The corporation employing caregivers has a difficult challenge.

CAREGIVERS HIDE OUT AT WORK.  THERE’S A REASON.

CAREGIVERS HAVE A MEDICAL DISABILITY WHICH
COSTS THEIR EMPLOYERS MONEY.  CAREGIVING IS USUALLY THE CAREGIVER’S #1 JOB. 

THE EMPLOYER OFTEN COMES SECOND.  CAREGIVING IS NOBLE, BUT IT’S COSTLY BOTH TO THE CAREGIVER AND HIS EMPLOYER.

CAREGIVERS REGULARLY TRAP THEMSELVES INTO AN EXCESSIVE SERVICE RELATIONSHIP WITH THEIR CARE-RECEIVER. 

One caregiver/employee put it this way:  “My supervisor and I have a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ relationship.  I come in late or leave early.  He doesn’t ask and I don’t tell!”

Caring For The Caregiver has created a program for employers (and employees) which can improve productivity and reduce disfunction at the same time.  It’s called:  “Empowering the Caregiver.”

“EMPOWERING THE CAREGIVER” ALLOWS HIM OR HER
TO REDUCE THE CAREGIVING ATTENTION AND ACTIVITY,AND RESTORE ON-THE-JOB PRODUCTIVITY WITHOUT REDUCING THE CARING.

Excerpts Per Met Life research, February, 2010:

If you have 1,000 employees,  up to one out of 6,  or 17% will be caregivers.  That would be 170 employees where what you’re paying for is his/her “second job.”

A caregiver costs you about $2,400 a year in absenteeism, “presenteeism,” and diverted attention.

If you have 170 caregivers, they should cost you $408,000 a year by Met-Life’s estimates.

Caring For The Caregiver offers a plan to offset that cost.

If we can reduce your “caregiver cost” by 50% we can save you at least $200,000 a year, or $1,200 per caregiver. 

We will also make your caregivers much happier, because caregiving will become a lot easier for them to manage.

And your caregiving employees will see the change as your generosity, your commitment to their well-being.  They will also feel (and be) more productive.

“Empowering The Caregiver”  provides measureable change.  See below.

 

Caregivers’  Response to Caregivers’ Fair and  Caregiver Empowerment Group

Caregivers apply their  caregiving skill to one another.

Upward Movement on the  graph indicates healing.

Level 1	Victim	The whole world’s against you and there is no way out.
Level 2	Complaint	The caregiver expresses unhappiness or dismay at his/her situation.
Level 3	Reporting	The caregiver is just reporting facts.
Level 4	Insight, Humor, Intention to Act	The caregiver sees a brighter picture, and is thinking about making changes.
Level 5	Empowerment, Taking Action or Feeling Gratitude	The caregiver understands his/her Situation, is preparing to take steps to manage his/her own welfare, and embraces the support he or she is perceiving/receiving,

At each session of the Caregiver Empowerment Group, which follows the Caregivers’ Fair, our facilitators keep careful score of the “healing process” which takes place.

This is described as an Ordinal  Descriptive Scale, and is an accepted method for documenting attitude change.   While each participant responds  differently, each invariably shows 1-2 level upward movement within the first month, and usually gets to Level 4 or 5 within 90 days.

Implementation

We can put this process to work  for you.  The initial Caregivers’ Fair accomodates as many employees as you can get in one room at one time.  The cost of the subsequent Caregiver Empowerment Groups can be usually be defrayed by health insurance.  We can arrange sites and times for weekly meetings.  The Groups will be run by trained professional facilitators and their credentials will be available for your examination.

Findings – MetLife Caregiving Research Report,   Feb. 2010

Caregiving for an older relative is an important factor in  the health, medical care expense and productivity of employees across all age groups – and therefore in the health costs for employers.

Employers can serve the best interests of their employees as well as their corporation by anticipating and responding to the challenges of eldercare for their employees.  Eldercare benefits and wellness programs can provide reduced
costs, with resulting bottom-line benefits to the employer.

In a study conducted by MetLife in 2010 at a large corporation in the Northeast, the differences between Caregiver and non-Caregiver employees were measured. The study is available for your review in its entirety.
Following,  summary and conclusions:

Quotes:

“My job has turned out to be an escape from caregiving.”

“The stress is killing me.”

“I used to go to Curves 3 times a week for exercise, but I had to give it up.”

“I use a lot of my vacation time and sick time caring for them, plus all the time for phone calls from the office.”

“It’s sort of like “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”   My supervisor knows why I come in late (because of caregiving for my mother) but he doesn’t ask and I don’t tell.”

“I don’t know where to cut back – on caregiving, on my job, or the rest of my family.”

 

 

METLIFE Statistical Summary –

Cost of medical care among Caregivers is 8% higher than that of non-caregivers overall.

Absenteeism – 10% of caregivers missed work in the prior 2 weeks, 8.5% of non-caregivers.

“Other eldercare programs include caregiver fairs, line supervisor training, lunchtime seminars, flextime and shared work, and
dependent care accounts.”

“Linking wellness to caregiving.”  Wellness programs have risen in prominence as an employee benefit because they promise to help hold down health care costs and they are seen by the employee as a contribution to his/her well-being.

