What do you do when caregiving follows you to work?

My last post discussed "How to talk to your aging loved ones in a way that they would listen and respond." I have been co-hosting a free one-hour weekly virtual seminar called Going Home, Staying Home. My co-hosts are nurses and nurse practitioners, and we answer caregiving questions live on zoom. When family caregivers can't attend, they can email their inquiries, and then we will answer the questions and send the replay links.

Last week, we had a very engaging session. We received nine questions from a CFO who happens to need care for his parents and who also needs help for his employees who are family caregivers. Can you imagine the conversations that occur in their break room about caregiving? In the upcoming weeks, I will answer one question each week. Their questions' theme is "Caregiving and what to do when caregiving follows you to work." Caregiving is generally defined as providing unpaid assistance for another person's physical and emotional needs. A study cited in the Academy of Management Journal focused on what today's caregiving employees really need, and it addressed the relationship between caregiving decisions, work-family conflict and work performance. This study showed that employees who are family caregivers frequently suffer high levels of stress, anxiety, irritability, depression, physical illness, obesity, financial insecurity, isolation and poor self-esteem.

In many cases, caregiving employees reported that their home life amounted to a "second shift of work." At an employer level, employees who are also caregiving can directly affect corporate earnings. This negative impact is caused by its effect on the worker's job performance, absenteeism, loss of productivity, time lost from work, inability to stay on the job, higher healthcare cost due to stress, and higher cost of recruitment, retention, training and supervisory challenges.

In my next post, we will begin the 9-part discussion on what to do when your caregiving roles conflict with your work and career obligations. If you are a business owner who provides caregiving or has employees who perform a "second shift of work" as caregivers, I am here to help.

Call or email anytime. See you next time during Going Home, Staying Home.

Photo by Elisa Ventur on Unsplash