• Help caregivers solve problems
• Find ways to meet their own needs
• Find ways to balance caregiving and work place demands

Caregiver consultation will assist with:

• Establishing an elder care plan to provide the regularly scheduled services
• Help the employed caregiver sort out the work and eldercare conflicts
• Recommend strategies to prepare a work balance plan to discuss with supervisors and human resources
• Occupational planning where caregivers are considering changes in employer or job setting

Employer and work place consultation will assist with:

• Providing seminars to employees on caregiving dilemmas
• Providing individual counseling to employees on caregiving resources
• Offering support and encouragement to caregivers dealing with stress and time demands
• Providing on site employee assistance in solving elder care problems and minimizing need to lose time from work due to conflicts in caregiving and workplace demands.

Contact Chrysalis Case Management to arrange for either individual or workplace consultation.

Articles for Employers

Employees Who Provide Elder Care Cost Money for Business and Impacts Employee Productivity

Employed Caregivers, The Workplace and Productivity Losses to U.S. Business

Supporting Caregivers at Work:  Are We Doing our Job?

Articles for Caregivers

Caregivers: Balancing Caregiving Demands with Your Job

Employees Who Provide Elder Care Cost Money for Business and Impacts Employee Productivity

Over 44 million Americans are providing care for an adult family member or friend. This is called caregiving. Caregiving impacts the caregiver and also the employer. A majority of caregivers are working. We now know that caregiving has entered the workplace.

Caregiving demands put time and emotional pressure on anyone trying to balance the demands of the workplace with the demands of family and caring for a loved one.

Nearly 60% of caregivers over the age of 50 are working, the majority are working full-time. Nearly 40% of the caregivers are men as determined in a "Caregiving in the United States" study in 2004.1

The burden of eldercare impacts employers in employee productivity and lost dollars.

How does it impact your company? Have you measured the productivity losses to your bottom line?

• The total estimated cost to employers for full-time employees with intense caregiving responsibilities is $17.1 billion.

• The average cost per employee for those with intense caregiving responsibilities is $2,441.

• The total estimated cost to employers for all full-time employed caregivers is $33.6 billion2

The 2006 estimates are that there are close to 16 million employed caregivers who are working full-time.

Some of those people work for you and you may not be aware that they are faced with a challenge of balancing work responsibilities with the caregiving demands they have on a daily basis.

The Wall Street Journal, July 11, 2006, said: "U.S. employers are paying an increasingly steep price in lost productivity for workers who take time off from their jobs to care for elderly family members."3

Employers can take steps to assist their employees find worklife/caregiving balance by offering a workplace seminar that gives concrete strategies to relieve the burden.

How many employees are currently affected by caregiving demands? How many expect to become caregivers in the future? Determine how eldercare concerns are impacting your business by arranging an assessment.

You can arrange for individual assistance for employees from a Professional Geriatric Case Manager. You can put in place policies and procedures which have been shown to have a positive impact on retaining employees.

Many employers have shifted their thinking to accept eldercare as a workplace issue and are making an effort to manage it.

Plan for the future and develop low cost strategies to reduce stress, improve morale, minimize lost time and improve caregiver productivity by contacting Chrysalis Case Management to discuss a work place assessment, worklife balance seminars or individual case management consultation. You may reach us at 603-529-5173. We look forward to being of assistance to your company in managing caregiver costs.

1 National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP, 2004
2 The MetLife Caregiving Cost Study: Productivity Losses to U.S. Business. Met Life Mature Market Institute, National Alliance for Caregiving. July 2006
3 “Employees Cost for Elder Caregiving is on the Rise”, Kelly Greene, Wall Street Journal, July 11, 2006.

Employed Caregivers, The Workplace
and Productivity Losses to U.S. Business

Fact Sheet

A number of companies are helping employees who care for ill or aging relatives.

Working caregivers cost businesses as much as $33.6 billion a year because of absenteeism, hiring replacement workers and other lost productivity.

This amounts to an average $2,110 for each of the estimated 15.9 million caregivers working full-time.

By 2020, one in 3 U.S. households is expected to be involved in caring for elderly or disabled relatives.1

Employers' annual cost is about 16% higher or, $4 billion more a year, than in 1997.

Replacing the 9% of caregivers who quit their jobs is the most expensive caregiving related problem, costing $6.6 billion a year.2

There are a much larger percentage of men involved in caregiving than in the past. Caregiving is no longer just a women's issue. Nearly 40% of employed caregivers are men.3

Men are just as likely to report that they retired early as a result of caregiving responsibilities as women.