“The corporate wellness industry is itself split on whether such programs are meant primarily to save cost -40%  - or increase worker productivity -38%.”

Questions:

Q.           What is the level of caregiving which impacts job performance?

A.            More than 14 hours a week.  20 hours or more requires major work adjustments, cutting back or stopping work,    and decline in annual income.

Caregiver Employee Demographics:        (Sample base description.)

Sex:                        39% female, 61% male

Age:                        18-39  17%           40-49  35%           50+  48%

Marital Status         67% married,     23% single,  Co-habiting 6%  Widowed 2%  Separated  2%

Hypertension  – Increases for both white-collar and blue-collar caregivers

Caregivers                               White Collar       23%        Blue Collar           25%

Non Caregivers                                                 16%                                     20%

Hi Cholesterol   -  more prevalent for both White and Blue-collar Caregivers

Caregivers                                White Collar       21%        Blue Collar           24%

Non-Caregivers                                                    16%                                      19%

COPD  – significantly higher for Caregivers than Non-Caregivers

Caregiver                                               18-39      7%        40-49       5%         50+          6%

Non Caregivers                                                     2%                        2%                         3%

Stress at home -  roughly double for Female  Caregivers,

CG Female                                            18-39      22%        40-49     15%        50+       11%

Non-CG Female                                                   12%                       10%                       5%

Stress at home  – more for Male Caregivers

Caregiver Male                                                      9%                          7%                       5%

Non-CG                                                                 6%                           5%                      3%

Effect of personal life on work  – significantly more for White-Collar Caregivers

CG                                              White Collar       23%                        Blue Collar          13%

Non-CG                                                                 16%                                                    13%

Absenteeism   -  younger White-Collar workers particularly vulnerable

18-39                                         White Collar         23%                      Blue Collar           11%   

40-49                                        White Collar           3%                      Blue Collar              6%  

50+                                           White Collar          9%                        Blue Collar             8%

Recommendations
from Met-Life Study (digest)

1. Combine eldercare service and wellness benefits.
2. PTO (paid time-off programs)
3. Telecommuting
4. Flexible schedules
5. EAP programs
6. Caregiver Fairs
7. Supervisor training
8. Lunchtime seminars

Wellness programs provide paired benefits:  Save costs, & increase productivity.

To take action:  Call Roger or Craig – 516-921-0755 516 944-6454

 

 

Why empowering your Caregivers is important to you.

People called Caregivers are doing admirable and noble things, and it’s sucking big money out of your business.  Most businesses haven’t even noticed.

A caregiver is someone who’s taken responsibility for the health concerns of a family member.  Caregivers are magnificent at this, and, if they’re on your payroll, at deferring their job-related responsibilities as well.

In fact, employee caregiving is a very significant but generally unrecognized corporate liability, and the solutions to this problem are even more unrecognized.

The caregiver does two jobs at once, and the one s/he’s getting paid for usually takes second place.  The costs to the business are experienced as:  absenteeism, presenteeism, workday interruptions, moving from full-time to part-time, or  ultimately, resignation.  And because they don’t take care of themselves any better than they take care of their job, they incur additional health-related costs – about 8% beyond normal.

How many caregiving employees work for you?  Somewhere between one in 10 to one in 6.  Most business owners are surprised by, or skeptical of that number.  But caregivers are not stupid – they do their best to conceal their caregiving activities:  “My supervisor and I have a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ relationship.  When I come in late or leave early, he doesn’t ask, and I don’t tell!” 

What’s not generally known:  employee caregiving costs U.S businesses between 17.1 and 33.6 Billion per year (Met Life 2006).  More personally, the average cost for the employer per employed caregiver is upward of $2,100 per year.  If you have 100 employees, the lost productivity cost alone exceeds $210,000.  What else is not generally known:  there are some new measures available to reduce that financial impact sharply.  

What about your Employee Assistance Plan?  Most EAP’s we’ve seen ignore Caregivers completely, or offer a little sympathy. 

How do you solve the problem?  You give the caregiver information and incentive for changing his process.  In fact, you empower him.  It’s a two-part process, and our firm has mastered it:

Part #1 – A Caregivers’ Fair, where the Caregiver discovers that s/he is not alone, and learns a lot about the hidden issues of caregiving.

 

Part #2 -  An empowerment support group, where the big difference is that everyone in the group is a caregiver.  Caregivers are motivated to take care of others, and uniquely capable of speaking the Caregiver’s language. These groups don’t just provide support, they provide change, empowerment and abundant healing.  Ask us for detailed proof.

Implementation:  We will manage professional implementation, and can expect that the Empowerment Support Groups will be insurance-compensated.  Only the Caregivers’ Fair should require your financial support.  

Please review http://www.caringforthecaregiver.org.  The proof of empowerment can be found in the section entitled “Caring and Healing Circle.”

If you’d like more evidence that:  1.  Caregiving employees are costing you a lot of money, and 2.  There’s a process available to minimize that cost, and make the Caregiver a lot happier as well.  Please ask us to come and prove it.

Best,

Craig Jennings, Founder

516 944-6454

craig@caringforthecaregiver.org