Episode Transcript
Elizabeth: So today's session is about supporting caregivers at the workplace. Many of us are juggling multiple roles. We're showing up for our paid work while also providing unpaid care. We're balancing our professional duties with the responsibility of caring for loved ones with health conditions, disabilities, or age-related needs.
It can be a struggle. Especially when we're in a workplace that may not always understand or want to understand what we're going through. It's true that the pandemic has changed how we work and there seems to be more flexibility, but that's not always the case. And certainly not for everyone. For leaders, it's our role to create awareness around the issue and also to be open to creating workplaces that are more caregiver-friendly.
And this isn't just about being a compassionate employer. It's also strategic. Organizations that recognize this reality gain a competitive edge through improved retention, productivity, and workplace culture. This is why I am so pleased today to welcome Liv Mendelssohn and Christa Hamstra to this session of Five Good Ideas.
Liv is the Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Caregiving Excellence, a program of the Azrieli Foundation, and Christa is the Founder and Managing Director of 4C Strategy Group. Together they bring deep insight and experience to this important conversation. Welcome, Liv. Welcome, Christa, and thank you both for being here.
Liv: Such a pleasure to be with you. Longtime fan of this series, and really so happy to bring some ideas on how to best support caregivers to this group.
Elizabeth: Well, we're delighted to have you, and I'm going to get out of the way and let the two of you take it away. Thank you.
Liv: Thank you, Elizabeth. So I'm gonna start us off just by sharing a little bit about the Canadian Centre for Caregiving Excellence.
For those of you who don't know us, we are about two and a half years old now. As Elizabeth said, we're a program of the Azrieli Foundation. Our mission is to support and empower caregivers who are the unpaid family Neighbors chosen family, friends and care providers who are frontline health workers, like personal support workers, disability support professionals, home health aides.
Different provinces have different names for the work that they do, but they are the folks who deliver that intimate and personal care at the frontline. So our role at the Canadian Centre for Caregiving Excellence is to focus on bringing together the aging disability and healthcare sectors to look at care.
And for us, care means caring for someone with a disability, someone who's aging, someone with health needs, mental health needs, or someone who has illness. It's really about care across the lifespan. We are a convener. And sector strengthener. We are a funder through our Azrieli Foundation parent organization. We do a lot of research and data collection, and we also do advocacy, which I'll talk about a little bit later.
Let's dive in together to look at what we mean when we say caregivers. So in Canada today we have more than eight million caregivers. That's quite a large chunk of our population, and they are doing the majority of work when it comes to caring for others.
Caregivers provide at least 75 per cent of all care. All the moments in between the formal interactions and support from hospitals, primary care physicians, home and community care. The day-to-day, hour by hour, and overnight support. And many of you on this call are doing this work. I'm also a caregiver. I've been a caregiver since I was a child, caring for my grandmother who lived with us as often happens because care is so often reciprocal. My grandmother cared for me and then as she aged we cared for her. And that's the story of so many families.
The challenge is that we really are in the middle of a caregiving crisis in Canada. That is why the Azrieli Foundation created our Centre. Caregivers have told us loud and clear from coast to coast to coast that there's insufficient support, that we really are struggling with our physical health, our mental health, and our financial health.
And that when caregivers are struggling, we know that the health outcomes for our loved ones, for the people we support are much, much poorer. Looking at that group of caregivers, almost two thirds of them are still in the workforce. That means that really people are juggling work and caregiving responsibilities, and about 35 per cent of the Canadian workforce is in the middle of that very difficult multiple role situation.
Some people call it the sandwich generation. There are many names, but caring for someone you love while still doing your best work at work. And we also know it's not just the emotional labour and the care navigation, it's also out of pocket costs. On average, caregivers are spending about a thousand dollars a month out of pocket on caregiving costs.
Caregivers want to work. In fact, they need to work, but they're doing it while carrying this additional, almost invisible role that's emotionally, financially, and physically demanding and they need support. And we'll talk about lots of different kinds of support, but I'm gonna turn it over to Christa to ground us in the workplace.
Christa: Thanks so much, Liv. Hi everyone. I'm Christa Haanstra and I have the great pleasure of being the lead for the Working Caregiver Project at the Canadian Centre for Caregiving Excellence, a program of the Azrieli Foundation. I, myself, as Liv just indicated, am also a working caregiver and have been for a number of years.
And most recently have become a family member to someone living in long-term care after caring for my father at home for ten years. So I wanna just talk a little bit about what are we talking about with working caregivers and what are they doing and what are the supports that they need and also the impacts on the workplace.
