"No one prepared me for this..."
Help me help you avoid that fate when it comes to caregiving responsibilities!
“Every single team member you have is aging…”
-Consuela Marshall
When Consuela uttered the above in a recent conversation, it stopped me short. I mean, truer words were never spoken, right? Or, to pull out another cliché, oft-used when complaining about getting older, “It’s better than the alternative.”
As we age, so do our parents, and so do the chances increase that we are going to find ourselves caregiving. It happened to me, and I felt utterly unprepared. It made me want to have more conversations about the topic and bring it out into the open, so no one else finds themselves quite as much a deer in the headlights (another cliché) as I was!
Caregiving comes in many forms, including self-care
Childcare may be the most well-understood form of caregiving when it comes to considering how it intersects with the workplace. About 40% of the current workforce is a parent with at least one child under 18. Especially for women, childcare needs may coincide with prime career development years. You typically have several months to figure out your plan for childcare, though it may certainly be fraught. In fact, all progress and evolution aside, that data show that it is still women who take on more of the responsibility, and who are more likely to be held back by being a mom, compared to a man’s experience once becoming a dad. [Source: Pew Research on Parenting and Gender and The Motherhood Penalty analysis from Harvard.]
Often, other caregiving comes with little warning, and with much less open conversation happening about how people manage it.
Your parent or spouse has an emergency medical incident…stroke, heart attack, etc…and a trip to the ER becomes a new ongoing caregiving responsibility to integrate into your life. Almost 20% of the current workforce cares for an adult loved one while working (with some being in that proverbial “sandwich generation” caring for both children and parents).
Your child is diagnosed with a chronic condition, and a whole new world of care needs lies before you.
You experience a new or worsening medical condition yourself, and suddenly the ways you worked without issue before are problematic, even painful. [I mean, did you know more than 28% of American adults have some form of disability? Source: CDC] The prevalence of disability rises as we age, but there are still millions of employees in the U.S. who are dealing with a significant disability while working full-time.
Throw in short-term disability or even absenteeism that comes with a chronic condition like long COVID or depression or heart disease, and the majority of American workers are dealing with care issues.
Any of the above situations come with more than just dealing with the care itself. You can look forward to emotional stress, not to mention the unplanned time suck of dealing with health insurance companies and/or governmental agencies. Even the dynamics of trying to cooperate and collaborate with other family members or colleagues to manage care and contingency planning can be high stakes and quickly become inordinately stressful.
Hence Optionality’s webinar for June: Can You Plan Ahead for Caregiving? Join us tomorrow (Wednesday) June 18th at 12PM PT/3PM ET to learn about how to answer that question with a confident “yes.”
We’re talking to Zack Demopoulos and Consuela Marshall…two experts on the topic, absolutely, but experts who have been caregivers themselves. Caregiving changed the trajectory of their lives, but it also changed the trajectories of their careers.
I’m a strong believer that when you get Expertise+Experience+Empathy, you get the most helpful 360-degree perspective, and that’s a good thing! So please join us on Wednesday (or get the recording after) by registering now.
Planning ahead for the unexpected
No matter how urgent, unplanned, and unexpected, there are ways to plan for a caregiving inevitability. Here are just a few areas for your consideration, as an individual, and as a manager or leader:
Legal back-up: It’s the most basic question: Do you have a will, a trust, an advanced directive, powers of attorney for medical and financial matters? Doing it now before someone is incapacitated (cognitively or physically) will make your life so much easier. It’s no fun thinking through the scenarios, especially when you’re young and healthy (or when your parent, for example, still seems pretty chipper) and any such need seems very far away. But it will make a big difference to work it out now, before it’s needed and before emotions are running super high.
Aging in place: Consuela will be covering this in this week’s webinar. I thought I was being so smart when we bought our current place…a one-story house with wide hallways in a safe, walkable neighborhood. Didn’t even think about the fact that there are a few stairs to get into our one-story house, at every entrance, and NO railings. And our toilets are regular toilets, with low seats…which matters in certain scenarios. I did learn that you can rent or acquire just about anything you need to outfit your home for a sudden accessibility need…and if it’s a temporary need, it can all be picked back up and taken away. But some stuff we’re hanging on to for the future, I’m just saying.
Redundancies at work: It seems obvious to say that having all institutional knowledge retained by any single person in any role can leave you high and dry if something happens to that one person. In real life, though, and in today’s market environment, people are spread thin and may already be covering more than one set of responsibilities. It may not be realistic to have at least a second person fully up to speed on every critical function or activity, but at the very least setting up documentation for critical processes (and ensuring access to said documentation) can give you a head start. Knowing the law and your rights and responsibilities as both employee and employer in the case of a medical leave or disability is also a good plan.
Consider flexible workplace policies: What’s good for your caregiver employees is likely good for everyone. Examples include: flexible schedules, remote work options, caregiver leave, and employee assistance programs. Evidence shows that even as national policy-making lags at providing sufficient benefits, companies can pick up that slack, and doing so can improve retention and productivity to realize a net benefit. Taking the long view, promoting the health and self-care of caregivers (e.g. through respite care, support groups, and healthcare access) can prevent a decline in worker well-being that leads to higher costs down the road.
I know I’m just scratching the surface on this. We are so lucky to have Zack and Consuela join us to share more resources and advice from their years of experience and expertise at this week’s webinar. Please do your future (and maybe your current?) self a favor, and join us!
