say, “A website, how is that an intervention?” Information is power, right? For people who are trying to navigate these complex systems around sort of like, what are the available resources to them.

So that’s sort of like what came up for me as you were talking. But what I want to do is I want to turn to you, Jennifer, and I want you to see if there’s any overlap between the types of things that Ellen has been sharing in her work, but also, there was an insight in this STEMM report that I’m curious to get your perspective on. And this insight is that while family caregivers provide care in many forms, and for a wide range of relationships, family caregiving is often viewed in a very limited way. So how does that align with like what you’ve seen in your work? And I believe we’ve heard Ellen saying some of this stuff as well.

Andrews: Yes. So it’s absolutely aligned with what we found as well. You know, the kind of narrow view of caregiving outlined in the STEMM report is exactly what we found. You know, probably the general stigma around even the term. So there are many people don’t even want to talk about caregiving typically as being a parent, they feel like that’s something separate, than caregiving more broadly. And even the willingness for our colleagues to talk about caregiving responsibilities. They feel there’s a stigma even to talk about the fact that you’re doing this work outside of your office work, and how that might be perceived by your colleagues, the people who you work for.

And, you know, just kind of being behind the scenes and being quiet about it. And I think what you said earlier about the pandemic. When our work and home life kind of came together, that kind of lifted the veil of some of that, but there’s still a lot of stigma around it. You know, and again, thinking about really this population as a holistic coalition, because as I said earlier, seven out of ten people have some sort of caregiving duties. This will really allow us to really think more holistically about how we are working with them, and how we should support them, and realize that this is a critical need within organizations, when they realize how big this population is, and how much they should really support their organization’s overall well-being.

Why Employers Need to Improve Work-Life Balance for Caregivers

Creary: So this may seem like a silly question, but I think it’s an important one. And this question for both of you is, why do you think these insights that you gained from your various projects are important and relevant to employers and workers? Why should people be listening to this conversation that we’re having, and, you know, investing, which they will need to do significant resources in solving these challenges. So Ellen, I’m gonna start with you. When you think about, you know, there’s a number of reports we could be talking about, including the most recent one on supporting family caregivers in STEMM. But you have been down this road for some time in a variety of projects that are all alluding to the same conclusion, that we need to be doing a better job of supporting caregivers. So why is this something that employers and workers should care about?

Kossek: Well, we know that, you know, 80% of employees have — are considered a family, even if they’re a single-person family. And work and life are not separate. We saw this during the pandemic. It’s really increasingly related with the digitalization of work and life. Even if you’re a frontline worker, you can still get called in at the last minute from home. And we have not updated our policies in terms of flexibility in a way that is mainstreamed. We’re seeing the fights right now with back-to-the-office mandates.

So I just think companies have not evolved. And people are going to walk with their feet and not want to work for big firms that aren’t more flexible in terms of implementing the policies they have. Well, I also think in terms of supervision and leadership, this is an issue where companies have a lot of symbolic or underutilized policies, even universities with paid leave and sick leave. People can’t use these policies effectively. And, you know, we have unpaid leave in this country right now for family and sick leave. So your listeners, your employers are picking up the slack.

The U.S. caregiving policy is in the hands of employers, and if they want to have a workforce, that’s ready and not stressed out, they are going to have to lead on innovative practices, just as they would define the best way to implement some of their innovations such as hybrid work. This is all linked. People are going to be working at home or need flexibility to integrate all of these complex parts of their life.

Creary: Again, I feel like — again, silly question around why human beings matter, but turning it to you, Jennifer. When you think about the insights in Guardian’s “Modern Look at Caregivers in the U.S.” report, what stands out to you as being the reason [as] to why this is important and relevant?

Andrews: Absolutely. So let’s start with 70% of workers have caregiving responsibilities. And this is expected to grow. And in particular, what we call the sandwich group. So people who are caring for both children and aging parents. So with this understanding in mind, it really should be a strategic priority within our organizations. All organizations are, or maybe I should say should be, focusing on ways to stay relevant, given the rapid changes in technologies, how the new generations want to work, shifting demographics, and so much more. So kind of listening to our colleagues understanding their needs, and providing them the right support is key. You know, this is why people join, stay, or unfortunately, leave an organization within the workforce more broadly.

