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Elder Care

and the Workplace An Invisible Issue

Elder Care

cover story

The “Age Wave” demographic shift has arrived.

Every day, approximately 10,000 Baby Boomers

turn 65.

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and the Workplace:

| 21february 2016 workspan

The “Age Wave” demographic shift has arrived. Every day, approxi-mately 10,000 Baby Boomers turn 65. In addition, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reported in 2013 that more than 44.7 million people are age 65 and older, representing a 24.7 percent increase since 2003. This changing landscape raises a variety of issues, including how best to support our elders. Many working Baby Boomers are caring for parents in their 80s and 90s. And, younger workers are caring for those in their 60s and 70s who have health problems.

When employees are caregivers,

be aware of their needs.

and the Workplace:

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By Sandra Caffo, LCSW, MFT, CEAP, LifeSolutions; Kathleen Greer, LMHC, KGA Inc.; and Patricia A. Herlihy, Ph.D., RN, Rocky Mountain Research

© 2016 WorldatWork. All Rights Reserved. For information about reprints/re-use, email copyright@worldatwork.org | www.worldatwork.org | 877-951-9191

02 |

2016

®

The Magazine of WorldatWork©

22 | workspan february 2016

It has been documented that about 80 percent of elder care is provided by family members, many of them currently in the workplace. According to the National Care Alliance, 75 percent of caregivers are employed.

The National Care Alliance and AARP report that nearly 70 percent of working caregivers modify hours, take leaves of absence, choose early retirement or turn down promo-tions. This duality of responsibilities creates challenges for both the individuals and their organizations in terms of maintaining appropriate levels of productivity.

Elder Care: Costly to Individuals and OrganizationsIt has been well documented how the impact of caregiving affects an individual’s financial and physical health. A 2010 Met Life study showed an 8 percent increase in health-care costs for employees that are providing elder care with a conservative estimate of the total cost to U.S. employers at $13.4 billion a year.

One would imagine in the face of the growing numbers of employees having to take on elder-care responsibilities that the issue of how to support these employees to main-tain current productivity levels would be front and center. It is not. In fact it remains fairly invisible in most worksites. This is even more surprising when one looks at a 2008 Families and Work study that reported 42 percent of the workforce (or nearly 54.6 million employed Americans) provided elder care in the previous five years. Another way of saying this is that almost half of the workforce, within a five-year period, is caring for an elder. The question is: Why the veil of secrecy among employees regarding their need to provide elder care? This article focuses on two benefits, whether provided separately or in an integrated fashion, that are well suited for supporting employees with elder-care concerns.

Employee assistance programs (EAP) and work-life programs address these issues. In some corporations, these benefits are provided by separate departments. More

recently, there seems to be a trend toward integration of these two services. Many executives may assume that by simply having these benefit services, their company is addressing these issues. However, with the consolidation of EAP and work-life in the past 10 to 15 years, there is the possibility arises that elder-care issues have not been given enough attention. The reality is that caregiving issues enter the workplace every day as employees show up tired, distracted, late or not at all with call-offs because of care-taking responsibilities.

Consider the following situation:The former director of compensation and benefits for Dunkin’ Brands credits the company’s EAP and work-life program with helping when her father, living 1,000 miles away, went into crisis. She was aware of the service because of her role in human resources and called the program for help.

“My father (75) was the victim of a money scam and was ready to file bankruptcy. The EAP helped to find an attorney to help him file bankruptcy, pay back taxes and negotiate with the IRS. The EAP followed up with me to be sure that things were progressing, and later helped me learn about Medicare through a Medicare agency. I’m not sure how I would have faced this without the help of an EAP counselor.”

National Behavioral Consortium’s EAP InitiativeSeveral EAP professionals recognized this underserved population and began exploring how widespread the issue was, not only within their own area of practice but by identifying the EAP/elder-care utilization among a larger span of providers. An EAP subcommittee of the National Behavioral Consortium (NBC) examined current EAP utili-zation reporting about elder-care issues among members.

NBC is a not-for-profit trade association that comprises regional managed behavioral health-care organizations

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| 23february 2016 workspan

(MBHO) and EAP member organiza-tions. The goal of this committee was to explore the perceived unde-rutilization of elder-care services provided by EAPs and provide strategies for improving utilization reporting. Suggestions for human resources and compensation and benefits professionals became a natural offshoot of this work.

NBC’s “EAP ElderCare Survey” arose from a concern that employees in client organizations were under-utilizing available elder-care services. The survey was a follow-up to an NBC utilization survey of HR profes-sionals that illusrated the continued desire for meaningful EAP data to help inform organizations about behavioral health issues. It was the subcommittee’s hypothesis that the approach to collecting elder-care data was ineffective and needed to change in order to identify current needs correctly and explore appro-priate resources for this service.