So even those working full-time, based on the report recently done by the CCCE, are caring an average of 4.5 hours per day. If you add that up over the week, it's over 30 hours. So we kind of talk about this as the second shift. In many cases, people are working almost an entire full-time job over and above their paid work, and there are real consequences.
We know, as Liv just talked about, there are out of pocket expenses. I think on average it's a thousand dollars a month that people are paying out of pocket. And so people want to work more, they want to find a different job, or they sometimes take on a second job in order to cover those costs.
So just to give you some stats: 16 per cent of caregivers are forced to work more hours just to cover cost, 10 per cent delay retirement, and 6 per cent want to find a different kind of job altogether.
On the flip side, we also know that people sometimes can't balance all of that, and so they turn to part-time work. Many retire earlier than planned, and this affects more women than men. Typically, when we look at the numbers, it is a gendered picture of caregivers, especially working caregivers. Or they sometimes take on jobs with less responsibility just to make it all work.
This impact is even more intense for early career caregivers and this is a group of caregivers that we don't often think about. I think most people, when they think about caregivers and working caregivers, they think of older people in the workforce who are either caring for an older parent or maybe a spouse.
We rarely think about those who are just entering the workforce. But in fact, there are a number of early career caregivers and the impact on them is distinctly different. Specifically, they often are going into the workforce or even going into picking school, and they are geographically limited because they need to stay near their family.
And then they're also balancing those responsibilities right from the outset. So they sometimes look for jobs that have less responsibility. They might even start part-time or they don't seek promotions or career progression because they simply feel they can't balance both of those things.
And that has a cumulative effect over their years. They won't be able to make as much money. They're not putting as much into their pension. They might not be saving as much money, and they are limited in where they go.
When we think about young people who are caring, again, just to paint that picture, we don't often think about this, but many people are caring for siblings, and this is especially true in today's day and age because there's been so many medical advances that people are living much longer with, let's say spina bifida or cp, or autism or down syndrome, just to name a few. And so siblings often take a bigger role in caring for their siblings, and we don't think a lot about that, but that's definitely a growing population.
And then also some of them are caring for parents with chronic illness or disease. They may have been diagnosed during their childhood and are still playing that role.
And finally, they're sometimes caring for extended family members. We know that the fastest type of household that's growing in Canada is a multi-generational household, and so there are people who are caring for their grandparents or even their aunts or uncles.
Finally, before I turn it back over to Liv, just wanted to talk about some of the systemic gaps that we see. We know that there are government supports for caregivers in the workplace, but the caregiver leave, for example, which is up to 26 weeks, is really for end of life . Not only is the uptake low, but the eligibility is quite specific and so not everyone could take advantage of that, especially for those ongoing or sporadic types of caregiving responsibilities.
Liv already talked about this, but I really want to put a fine point on the fact that working is respite for caregivers. So it is an opportunity to do something different, to have something else to focus on, which is really important for caregivers. Respite is the number one thing that caregivers want and need, and for working caregivers going to work can be a form of respite.
And finally, and I'm gonna talk about this a little bit more when we get into our five good ideas, but caregivers bring a lot of skills and gain a lot of skills through caregiving, which are the kinds of things that the workplace is looking for. Things like project management, financial management, understanding complex systems, advocating for needs that might be unseen. I'll go into that a little bit more when we get into the five good ideas, but we really want to highlight that working caregivers have a lot to bring to the workforce, so it behooves us all to think about this.
Now, I'll turn it back over to you, Liv.
Liv: Christa, it reminds me of that expression, you want something done? Ask a busy person. On our team, we've learned you want something done. Ask a caregiver. They know how to juggle. They know how to prioritize. They know how to project manage you. You simply can't support someone through our somewhat broken medical system without those skills, so they really have those down pat and honed.
Before we jump right into the five good ideas, which I promise is coming next, we just wanted to give you a sense of the growing national movement to support caregivers. We really are excited to see the growth of this in Canada.
There's some lessons learned from the pandemic and some focus from that period, which we know is not completely over, but we've really seen a groundswell of support for caregivers and caregivers beginning to really advocate.
We met with thousands and thousands of caregivers, care providers and champions from coast to coast to coast over the last year and together we put together a national caregiving strategy for Canada. It lays out practical, actionable solutions to address some of the biggest challenges faced by caregivers and care providers across the country.