You know, at Guardian we are — our purpose is to inspire wellbeing. And we really take a holistic approach to ensure that we are equitable for and inclusive of all of our current and future colleagues. We are examining all of our systems, processes, practices, policies, and norms with an equity and inclusive lens, and that really includes caregiving. For example, we recently introduced a service called Wellthy. It’s a concierge service that supports managing healthcare needs for employees, as well as their loved ones.

So I am personally a user of the service and I have to say it was transformative. So unfortunately, my dad recently fell and he broke his hip. But using the service, we were able to have a healthcare partner research and provide us with recommendations on the best support for him, given, like, the criteria we provided them. They literally saved my family and me hundreds of hours of research and stress. You know, I was able to really kind of show up for work, and be focused on my job responsibilities, while also knowing that my dad’s needs were being managed. This is one innovative and like powerful example of how employers can support their workforce. I have to say, personally, as an employee of Guardian, I am so grateful that we had that type of benefit. I’ve used it, then I’m still using it today.

Creary: That’s such a great idea. It’s not easy — I used to work in healthcare. It’s not [UNINTEL; OVERTALK] even when you work in it, it’s like impossible. So to have someone there and an employer sponsor back it, that allows someone to help you figure out how to, like, get your loved one the care that they need. That’s kind of invaluable.

Andrews: Yes. I can’t rave about it enough. It’s been amazing.

Creary: So Ellen, I would love to know — you mentioned like a number of interventions. You know, I keep thinking about the fact, and you’ll get this as much as I do, because both of us have been studying workplaces for a long time, is when I see another headline around, you know, return to office and remote work and people batting that policy around, I’m like, we’ve been batting around this policy for, I don’t know, however many decades since we had it, back when it was the policy for women, right? Or the policy for caregivers.

So it’s always interesting to me that people think that remote working emerged with the pandemic. If anything, I would say the fact that we already have these policies in place for caregivers allowed us to transition very quickly to that environment. That said, that’s just one way that I’ve seen. You talk about, and other people have talked about, in terms of flexibility. But like what are some of these other potential interventions that you think are on your top, you know, two or so list of things that employers should be putting in place to support working caregivers?

Kossek: Well, number one is to think that every job needs some sort of work life support. And I think one of the reasons that Jen was talking about, how some people don’t want to be called caregivers, is companies went through a language narrative where they didn’t like using the term work family because they thought it was not including single people and other types of needs. But everybody needs care, from self-care to caring for all the dependents that we’ve talked about.

So in a study I just did that was published in Human Resource Management, we found that people in jobs that didn’t have a lot of schedule control or boundary control, they had higher emotional exhaustion. So think janitors, thinking nursing assistants, food service. So we — and we found that we could improve emotional — or this exhaustion by just training leaders to be more supportive of care and non-work needs.

So first intervention to me is just trying to change the culture and make work life support just like supporting people on how — as part of, you know, making your marketing goals. This is the path to meet these objectives. And we don’t integrate work life support from leaders into a lot of leadership training. Number two, I think, is the fact that if we’re going to make these hybrid and future work policies really mainstreamed, we need to really implement policies to support people’s ability to turn off work, connectivity, managed care, while they’re working in the home.

And lastly, I’ve done some work with frontline workers. And there are things that we can do for the people that have been left behind. I did a recent study that I’m writing up on a cell phone policy. You know, at a Walmart, you have to lock up your cell phone, or — we won’t say Walmart. At big box stores, if we can edit this out. And you have to lock up your cell phone. You can’t even get a text during the day if your kid gets home from school, or a doctor needs to call you, you can call them at break. So just allowing people the ability to take some of these messages not on break and step off the floor was an intervention that we did.