NBC Survey SampleFifteen NBC regional EAP providers were invited to participate in the survey. Twelve organizations partici-pated, representing a response rate of 80 percent. NBC collectively represents almost 22 million members and covered lives within 35,879 client organizations.

Findings:All EAPs offer a variety of consultation and referral services related to caretaking of elders ranging from emotional support to help with residential or in-home services. ❙ 83 percent of those EAPs surveyed see less than 2 percent utilization of elder-care services. Utilization is measured by dividing the number of new client intakes where eldercare is the primary issue by the total headcount of the organization.

❙ EAPs deliver these services internally, through a work-life partner or a combined approach.

❙ 58 percent of the survey’s participants predict that utiliza-tion of elder-care services will be higher in the future. One comment was that “Baby Boomers are retiring in droves, elder population growing, people living longer.”

❙ 83 percent of the participants indicated that some elder-care issues get documented under other categories, such as legal or financial. This prompted the subcom-mittee to consider other data that might be compiled

to paint a more accurate picture of elder-care usage, such as secondary issues, age of callers and/or ancillary service requests.

Recommendations for NBC EAP Member OrganizationsSurvey recommendations included expanding commu-nication channels and approaches to promote elder-care services and increase workforce engagement. Chief among these channels is connecting with human resources and benefits partners as a natural and key part of success. Identifying internal groups for EAP outreach and jointly establishing the approach to engagement is an identified next step. An employee survey might be a way to docu-ment the number of caregivers in an organization. This could help bring the needs of caregivers out into the open.

Recommendations for EAP ReportingOne of the strongest recommendations concerned the process of data collection of EAP services and, in particular, for more effective utilization reporting. Figure 1 on page 23 provides an example of how many pieces of data need to be reviewed to get accurate reporting of elder-care and older adult usage. The KGA Utilization Data

Figure 1 | Why Employees Call the EAP for Help with Elder and Older Adult Issues

Other 7%

Financial 4%

Medical 3%

Estate Planning

37%

Elder Law 11%

Free Will 6%

Retirement Planning

9%

Home Health Care Support

10%

Community Service Programs

6%

Residential Options

7%

24 | workspan february 2016

Management System provided data from one regional EAP to illustrate the current practice.

The recommendations specifically called for collecting and examining elder-care data from several angles at once. This would help overcome the limitations of the data-collection processes and assimilate the elder-care data in a more meaningful way. These might include a variety of data points including: ❙ Noting both primary and secondary reasons for calls ❙ Providing more detail for clients about the types of elder-care calls

❙ Analysis of the age of callers ❙ Accurate reporting for ancillary service requests such as estate planning, retirement planning and elder law.

Other RecommendationsLike it or not, most of the people who call the EAP for elder-care issues are already in crisis. Education about elder-care issues in advance of crises can be helpful to employees and household members but only if the topics are targeted to pre-identified needs. Employees prefer topics that answer specific questions, such as issues related to: ❙ Social Security/retirement planning ❙ Transportation ❙ Finances ❙ Care for the caregiver

58 percent of the survey’s

participants predict that utilization of

elder-care services will be higher in the future.

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| 25february 2016 workspan

❙ Managing difficult conversations about driving, estate planning and residential options.More general programs such as “elder-care planning”

or “helping elders cope” are too general to be helpful. Whenever possible, education also may be presented in webinars so that household members can participate.

Value Of EAP DataHuman resources and compensation and benefits profes-sionals value EAP data when the information helps inform them of key employee concerns. Transforming the impact of caregiving on the workplace from its current invisible status to full visibility is an important example. To this end, a compilation of available data can provide a more accurate description of the population than can traditional utilization data. Human resources, compensation and bene-fits professionals should expect their EAPs to provide this level of data in order for the information to be integrated with other data points such as health plan, disability plan, retirement planning and leave of absence.

Eliminate the StigmaElder-care needs are going to continue to increase as the population ages and people work longer. When EAPs and other departments within organizations collaborate,

the stigma of getting help may be reduced and services can then be more targeted to their specific needs. In turn, this will provide more efficient and effective programs in general. 

Sandra Caffo, LCSW, MFT, CEAP, is a senior consultant for LifeSolutions

and can be contacted at caffosan@verizon.net.

Kathleen Greer, LMHC, is founder and chairman of KGA Inc., an HR

services firm that provides EAP and training services. She can be contacted

at greer@kgreer.com.

Patricia A. Herlihy, Ph.D., RN, is the founder of Rocky Mountain Research.

She can be reached at pherlihy@rockymountainresearch.us.

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resources plus

For more information, books and education related to this topic, log on to www.worldatwork.org and use any or all of these keywords:

❙ Benefits

❙ Work-Life

❙ EAP, Elder Care.