I'll just share with you the five key areas: supports, programs and services for caregivers; supports for caregivers and work in education, which we'll talk about a little bit more; financial supports for care recipients and caregivers; building a sustainable care workforce; and, federal leadership and recognition.
Within that framework there are several important recommendations that directly address working caregivers, including extending all caregiver EI benefits to up to 50 weeks. Currently, they range from 26 to 35 weeks depending on the situation. Improving access to caregiving benefits for self-employed casual or part-time workers. Introducing CPP drop-out and drop-in provisions to make sure caregiving years don't penalize someone's retirement income. And we started to talk about that, but it is particularly something that, that is borne by women, and leading by example, encouraging the federal government to adopt caregiver friendly policies for all of its own employees.
So when we talk about supporting caregivers in the workplace, we're not starting from scratch. There's already a roadmap, and the five ideas we're about to share are very much aligned with this broader national effort. They offer a way for employers to take meaningful action now.
So we're gonna jump into the five ideas now.
The first one is understanding your workforce, gathering data, and assessing benefits. You can't manage what you don't measure. We all know that. So we need to start by identifying how many caregivers are in your workforce and reviewing existing benefits, using surveys, HR data, and employee feedback to assess what supports are most needed, and ensuring that benefits, leave policies, mental health resources, and financial assistance are aligned with the realities of caregiving.
Our research has shown that more than 60 per cent of workplaces don't track how many employees are caregivers, so that is a good place to start. We know from some organizations using employee benchmark surveys to identify caregivers and understand the types of care they're providing, it really helps tailor those workplace supports more efficiently and effectively.
Many existing benefits already support caregivers, so reviewing your total rewards program is a great place to start and highlighting what's available that could support caregivers and ensure that your HR teams and your staff are aware of and can direct employees to existing government caregiver benefits.
This is a big one.
Our research shows that caregivers do not know about these supports, and actually only 10 per cent of caregivers access what's already available before we even do the advocacy to expand and meet the needs. Even the bare bones benefits that are currently available have very little uptake. Christa, over to you.
Christa: Thanks, Liv. And actually, just to add to that, one of the things we heard when we were talking to employers is that even the government benefits that exist, employers are -- the HR departments in particular is where we heard this -- they're a little bit hesitant to talk about it because they don't understand the program well enough, and so they don't want to be sharing information that's inaccurate. And so they often rely on the employee to ask about it rather than proactively talking about it, which we see as a really easy fix in terms of supporting working caregivers, if we can even just move to a more proactive sharing of that information. Again, recognizing that the caregiver leave at the federal level is very specific to end of life, but there are people for whom that's hugely beneficial.
So I'm gonna jump into our second suggestion, which is maybe a bit provocative, but we like to talk about it this way because it gives people a framework in which to think about it. So what if we were treating caregiver like caregiving at work and people who are working and and balancing caregiving. What if we thought about that like we did parental leave or maternity leave?
Most employers, all employers at least have a parental or family friendly policy of some kind and some kind of top up, obviously for parental and maternity leave. And we think that caregiving should receive the same intention. In fact, if you look at it, we know that the number of new parents in the workplace will likely remain stagnant based on the predictions, whereas the number of working caregivers is gonna go up. We know that right now it's one-in-four people in society. It's gonna be one-in-two.
So that number is gonna continue to go up. So what if employers actually thought about, how do we support caregivers proactively and the workplace in the same way that we put the attention on new parents?
The other thing we know is that there's a lot of connection to burnout. So we know there's a lot of discussion about burnout in the workplace, and we know that if we were to look at those burnout levels, which are very high in the general population, employee population, that if you actually dug a little deeper and did what Liv just talked about, looking at the number of caregivers that are in your place, you might actually see that correlation.
And again, if we were thinking about caregiving employees the way that we think about new parents in the workplace, we know it's not nearly as predictable. We know that there's obviously a very clear way in which people become new parents and being a caregiver can be not nearly as predictable, but there are ways in which caregivers can be supported.
So things like offering leave, sometimes unpaid leave, sometimes leaves. Flexible work. We know all about that, and Elizabeth mentioned that at the beginning that obviously during Covid we looked at that and there were huge benefits to caregivers, but we really need to think about that in the workplace on a continuing basis.
And also looking at, could we look at part-time employment for a temporary period of time while people are balancing really intense caregiving without losing your seniority, which again is an ability to support caregivers at a time in their life when they need it most. And we know there's a huge return on investment when you support caregivers in the workplace because they come back even more committed to the workplace. They want to give back to their employer who has supported them, and they come back with all those good skills that they've built through caregiving, which I'm gonna talk about in one of our upcoming good ideas.
