Why Our Current Thinking and Solutions Are Not Going Far Enough?
One of the main reasons that elder caregiving is heading towards a crisis is that we’re not thinking about and implementing the right solutions. Part of this is down to the perception of caregiving.
Seeing Caregiving Solutions as “Improving Personal Support”
This approach focuses on making life more efficient for caregivers. Solutions in this area are focused around saving time — for example, apps that help with transportation, shopping, chores, and other day-to-day tasks.
Seeing Caregiving Solutions as a “Mobility-Enabled Workforce”
In other areas, corporations are already putting their money into mobility solutions which provides more flexibility to caregivers. This allows them to work from home and to alternative schedules.
Seeing Caregiving Solutions as an “Extension to Health Insurance”
Some employers and insurers are exploring is insurance plans can be expanded to cover some of the costs and resources incurred by caregivers who are looking after elderly relatives.
“Many research findings tie directly to the fact that a profound workplace/workforce mismatch exists. While the demographics of the American workforce have changed dramatically over the last thirty years, the structure of the American workplace has not. It retains its full-time, full-year structure, which made sense when the majority of employees were male, lived in traditional breadwinner-homemaker households, and retired promptly at age 65. The one-size-fits-all workplace no longer makes sense when most employees live in dual-earner or single-parent households or work well beyond 65, often with significant caregiving responsibilities. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the 21st-century workforce, nearly four out of five working Americans – across age, income, and stage in life – want more flexibility at work. But a flexibility gap exists: the demand for flexibility far exceeds its availability.” Workplace, Workforce, and Working Families research
Ultimately, while useful, these are just piecemeal approaches — they don’t deal with the underlying issues and look at the problem as a whole. For example, they do not answer the question “Is a family member the best caregiver for an elder?”
Caregiving Tensions in the Modern Workplace
Business issues caused by family caregiving go far beyond lost productivity and the bottom line. There’s an increasing demand for a more agile and mobile workforce, with challenges caused by globalization and the push into new markets. As more employees are in force into dual employment, some of that institutional expertise and focus may start to be lost.
Team challenges are occurring by unplanning absences can cause upstream and downstream operational impacts, especially if critical people are called away for caregiving needs.
There are other, subtler impacts too, especially when it comes to attracting talent. Low unemployment means that highly-desirable job candidates can pick and choose where they work, and they are going to work for businesses that understand caregiving challenges and have a strong employer brand.
Business leaders need a paradigm shift in their thinking, not just in HR, but across the overall strategic goals for the business in terms of strategy, competitiveness, and how a motivated workforce helps to meet those goals. Corporations need to think about whether success is just about increasing the bottom line, and what successful family or informal caregiving might look like.
It’s time to shift our perspective and think about what a pro-care employee and business culture look like.
Shifting Our Perspective About Eldercare
The problem is that we continue to see caregiving as a personal or family matter. Without a profound shift away from this attitude, the costs of caregiving will spill over into businesses and institutions and cause significant issues. This is compound by a lack of understanding of the true impact, both within the business environment and society as a whole — what we do know is that the costs will be huge, and they will have far-reaching implications for the modern workforce, home and family life, the healthcare industry, and our economy.
If we’re going to develop truly-innovative solutions to the growing eldercare problem, we need to widen the discussion. It’s time to move away from focusing exclusively on the major stakeholders — non-profits, academia, insurance, healthcare, or pharmaceuticals. We need to engage with local and national government, policymakers, employers, technologists. If we’re going to develop the institutional, systematic caregiving solutions that we need. We think a good place to start is with employers.