Prepared by: Cynthia J. Ward
Chrysalis Case Management
PO Box 305
Weare, NH 03281
603-529-5173
www.chrysaliscm.com
c. 1/15/07

1"The MetLife Caregiving Cost Study: Productivity Losses to U.S. Business" National Alliance for Caregiving and the MetLife Mature Market Institute, July 2006.
2" Caregiving in the U.S.", National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP, 2004.
3"The MetLife Caregiving Cost Study: Productivity Losses to U.S. Business" National Alliance for Caregiving and the MetLife Mature Market Institute, July 2006.

Caregivers: Balancing Caregiving

Demands with Your Job

Family caregivers play a powerful role in caring for loved ones. If you are one of the 40% of US employees who are taking care of someone, reward yourself by asking for help in managing all that you have to do and worry about.

When you are juggling working and caregiving you should have an action plan to minimize your work disruptions and keep balance. Gain focus and take control by learning strategies to managing your work demands and your caregiving commitment.

Learning strategies will help you by:
1. reducing pressure
2. managing stress
3. taking charge
4. evaluating your work demands
5. finding resources to help with caregiving

A recent survey of employees questioned by a privately owned employee benefits organization showed that a staggering 82% said that they could use the help of a professional geriatric case manager (October 2004, Life Care, Inc., Press release, accessed at www.lifecare.com.) This survey confirms that the majority of workers are struggling with eldercare challenges that place a burden on them while trying to carry out their work responsibilities.

Talk to your employer and suggest that they offer some help by arranging a seminar for employees. Tell them that you need some flexibility in managing things and tall them that you need someone to talk to you who can help with all that is going on. Some employers provide work life programs like work life balance seminars and individual case management assistance.

If you would like to learn more abut how to get help, contact us. We are Work Life Balance Seminar Trainers and provide individual caregiver assistance and consultation. We will be happy to talk to your employer about how we can help you and other employees with the challenges you have. Contact us through www.chrysaliscm.com or by calling 603-529-5173.

Supporting Caregivers at Work: 

Are We Doing our Job?

These are times when employees are concerned about their jobs. They are under more pressure than ever to be present and productive at work. If you employ people who are caregivers, you are aware of how much pressure they are under at home in caring for aging parents.

It is likely that you employ people who are taking care of their aging parents at home. Most persons providing caregiving are employed. For those caregivers who are 50-64 years of age, an estimated 60% are working full or part time.1 Caregivers are under pressure to juggle parent care demands, their own families and their jobs. They are jugglers extraordinaire. Can they keep all the balls in the air? You are probably aware of the things they deal with. Caregiver problems and challenges can carry over into the workplace and cause a person’s attention to be divided between their very real demands at home, concern about an ill or disabled loved one, and their responsibilities at work.

More than ever employers want to retain employees but may be forced to operate with a reduced work force. You expect your team to be at work and to be free from distractions while there. When employees are not focused and are not at their best, productivity is impaired. This has come to be broadly referred to as "presenteeism". More and more employers are paying attention to this. One employer reports that 30% of employees come to work at least 5 days when they are too distracted to be effective and 28% of workers took time off for caregiving.2 Presenteeism has been estimated to cost employers an estimated $2,000 per year for each employee.3 A staggering 37% of employees with current elder care issues have lost work time because they spend up to 11 hours per week taking care of matters at home.4

The duration of caregiving has been found to be an average of 4.3 years in a study by the National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP.5 Most striking is the well documented effects of caregiving on a caregiver’s mental and emotional health. Depression is the most common disorder with 20-50% reporting this as a problem.6 The per employee costs associated with the impact of depression and other mental illnesses is $348 per year according to the Institute for Health and Productivity Studies, Cornell University (2004).

Nationally and locally employers are instituting strategies to lower the costs associated with reduced presenteeism. Some have added an elder care component to their employee assistance program. Some are providing unique individualized benefits to effected employees. Face to face consultation has been demonstrated to relieve stress, provide valuable resources, and teach skills for managing caregiving demands. The result is a productive, focused employee who feels more in control of the many demands they face. The small up front costs to help caregivers cope while managing their jobs may help avoid the cost of replacing the 9% of caregivers who quit their jobs.7

Chrysalis Case Management can help explore how your company or business can provide caregiving coaching to effected employees.

1 AARP: A Report to the Nation on Independent Living and Disability. Washington DC: AARP, 2003

2 Chaifetz, R. Elevated Stress Levels Leads to Preseentism. ComPsych, provider of EAP programs.

3 Cigna Behavioral Health, April 26, 2004

4 Risk and Insurance. March 2004

5 Caregiving in the U.S. Bethesda: National Alliance for Caregiving and Washington DC: AARP, 2004

6 Schultz, R. et al. Psychiatric and Physical Morbidity Effects of Dementia Caregiving: Prevalence, Correlates, and Causes. The Gerontologist 35: 771-791, 1994.

7 See #4

Contact Chrysalis Case Management to arrange for either individual or workplace consultation.