So we know that when workplaces support caregivers it increases morale, it increases the caregiver and working caregiver and employee experience. And then when they don't, we know that there's a real downside to the employer that you're gonna lose people who don't want to be leaving work but can't figure out how to balance the two things. And you will have more resignations and the costs associated with that is very high. So I'll turn it back over to you, Liv.
Liv: Yeah. It goes back to that juggling and how we support people as they juggle and as they give their all to the person they support and give their all at work. We know that prioritizing flexibility is key. Creating environments where people can have clear options, accessible and available to all employees around remote, hybrid, or adaptive work arrangements. That has we know been key to attracting and retaining talent through the pandemic and as it continues. Flexibility really needs to be built into formal policies and not left to the discretion of individual managers to ensure consistency and fairness across the organization.
Making these options easy to understand and easy to access is really, really important. As we'll talk about, there's so much anxiety and stigma about disclosure, that making these options simple and easy to access is important. Communicating your paid leave policies clearly is important. Considering the option to move temporarily to part-time work, I think is really key for caregivers.
For a lot of caregivers, it's episodic. Our benefits and our leaves are designed for one period of acute caregiving, usually designed for end of life caregiving. So it might be however many weeks it's discreet, and then the employee is expected to go on, go back, continue. That is not the majority of caregiving needs.
Shift caregiving is across the lifespan. And again, it's episodic. It's not a one-time. For most people, it is a marathon and not a sprint. Our hybrid and adaptive policies need to reflect that.
There's another group to consider, particularly as we look at attracting and retaining talent, which are long distance caregivers who may not have the loved one they care for be here in Canada or in province, but maybe up all hours of the night as the person who is navigating care, either in their home country, their home province.
Some of the best employees -- those who are the doers, those who are the implementers -- are often carrying that role in their family as well. And so that flexibility is so important for someone who may be a top performer at work, but may also be up at three in the morning dealing with a healthcare system half across the world and trying to advocate for their loved one. So important to think about that group of people as well.
Christa: So I'll jump into our fourth good idea, which is to recognize the value of caregivers and the skills that they gain in the workplace. We've already talked a little bit about this, and as Liv said earlier, when you want something done, give it to a busy person. We know that caregiving actually falls to the people in the family who can do this.
And let's be clear, if you are a clinician, let's say you're a nurse or a doctor, or you work somewhere in the healthcare system, probably the rest of your family is assuming that when care is needed in your family, it's gonna fall to you. Just so you know, we call those double-duty caregivers, those who are working in healthcare, and then go home and provide care.
And we know that there's a special kind of attention that needs to be paid to that type of caregiver because there's a real stress. There's some really interesting stuff happening in Canada related to that. SE Health has worked with Green Shield to create a partnership to really look at how to address the stresses of double-duty caregiving.
But if we think about the fact that caregiving is not only falling to those who are incredibly capable and who naturally have or possess the skills that are needed to care we know that those are also the ones in the workplace who are often doing a lot of those extra tasks.
We talk a lot about how it's important to support caregivers, but it really is a win-win. If you really think about what caregivers are bringing back into the workforce, there's a lot of benefit. In fact, there was a study done in 2023 by the Rutgers Centre for Women in Business that looked at the skills that caregivers were building through their caregiving activity. Empathy and emotional intelligence. We know in leadership roles and across organizations, this is really important. Prioritizing tasks and multitasking and project management as we talked about before. Patience and personal resilience, collaboration, managing complex systems, as I talked about earlier, anticipating needs and encouraging others. We know that many caregivers are trying to influence decisions in the healthcare system. They have no formal ability to influence decisions, so you have to be really compelling in how you present your argument and advocate for things that may not be easy to get through the healthcare system.
They're efficient, flexible; they have a lot of focus. They're all about teamwork because there's no way to do caregiving without teamwork, especially when you're managing a whole bunch of providers across different systems. And they even have an increased focus on personal care and happiness because we know that as caregivers, you need respite and you also need to focus on self-care. Often caregivers don't recognize that until they're burnt out, but it is a really important piece of being able to provide care.
And they're really managing those complex systems every single day, and then they bring that back to the workforce. So we think that there's even a way in which you could be looking at within organizations, how do you do your performance reviews by even talking about the types of skills that they might be bringing back to the workforce through the experience they've had in caring for someone.
