More employees struggling with eldercare

More people are caring for aging relatives and this often affects their productivity. In fact, elder care has been called the silent productivity killer.Often, employers are not even aware that employees are dealing with elder care issues. An AARP/National Alliance for Caregiving study from 1997 estimated that one in four American households struggled to provide care for an elderly individual. Another study, from Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, estimated productivity losses due to elder care issues ranged from 11 to 29 billion dollars per year. HR professionals say employee expectations regarding elder care benefits have increased, and, as a result, most organizations expect costs for these benefits to increase in the next five years.

The SHRM 2003 Elder Care Survey reflects similar findings as 47 percent of HR professionals report seeing an increase in the number of employees dealing with elder care issues over the last several years. Despite the increase, only 25 percent of organizations offer elder care benefits.

Productivity hit hard. HR professionals estimate that nearly 15 percent of employees in their organizations deal with elder care issues. According to the SHRM survey, a significant percentage of respondents witnessed employees who missed a full day from work (59 percent), encountered workday interruptions (44 percent) or stress-related health problems (29 percent). Sixteen percent of all respondents said they had experienced turnover or attrition due to elder care issues.

The impact elder care has on employees is even more profound depending on the size of the organization. According to the survey, HR professionals from large organizations (500 plus employees) are much more likely to report workday interruptions, strained employee/manager relationships and missed appointments and meetings than HR professionals from small (1-99 employees) and medium-sized (100-499 employees) organizations. Twenty-three percent of respondents from large organizations and 21 percent from medium-sized organizations report seeing turnover due to employees challenged with elder care issues. Only four percent of small organizations said the same, SHRM says.

It is inevitable.The increasing need for elder care is an inevitability, says SHRM President and CEO Susan R. Meisinger. Employers have an opportunity to either anticipate and manage it in a way that benefits both the employer and employees, or let it smack them in the face a few years from now, dragging down productivity and increasing turnover as a result. Organizations simply can't afford to ignore the cost of this reality.

What to do? Although the SHRM research indicates that a quarter of organizations offer some kind of elder care benefit, nearly one-third of HR professionals agreed or strongly agreed that employers have an obligation to provide resources and assistance for employees facing elder care issues. The biggest challenge, however, is cost. Nearly 40 percent of HR professionals said elder care benefits are too costly for their organizations, and one-third said there would not be enough employees utilizing elder care benefits to justify changing current benefits packages.

The most common benefit employers offer is unpaid leave under the FMLA for elder care reasons (88 percent), but FMLA leave does not apply to organizations with fewer than 50 employees. Most organizations (76 percent), regardless of size, provide unpaid leave for elder care issues, but the length of leave varies by organization. Benefits providing financial support for elder care come most often in the form of dependent care flexible spending accounts (FSAs), which are offered by 64 percent of organizations. Most HR professionals indicated the benefits could be used for employee's parents and the parents of their legal spouse. The majority of respondents said their organization makes exceptions to formal policies to provide more flexibility to employees facing elder care issues.

Fifty-eight percent of HR professionals agreed or strongly agreed that it was necessary to increase the contribution amount permitted under dependent care FSAs to help employees financially deal with elder care issues. Nearly the same percentage agreed or strongly agreed that individual tax incentives for the purchase of long-term care insurance covering older relatives would help defray the costs of employer-provided long-term care assistance.

SOURCE: SHRM 2003 Elder Care Survey, www.shrm.org