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& DESIGN Home Page Architecture Brand Equity Auto Design Game Room SMALLBIZ Smart Answers Success Stories Today's Tip INVESTING Investing: Europe Annual Reports BW 50 S&P Picks & Pans Stock Screeners Free S&P Stock Report SCOREBOARDS Hot Growth 100 Mutual Funds Info Tech 100 S&P 500 B-SCHOOLS Undergrad Programs MBA Blogs MBA Profiles MBA Rankings Who's Hiring Grads | | JULY 31, 2000 WORK & FAMILY By Pamela Mendels Easing the Burden of Elder Care When employees are responsible for aging relatives, it takes a toll on the workplace. Here's what employers can do
She lives alone and, knock on wood, is in good health. But she is also 85 years old and doesn't drive. Because I live 200 miles away, it falls largely to my brother, who lives near her, to assist with such matters as shopping, household bookkeeping, and home repairs. He also pays daily visits to say hello and make sure all is in order. I thought about my brother last week as I thumbed through the pages of a recent report about AT&T employees who care for elderly relatives. The study was conducted by the Washington-based National Council on the Aging to assist AT&T in crafting programs for employees facing elder-care responsibilities. These are bound to arise as baby boomers and their parents age. "You look at the demographics, and you see that elder care is becoming an issue," says Skip Schlenk, director of work and family programs at AT&T. FOCUS GROUPS. The study was based on 10 focus groups and a 1999 survey of AT&T employees at work sites in four cities. The survey was not a scientific representation of the AT&T workforce as a whole, because respondents were not randomly selected. Rather, employees could choose to participate. Still, the answers of the 1,299 respondents give a flavor of the elder-care issues looming for both employers and employees. One finding: Unlike child care, elder care is not overwhelmingly the province of women. More than one-quarter of the respondents -- 28% -- who said they currently have elder-care responsibilities or anticipate having them were men. Regardless of gender, employees reported that the needs of their older relatives affected the workplace. For example, 67% of those who currently provide care said they had taken off time from work for general care-giving or to handle a crisis. Such absences are one reason the National Alliance for Caregiving, a Bethesda (Md.) nonprofit group, has estimated that an employee with elder-care responsibilities costs his or her employer about $1,150 extra a year. The focus groups fleshed out the survey. A repeated comment: Employees who live with aging relatives say they call home frequently or receive frequent calls from their relatives. The focus-group discussions also show how emotionally wrenching and physically draining it can be for employees to take on the role of caregiver for a relative, especially a parent. One participant, the report says, "shared her experience of her father choosing not to place the mother in a nursing home, then not providing the care required. He waited for his daughter to come home every day to provide care." HELPING HAND. These problems aren't easy for anyone -- let alone an employer -- to solve. But one way employers can lend a helping hand is to try to provide information about elder-care programs in the community. The focus-group participants say that just figuring out what services are available and then making the calls to evaluate the quality of the care provided is exhausting. In response to the findings, AT&T is testing a program that would allow employees and members of the community to contact a clearinghouse to get information about and apply for multiple elder-care services. That sort of program may be the kind of large-scale venture a big employer can help set up. (After all, AT&T has a $49 million fund to help establish child- and elder-care services.) But what about small companies without large philanthropic or human-resources budgets? It turns out that they, too, can assist, says Gail G. Hunt, executive director of the National Alliance for Caregiving. She faxed me a brochure entitled "Low-Cost and No-Cost Elder-Care Programs." Among them: holding lunch-time presentations from representatives of organizations dealing with the aging; collecting and making available free brochures describing community services for the elderly; assembling a "dependent care" booklet that details how company perks such as leaves of absence and flexible spending accounts can be used for elder care. Finally, employers can point workers to helpful sites on the Web, such as www.caregiver.org. "It's not a panacea," Hunt says, "but it's better than not addressing the issue at all." Indeed, there are no quick fixes here. As I think about the heavy responsibilities my brother carries, it's comforting to know that some employers are attempting to help ease the burden a bit. Send your questions to frontierlife@businessweek.com.  Pamela Mendels is based in New York City. She wrote about small business and had a workplace advice column at Newsday, and has written about workplace matters for Business Week, WorkingWoman, and the Web site iGuide.  | | |
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