Finally, we did two national round tables last year with organizations across Canada that are looking at how to support caregivers in the workplace. The report is in the resources for this session, but we did draw on an organization from the US who is doing really interesting stuff in this space called Guardian Life. And they did research that shows that when they support caregivers in the workplace that it increases their employee wellbeing and they are twice as loyal and more likely to stay in their job after they've been supported. So there's a huge return on investments for organizations that we need to really focus on when we talk about this.
This is not just a one-sided discussion. Back to you, Liv,
Liv: Our fifth good idea is really about building a caregiver supportive culture, de-stigmatizing, and making and normalizing care and conversations about care in the workplace. And as with any culture shift, visible support from senior leadership is essential.
So if you are in senior leadership, chances are someone on your team has had a caregiving experience and that's something you can really bring into this conversation. We know that people feel much more comfortable when senior leadership is clear and open. And leaders who share their own caregiving experiences authentically and vulnerably can help reduce that stigma and encourage others to speak up. Many employees have told us that they are afraid to disclose their caregiving responsibilities, so building trust is key. Storytelling is really important and doing it regularly will create an environment that enables people to, to speak up.
And we've seen this in so many areas of workplace culture shift, too, be it around mental health or other areas that have been traditionally stigmatized. We also know that Covid gave us a glimpse into people's lives beyond work. Literally we often could see in the background of our Zooms, people's families, pets, really a more full picture of people's lives. And many employees now expect that reality to be acknowledged.
One of the things we know has been really effective from our groups that we convened are employee resource groups for caregivers. It can look different in every organization, but asking someone with lived experience, caregivers themselves to help create a group that works in your setting is really important.
One company we spoke to had a membership-based group while another had an open access model with web-based resources for everyone 'cause it was more accessible in their workplace. You will know with your employees. If you're an employee, you can ask for this, what will work best in your setting. But these groups are really, really helpful. They provide that peer support and they also help employers figure out where the real pain points are and where those supports will be most effective.
Regularly communicate what supports are available. Many caregivers don't identify as caregivers until they're really deeply involved and even in crisis.
So I will tell you I identify as a daughter. I identify as a granddaughter; I identify as a mother. Those are many areas of my care. But I didn't think of myself as a caregiver formally until I was managing my mother's palliative care journey. Then, boy did I know I was a caregiver. And so communicating regularly so that people have a chance to see themselves and their experience and what you're sharing is very important. And providing accessible resources, including support for elder care, child illness, family illness to reach and meet a range of caregiving needs is also important.
There is often a focus on, again, end of life care or aging, but we know there's complex care in so many areas of our lives In caring for someone with a disability, caring for someone with cancer or diabetes or some illness care. The care world is very broad and it's important that our messaging and our outreach acknowledges that.
Those are some of our big ideas and we're very excited to have a conversation with you all now about what that might look like in your workplace.
Elizabeth: Thank you both so much. They're not just big ideas. They're really good ideas and they're ideas that have lots of sort of smaller parts to them.
And some of the questions that are coming in have to do with how do elements of that play out? And we also receive questions from some of the audience in advance. We've gotten some really great questions in the q and a box to take a look at.
I think I wanna pick up on the last good idea that you were talking about, which was culture. And I think the first point you made about being explicit about what the company or the organization can do, and I wonder if you could say just a little bit more around what it takes to make that happen. I know that sometimes employers are shy about invading people's privacy. And is there a way of overcoming that in a way that doesn't sort of violate that, but at the same time is a proactive support and making explicit, I guess the organization's commitment to being a caregiver friendly environment?
Liv: I think different employers will approach this in different ways. We know some employers will start with sharing articles, news articles or resources by email and just beginning to normalize the care experience. That way others will include in their town halls or their newsletters or some storytelling, again, from senior leadership makes a huge difference.
There are a lot of ways to approach it and if your organization is large enough to have dedicated HR, it's so meaningful to a caregiver to know that that HR person can help them, whether it's navigate to benefits like an EAP program, if you have one, or just to know what's available in the wider community.
That's so helpful to people. People tell us all the time their primary care physician, nurse practitioner, whoever they're seeing often also doesn't have a lot of information and there's an assumption that everything is gonna be dealt with in the medical system. But actually so much of the care support happens in the social care and social universe. That's a place where employers can really be helpful even in just pointing out there are six provincial caregiving organizations that offer services and hotlines in Alberta, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and BC, and more coming online every day. So there are actually hotlines you can call in many jurisdictions. And so even as an employer to be able to say, you know, call the Ontario Caregiver Association, the organization, or call Family Caregivers of BC. Here's a 1-800 number you can call for support. All of those messages really normalize the experience.