We also looked at things like with unionized workforces. Shift trades. If you think about jobs that are 24/7, you can put in some flexibility, making it easier for people to get time off. And then things like healthcare, where you have to have employees trade jobs that have the similar level of skill to care for the patient acuity, you need to train workers and think about your culture to put that flexibility into your system. So I think we could do a lot more innovations to support people’s ability to have flexibility for every type of job. And that’s important to me, to not just make this something probably for people that can work on a laptop at home.

Creary: Yeah, I truly appreciate that focus on how we think about, like, the salaried workers. Like those of us who do have the ability to work on that laptop from home versus those who don’t.

Kossek: And just one thing, though, on the salaried workers. There is still a tremendous gap in terms of people who are caregivers rising to the highest levels of the c-suite while they are doing care. So I’m not saying we don’t care about salaried workers, we do. And there is an adverse impact. And that would be the leadership pipeline is still having problems, because they haven’t figured out how to support growing in a career and care with some slight ability to manage load during peak times.

Creary: Absolutely, absolutely. So Jen, I’d like to turn to you give me an opportunity to share any other, you know, thoughts that you have on the idea of supporting caregivers in the workplace, whether that’s like an experience, insights from the report, or interventions. What do you think?

Andrews: So there’s so much. And I think, you know, a lot of what Ellen says really resonates with me. But I guess maybe something that I can take away for the listeners is that they need to really remember that the caregiving population is really much larger than they assume. And it is not solely a women’s issue. It’s an organizational issue. You know, with 70% of our workforce having caregiving duties, we know that 70% of the workforce is not women. So this is impacting men as well. And this is only going to continue to grow.

So you know, benefits and accommodations that may have worked five, ten, fifteen years ago, are no longer sufficient for today’s workforce. It really is a way in which we need to kind of really transform how we think about our organization, and really how are we thinking about what the company should be doing. You know, what’s the lived realities of the folks who are now part of these companies. Because, you know, any company is just a collection of people.

And, you know, the fact that this cohort is so expansive, this again needs to be strategic priority within organizations. They need to really make sure they make these changes because, you know, kind of what Ellen said earlier, if people aren’t going to — aren’t doing this, if organizations aren’t doing this, people are going to leave. And so if you want to stay relevant, you want to be innovative, you want to have the best talent and continue to attract the best talent, we have to do this.

You have to ensure that your organizations are equitable for and inclusive of all your current and future employees. Your leaders really need to understand that what may have worked for them may not be somebody else’s lived experience. So they need to really be empathetic and humble enough to kind of listen, to really interpret what they’re hearing, and then to act. So that’s probably what I would want to leave you with.

Creary: Excellent, thank you so much. Ellen, final thoughts on this topic, at least for today?

Kossek: Just I think the listeners that are in a key decision-making role, you have the power to make the change. And I think this issue of care and work life resonates with many people personally. Or if you have sons or daughters or you see other co-workers. And the US is a pretty individualistic culture. And we’ve sort of told people you’ve got to figure this out by yourself. But these issues are in work teams and are occurring in organization cultures. And these dynamics can really only be solved with teams working differently and leaders acting to make this a top priority.

And, you know, it really is part of being a sustainable workforce. Just like we think about sustainability for the UN goals. I think that this is the future. And we, for the first time, or not the first time, but for a long time now, we are lagging in the U.S. in terms of rankings of equality, health, well-being. On other countries, if the war for talent goes global, they have better work life and better support than we do.

Creary: Absolutely. Well, you know, I’m so delighted that you two were able and willing and available to come on the show today. I want to thank you Dr. Ellen M. Ernst Kossek from Purdue University’s Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. School of Business, and Jennifer Andrews from Guardian Life, for joining us today, for sharing your insights your expertise on supporting caregivers in the workplace, and definitely for the work that you do more broadly related to equity and inclusion in organizations. That does not go understated in terms of, like, this as part of this broader conversation the two of you are helping to continue to grow.

So thank you for sharing your insights and your expertise today. I truly appreciate you for being here. So that is all for today. Thank you for joining us, to our listeners, and for listening to this episode of the Knowledge at Wharton Leading Diversity at Work podcast series. Goodbye for now.