Managing and Supporting Employee Caregiving
Michael Walsh · Founder and CEO · Cariloop, caregiver support platform pairing employees with dedicated care coaches
Summary
- Three out of four employees are somewhere on the caregiving spectrum. Most HR teams don't know it because employees hide it out of fear.
- Caregiving is not just elder care. It includes disabled children, spouses with diagnoses, grandparents with dementia, and many other complex, ongoing situations.
- The time cost of caregiving often equals a second full-time job. The financial cost burns through retirement accounts, savings, and PTO.
- Breaking stigma requires cultural permission, not just resources. It usually starts with someone willing to share their own story.
- Caregiving support reduces disability claims, prevents workforce exit, and protects retention of your highest-performing employees.
Who This Episode Is For
HR leaders, benefits professionals, and managers who want to understand the scope of caregiving in their workforce. Covers how to build support structures that retain employees before crisis forces them out.
What You'll Learn in This Episode
- Why three in four employees are on the caregiving spectrum and why most don't disclose it.
- How caregiving takes many forms, each with different timelines, demands, and emotional weight.
- What the time and financial burden of caregiving actually looks like for working employees.
- Three actions HR can take today to support caregivers without hiring an external vendor.
- How caregiving support connects to retention, disability claims, and the shift from reactive to proactive HR.
Key Takeaways
Three in Four Employees Are Caregivers, and Most Are Hiding It
One in six people in the workforce is caring for an adult or aging loved one. One in five has a legally defined disability. Three in five are parents, many with children who have special needs or medical diagnoses. When you add these populations together, roughly three out of four employees are somewhere on the caregiving spectrum.
- Most HR teams underestimate caregiving prevalence because employees don't disclose. The problem exists whether it's visible or not.
- Employees hide caregiving out of fear: being passed over for promotion, placed under a performance microscope, or seen as a retention risk.
- Caregivers often keep their heads down, managing medical crises in silence while trying to stay invisible at work.
- The cost of employees leaving the workforce is high, and caregiving is one of the leading causes of workforce exit that goes unreported.
- Without awareness, you won't see the problem. But lack of visibility doesn't mean it isn't there.
Caregiving Comes in Many Forms, Each With Different Demands
When most people hear the word caregiving, they think of aging parents. But caregiving also includes parents of children with autism diagnoses, spouses managing cancer treatments, adults coordinating dementia care, and complex multi-year medical situations. Each has different emotional weight and a different timeline.
- A parent whose child is diagnosed with autism is navigating a lifelong caregiving journey, not a finite event. That's fundamentally different from caring for an aging parent with a predictable timeline.
- A parent whose child is diagnosed with cancer faces immediate, urgent decisions that require time away and concentrated attention, often without warning.
- Caregiving for a loved one with Parkinson's is a long, progressively demanding situation where needs change over time.
- Support programs that only address elder care miss a significant share of the caregiving population at every stage.
- The financial, emotional, and time demands of each caregiving situation are different. Solutions need to be comprehensive enough to meet all of them.
The Time and Financial Cost of Caregiving Is a Second Full-Time Job
Caregiving is often framed as something that happens on the side. For many employees, it isn't. Medical appointments, care coordination, insurance navigation, school systems for special needs children, and constant decision-making add up to the equivalent of a second full-time job.
- Families burn through retirement accounts, PTO, savings, and life insurance navigating healthcare, assisted living, and out-of-pocket costs.
- Many caregivers leave the workforce entirely because they cannot sustain two demanding full-time responsibilities simultaneously.
- Time away from work appears to managers as disengagement: missed meetings, early departures, unexpected absences. The root cause is invisible.
- Flexibility, including remote work, compressed schedules, and time away without penalty, can be the difference between an employee staying or leaving.
- The gap between legal minimum and real support is especially visible when employees are forced to choose between family and work.
Breaking Stigma Requires Cultural Permission, Not Just Resources
Offering a benefit and creating safety to use it are two different things. Employees who fear professional consequences don't reach out, even when support is available. The most effective way to break that stigma is for someone to share their own experience publicly.
- Cultural permission starts at the top. When HR leaders or executives share their own caregiving experiences, they signal that it's safe to talk about.
- Hearing a peer say "I went through caregiving and my employer supported me" changes how others perceive using the same resources.
- Employee Resource Groups focused on caregiving create community and reduce isolation for employees managing long-term situations.
- The message needs to be explicit: we see you, we support you, and there are no professional repercussions for asking for help.
- Without that cultural signal, the benefit exists in name only. Stigma doesn't respond to policy documents. It responds to people.
Three Things HR Can Do Today, Plus the Business Case for Doing Them
You don't need an external vendor to start. Three actions require nothing but intentionality, and the business case for all three is direct.
- Action one: at the next town hall or all-hands, invite someone to share their caregiving story. Thank them publicly. Signal immediately that this is safe to discuss.
- Action two: review your leave, disability, and time-away policies. Ask honestly whether an employee would feel safe taking the flexibility they need.
- Action three: use November, National Family Caregiving Month, to communicate awareness, highlight existing resources, and open the conversation.
- Add a question to your next pulse survey: "Do you have caregiving responsibilities outside of work?" The data will inform every subsequent decision.
- EAP alone is not enough. Caregiving support that pairs employees with dedicated care coaches reduces disability claims and prevents the workforce exits that cost most.
- The ROI is real: lower turnover, lower disability claims, and retention of high-performing employees who would otherwise leave quietly.
About Michael Walsh
- Founder and CEO of Cariloop, a caregiver support platform that pairs employees with dedicated care coaches from social work, nursing, and healthcare backgrounds.
- Built Cariloop after eight years navigating caregiving himself across states while maintaining a consulting career in Chicago. Graduated from Purdue in 2007.
- Cariloop serves approximately two million families across several hundred employers, supporting every caregiving situation from elder care to pediatric diagnoses.
Connect with Michael on LinkedIn →
Frequently Asked Questions
How many employees are affected by caregiving responsibilities?
Three out of four employees are somewhere on the caregiving spectrum. One in six is caring for an adult or aging loved one. One in five has a legally defined disability. Three in five are parents, many with children who have special needs. Most HR teams underestimate this because employees don't disclose out of fear.
Why do employees hide caregiving responsibilities from their employers?
Stigma. Employees fear being passed over for promotion or marked as a retention risk. Most manage medical crises in silence. Creating safety requires more than offering a resource. It requires cultural permission to use it, which usually starts with someone in leadership sharing their own caregiving experience publicly.
What is the business case for supporting employee caregivers?
Caregiving support reduces disability claims, prevents workforce exit, and protects retention of top performers. Each engagement with a care coach adds a layer of retention protection. The ROI is measurable: lower turnover, lower claims, and higher engagement from employees who know their employer sees their full situation.
What can HR do today to support caregivers without external services?
Three actions: invite an employee to share their caregiving story at the next town hall. Review leave and time-away policies to make sure caregivers can access flexibility without fear. Use National Family Caregiving Month in November to highlight existing resources and open the conversation. None require new budget. They require intentionality.
What is the difference between caregiving for an aging parent and caregiving for a child with special needs?
Different timelines, demands, and emotional weight. Caregiving for an aging loved one often follows a predictable arc. Caregiving for a child with a serious diagnosis is often indefinite and evolving. Support programs that only address elder care miss a significant share of the caregiving population in your workforce.
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