Christa you look like you wanna add, so...
Christa: I just would say when we did our initial work to really understand the environment in Canada, one of the things that we found is if a senior leader disclosed their caregiving experience, that had a direct impact on people's willingness to come forward.
The flip side of that was that we also saw, so I think about that one particular example, that senior leader was a champion of supporting caregivers in the workplace and then he left and I met him after he left, and he introduced me to the person who was now leading the work.
But they didn't have the same commitment to it, and so it just didn't have the same degree of focus. So, for example, I asked that person who replaced him, do you track how many working caregivers you have? And she said no. But in fact they do. It just wasn't a stat she was familiarizing herself with.
And so it's just interesting to see that that champion at the senior level who is sharing their personal experience and really making it okay for people to disclose their working caregiver status, if you will, really makes a big difference in opening doors for others in the organization. And I think that's really important.
It's not just an HR issue; it really is a culture issue and making it okay to talk about this. And then there are important components managed by HR, but it's not only an HR issue. I think that's one of the most important things.
Elizabeth: And I think that's important because it transcends then the size of organization, 'cause a lot of small nonprofits don't have an HR person. And so a lot of it will hinge on the leadership openness to talk about, or to reflect on or to normalize that conversation within the organization. So as you scale up, having explicit policies or direction, that type of thing. But in the smaller ones, sometimes it comes down more to how it gets talked about.
I think you've kind of answered this, Liv, in your comment about the organizations that are in different provinces, but one person asked that even as an HR professional, they've been advised not to explain government benefits to employees in case they get it wrong.
And so what is the balance of pointing people to benefits without taking on liability and risk? I think that your point about there are associations that actually can do this for you is possibly the road through that.
Liv: Whether there's a provincial organization in your province, and we are hoping to see them in all provinces and territories, but whether there's a specific organization, there are organizations that you can become familiar with, like your alzheimer's societies, your MS societies, there is support out there for people.
And so being able to maintain even a cursory referral point for people is really, really helpful. And there's some really great umbrella organizations that have programs to explain benefits like March of Dimes or Credit Canada. Those are places that are more generalized that you can send people to have those conversations about specific benefits.
It is really tragic both for the employee and the employer when people aren't able to take advantage of those or don't know about those because then the strain just continues and then that's a person who is likely to experience burnout or to have to take a very long leave and may not have had to do that, very likely would not have had to do that if they'd had the support in time.
Elizabeth: We have a few HR people in the audience today and someone else is asking how do you get leadership to understand that this is not just a human rights thing. In fact, this is a bottom line thing. For me, that always points to the business case. And you've made the business case verbally here today.
Is there an evidence base that if I wanna go and here's the fact sheet, this is how productivity changes, or this is what the retention rates look like. Is that a direction that we can offer?
Liv: Both Forbes and Harvard Business Review have put out strong cases. So those are often respected sites for senior leaders looking at the bottom line and we can certainly share those out.
And Christa, I think you have some more specific ideas on this one as well.
Christa: We know that there are stats around how many people leave the workplace. And again, it's a very gendered perspective. There is a much higher rate of women who leave the workplace early, but also the presenteeism that is a factor. The fact that people are at work but not completely present because of all the things they're trying to balance.
So there's definitely those very hard stats, but I do think this goes back to really using some case examples where you can illustrate the impact of caregiving. The one report that I would really point people to that has done this deep dive is in the US. I realize it's not in our jurisdiction, but there's definitely things that we can extrapolate from that, which is the Guardian Life Report, which really talked about this whole idea of employee wellbeing and the direct connection to supporting working caregivers. They're twice as likely to be loyal and they're less likely to leave the organization.
The storytelling piece of bringing some of those big stats to life, sometimes the numbers are so big, they almost become meaningless in terms of the rates of presenteeism or the dollar value of presenteeism and absenteeism, but when we really look at it I think that it has an even bigger impact.
The other thing I would say is the cost to replace people is usually somewhere around double the amount that it is to have them in their role. And so if you're losing people, if you're even losing 10 per cent, which I'm sure it's more than 10 per cent based on what we know, it's probably closer to 20 per cent of people because of caregiving, that's a very big number that you could actually prevent from leaving the workplace if supports were in place, and then you would be saving all of that money.
So I think there's lots of different ways to look at it.
