The Changing Workforce and the Need to Support Employee Carers

by Jeannette Galvanek in Blogs, Business, Caregiving

Your Business Success depends on having an engaged, motivated, and diverse workforce with access to technology that supports communications, productivity, and location-independence. That’s why we’re seeing such a strong drive towards the mobile enterprise, as employees move away from office-bound roles to work from anywhere.

However this desire for remote and virtual working isn’t just driven by a need for autonomy, trust, or flexibility — for many employees, it’s a necessity. Moreover,our aging population means that employees often have to provide at-home care for elderly relatives, while still being able to deliver excellent quality work for their employers’ career.

If you want to ensure the strength and growth of your business over the long-term, you can’t afford to ignore these economic, demographic, and technological shifts. By understanding and addressing them now, you’ll be able to meet workforce demands, attract the best talent, and future-proof your employment needs.

Aligning The Inescapable Any Time, Any Location Workforce with Our Mobile Enterprise and Elder Care Corridor.
There are a number of metrics and trends that show how flexible working, technology, and mobile enterprise are becoming more important.

The Changing Needs of the Workforce

The workplace flexibility movement began years ago when many organizations launched talent initiatives to accommodate working mothers. Over time, flexibility options mushroomed: from compressed workweeks to job sharing, telecommuting to adjustable schedules, career lattices to career reentry. From its birth as an employee entitlement, workplace flexibility has grown to become a requirement for organizations that want to make the most of its people’s productivity.

Deloitte Workplaces of the Future: Creating an Elastic Workplace

• The number of people working from home has increased by a fifth over the last ten years.
• Many employees work outside the main office for two and a half days a week or more.
• 88% of highly-engaged employees have control over their workplace.
• 30% of employees say apps improve business processes.
• 58% of companies employing more than 10,000 people are enabling mobile access to drive app adoption.

The Rise of the Internet of Things and the Move to Mobile Enterprise

Increase in smartphone penetration, boost in connectivity and productivity of both employees and organizations, increasing demand for real-time information capture, and organizations’ continued focus to make their business processes mobile-ready due to increase in mobile workforce are some of the driving forces in the mobile enterprise application market.
Research and Markets Mobile Enterprise Application Market by Software Report

• Growth across the Internet of Things (IoT) means we will have over 30 billion connected objects over the next couple of years.
• Enterprises using mobile apps have launched an average of eight mobile apps to date, with another two to three in development per company, and six more planned over the next year.
• 68% of organizations expect to increase spending for mobile apps.
• The mobile application market is expected to reach $46 billion over the next couple of years.
• There are more than 7,800 health-related applications for smart devices.
• Learn more about digital work-life and caregiving technologies.

The Aging Population and Need for At-Home Care

It’s hard to underestimate the impact our aging population is going to have on the economy, your workforce, and long-term trends on attracting and retaining talent. Let’s face it, the baby boomers are getting older, and their medical needs are increasing.

Lifeworkx – Employee Home Care Burdens are Your Economic Threat.

• Moreover, there are around 70 million baby boomers, aged between 54 and 72.
• Every day in the US, 10,000 baby boomers turn 65.
• 44 million people in the US have caregiving responsibilities, with six in ten were working.
• Informal caregiver services exceed $523 billion every year.
• Lost time and productivity across the US economy is expect to increase by almost $36 billion every year.

Learn more about the economic threat of the burden of at-home care.

However, these shifts are a foundation and need to be baked into the deepest levels of your workforce. HR, and business strategy, policies, and processes.

In the same way, the changes being wrought by these trends will catch many businesses unawares, which means if you start taking action now, you’ll be building up a competitive advantage for the future. It’s too big to ignore an employee home care needs are cutting into the already problematic demographics of a shrinking workforce.

Moreover, we believe there are several ways to empower business strategy, thinking, and investment to meet the needs of your workforce:

• In addition to that, understand the current and future state of your workforce.
• Use IoT devices, mobile apps, and connectivity to empower your caregiving workforce.
• Implement a “One Team” approach and ideology.
• However, transformation into a “Care Wise” business.

Understand the Current and Future State of Your Workforce and the Need to Shift to a Location-Independent Approach

As you’ve seen above, the need for more flexible working and caregiving options is essential.

• In addition, employees who provide elder care may distract. If they are not able to monitor the health and needs of their relatives.
• Distracted employees are less motivated, productive, or engaged, which will impact your bottom line.
• Employees may be call away from work suddenly due to emergencies or other care requirements.
• However, employees need more autonomy and trust, supported by comprehensive policies and processes.
• Anyways Potential employees will want to see provision for location-independent working. And it will be a necessary benefit for many of them.
• Attracting the best talent will mean offering flexibility like at-home caregiving.
• However virtual teams and remote workers can be empower to work together more effectively.

However, the way to close the gap between current and future workforce needs is through a balance of technology. Strategy, and implementation if you want to become a Care Wise business.

In addition to the above artcile. Also Read: IoT Connectivity Can Change Unreasonable Caregiving Expectation