Liv: The conversation we hear about all the time is about productivity and Canada's productivity gap. This is at the heart of that. If you can support people to stay in the workplace longer, then you have that productivity, that missing productivity, and even within individual organizations or firms, it makes a big, big difference.
Elizabeth: So what we're talking about here: how to make the case, how to be compelling, how to convince, how to sway. Is there a rule for legal requirements at the provincial level to, to actually require or compel employers to act in a particular way? Where are we on that path to making it something that employers must do.
Liv: There is a future state role for that in our national strategy. We definitely speak to the roles of that provincial legislation and some provinces are further ahead than others and we can learn a lot from various jurisdictions.
In the UK they have five mandated paid caregiver days in addition to the other paid leave days that are available to people where you don't have to explain why you're going to this appointment with this person. That's the baseline and starting point, and I think there's really a role for that in Canada as well.
Elizabeth: In terms of leveling up the advocacy , which is challenging, that it's actually discriminatory in some ways. Is there any work happening in that area? Have we looked at the intersectionalities in the workplace? Who are the caregivers who are most impacted?
And does this in some ways contravene the Ontario Human Rights Code, for example?
Liv: Absolutely. And we've seen people make successful cases about discrimination based on family status for caregiving reasons. So we are looking at being proactive and things employers can do and our governments can do. But there is also the need for that individual response when things haven't gone right.
And when someone has faced that discrimination and as you say, when there are multiple layers of barriers it's so much more difficult and much more likely to face that kind of discrimination.
Christa: It's also connected to EDI in the workplace and and even just listening to one of the previous Five Good Ideas podcasts, I was nodding a lot through that. There's a lot of parallels there in terms of not just the business case, but also the intersectionalities that are happening.
The other piece that we talk about is looking at how this can be embedded in an EDI framework or commitment. Also, the idea of mental wellness in the workplace and mental wellbeing in the workplace. There's direct alignment to that, that I think organizations can build it into.
And then just the whole idea of psychological safety. I think I've seen one of the comments pop up here talking about the fact that people are afraid to disclose because they've seen what's happened to other people. And that is where I think there's the biggest opportunity. Listen, we all know that workplaces are complex and sometimes people see someone disclose that they're a caregiver and the next thing they know they're overlooked for a promotion. There's a lot of things that happen between those two things that maybe people don't see, but that's the connection that the other employees are making. And so I think there's a real opportunity to talk about creating a culture where you can talk about it and really making it safe for people just to disclose.
I might just give you one example of someone who talked at our roundtable last year. It was a consulting company called Longview. They're a multinational company based out of Western Canada. And they have something that's called the No Regrets Career. And every year as part of their performance review, they ask the question, What are the things that you'd like to do? What are the things that are happening in your life that we need to know about in order for you to wanna stay here and for work to be an important part of your life, but not the only part of your life?
There's people maybe early on in their career who wanna work on a sabbatical over five years, but that is the door that they open to the conversation around a caregiving responsibility that might be presenting itself. They can then create a tailored response for that person in order to support them over the next year or over the next couple of years or, in my case, over 10 years.
They've created this platform. There's no intimidation around it. It's an annual discussion. It comes up every year and it creates that opportunity. So I think that's just an interesting way of talking about that.
Elizabeth: It's a wonderful way of dealing systemically to build it into the performance framework because it simply forces it without any strangeness, without putting you in an odd position. It creates an accountability around that as well, that as the employer are you taking that into account as you build plans for your team.
Before we go off this, there was an add-on to the question about human rights and the intersectionality piece. When people are able to work remotely or the accommodations are in play there are sometimes unanticipated reactions to that, or reprisals perhaps. I'm able to work from home so I'm able to do my job and have my caregiving responsibilities met, but am I now overlooked because I'm not physically in the office? Am I not part of the culture? Are there other things that are reprisal responses to that? Is that part of the fuller picture that we have to think about when we think about culture?
Liv: Absolutely. It particularly impacts women and we know that women who take time out to care or go down to part-time or have flexible work, it impacts pensions, it impacts future, but we also know it really impacts advancement. And that's something we've heard again and again
from people. I was on a particular track and when I needed to go remote for a period of time or when I needed that flexibility then I knew that I was no longer on that track and I could never get back on.
And so these sort of hidden restrictions and, as you say, sometimes there are reprisals individually, but sometimes they're systemic. They're just built into the way that people are seen and people are tracked. And that also really takes some effort to de-stigmatize and to talk about.
It should be okay to talk to the person you report to about all of the pros and cons and all of your fears about what happens if you do take up a more flexible work arrangement. And we know that that's not the case yet for most people. So we have work to do there.
Elizabeth: So I'm gonna shift gears a little bit. First, I wanna acknowledge that there's a number of comments in the Q and A just affirming so much of what you've been talking about. And so thank you for the people who have taken the time to add that commentary, 'cause I think that's important to know that this is resonating very deeply with people.
It's the money. What we pay for is a sign of what we believe matters and that we feel is important. And very first question that was put in today says in Malta, where my mother-in-law lives, children are paid for looking after their loved ones. What is the potential, in your opinion, for a policy change in Canada to offer a similar approach? It could have other effects in terms of reducing costs on the healthcare system and so forth. Is that actually an idea that can be on the table in the Canadian context?
Liv: It a hundred percent is. It actually exists in three of our provinces as a provincial benefit. So in PEI, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, there is a small monthly care allowance. New Brunswick is in the process of designing a care benefit that is likely to be a little bit larger. In PEI it is a little more generous and then than in the other provinces, but it's directly designed and thought of as a form of income replacement almost because it's a recognition that these are people who are doing the work that allow everybody else to work.
Right? If all the caregivers went on strike tomorrow our entire health and social care system would collapse before 10:00 AM on the first day. We really are the backbone of all of those systems.
So as part of our national caregiving strategy, we do have a recommendation for a federal benefit that will support caregivers, unpaid caregivers, high intensity unpaid caregivers who are in need of that income replacement support. We have a very robust multi-party, all five parties, caregiving caucus with MPs from every party who are in support of really shifting and changing the game for caregivers.
If people wanna know more about the strategy or to get involved, I think it's going out in the materials, but it's really simple. If you go to caregiving Canadian caregiving.org/act, you will get lots of information about how you can participate in that advocacy. But we really do think, as my colleague James would say, caregiving is the next frontier in Canadian public policy and it's really time to shift our attention. There's a demographic imperative to shift our attention to care.
Elizabeth: No question. So a couple of quick things that you might be able to just drop in the chat. Is there a link to resources on the No Regrets Career path? That caught my attention. I thought what a great conversation in a performance review.
Christa: I loved it too. I loved it too. It's outlined a little bit in our round table report, which is also on the website that Liv just mentioned, and it's in the resources that we've added.
Elizabeth: Terrific. Somebody noted that there is an annual caregiving conference that you pulled together. Is there going to be one this year and how do people find out about it?
Liv: It's every other year. We had the first one two years ago. It is a caregiving summit, so it's really about this notion of acting on care, taking our caregiving strategy and putting it into place. It's in Ottawa, November 3rd to 4th. You can get that same information from our website, and I think it's in the package going out. It is for everyone, for caregivers and providers, for systems leaders, for healthcare leaders, for policymakers. We had a really robust gathering of about 400 people the last time we did this. We expect it's gonna be even larger and more urgent this time.
So we're looking forward to that. Hope you can all join us.
Elizabeth: One last question and then I'll turn to both of you for final comments.
Long distance caregiving. Because there's a lot of people in this country who have family, loved ones in all parts of the country or the world, and so it's a reality.
So is there a specific advocacy measure to take up on this? Are there ways of engaging around this or positioning or advocating for it within the organization?
Liv: Absolutely. People who are particularly focused on that, we are still developing our advocacy messaging around that, are very welcome to get in touch with us.
But we've been talking with Chambers of Commerce, we've been talking with employers who are trying to attract that kind of talent because we know we need newcomers and not so newcomers, people who've been here for a long time, whose family are elsewhere in our workforce, and we need them thriving. So that is definitely a big issue.
Christa: I might just add that there's, out of the University of Alberta, a lot of work on this piece too, the transnational caregivers. So I just highlight that and I'm happy to share some resources and links after the fact.
Liv: And Dr. Bharati Sethi has done quite a lot of work on this and has lived experience as a long distance caregiver and has done some great work too.
Elizabeth: Terrific. So are there final comments? Your 30 seconds of what you want people to take away?
Liv: We know that this is every Canadian family. We don't need to be quiet about it. We encourage you to get involved and to act on care. And Christa your 2 cents.
Christa: Right now we talk about supporting caregivers in the workplace as a competitive advantage, and that is true because it's not very widespread at the moment.
But I would just hope that in two years time it's no longer a competitive advantage. It's just the norm. Wouldn't that be the dream?
