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[Music] this podcast is brought to you by knowah [Music] warten hello my name is Stephanie K and
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I'm an assistant professor of management at the Wharton School of the University
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of Pennsylvania and I'm delighted to welcome you to today's episode of the
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knowledge at Warton leading diversity at work podcast series which is focused on
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supporting caregivers in the workplace joining me today are two very special guests first we have Jennifer Andrews
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who is head of equity and inclusion at Guardian Life prior to Guardian Jennifer led the diversity and inclusion efforts
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for the America's region at credit SS she's also a University of Penn alumnus
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uh Jennifer is here to talk about standing up and stepping in a modern look at caregivers in the US which is a
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report that has insights based on responses from guardians annual workplace benefits study uh and this
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report explores the remarkable rise in the number of caregivers in the country in the US the profound impact caregiving
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responsibilities have on their lives mentally physically and financially as well as the crucial role of employers in
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supporting their caregiving Workforce amid the societal Trend and workplace Dynamic next we have Dr Ellen ER
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KK who is the basil S Turner distinguished professor of management at Purdue University's Mitchell e Daniels
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Junior School of Business uh her current research examines strategic and Leadership initiatives to advance gender
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and work life equality and improve the implementation of flexibility and work life work Family Life policies to Foster
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diversity and inclusion in employment Dr kic has won numerous National and International schol L awards for
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research and service Excellence to advance gender and work life understanding now recently she served on
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a nationaly of Sciences committee focused on family policies for the stem Workforce she will share insights from
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the recently released report report supporting family G caregivers in stem a call to action um in addition to her
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years of research on these topics welcome Jennifer and Ellen I'm so delighted to have you here to today uh
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to join with me in a conversation on supporting caregivers in the workplace so I want to start us off by talking
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about Guardians report standing up and stepping in a modern look at caregivers in the US and what was learned from that
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work Jennifer can you please share with us a little bit about the report including how the data were collected
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and the top take top three takeaways from the report sure and thanks so much for inviting me to share the insights
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from this report so we started with surveying about 2,000 employers and American workers and we use an expansive
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definition of caregiving basically anyone who provides care for another so whether that be Elder Care Child Care
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caring for a sick or disabled person or some combination and i' say upon my top
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three takeaways first this may surprise your listeners but we discovered that about seven out of 10 workers have some
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level of caregiving responsibilities you know most employeers can't even fathom
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this and we know that the caregiving responsibilities are dis disproportionately impacts historically
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underrepresented groups second there's a stigma around the word caregiver so
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ironically we spoke to some of our own Guardian colleagues who happen to be parents and they said they did not want
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to be labeled as a caregiver for their children however the reality is that as well as you know parents parents as well
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as caring for kind of sick or elderly loved ones they really have similar needs so looking at caregiving as a
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holistically will allow employeers to really provide more comprehensive benefits and accommodations that really
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will support all types of caregiving on the third and final takeaway is that caregiving caregivers sorry are more
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likely to have negative impacts on their physical financial and mental well-being
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as well as potentially they will kind of diminish some of their career growth opportunities so if you think
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specifically so you know about 25% of the caregiving population say that they don't keep up with their health checkups
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they don't exercise regularly and they don't really um practice healthy eating
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habits 40% say that their caregiving responsibilities have somehow negatively impacted their household
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finances 41% say that they have overall low mental well-being and that's compared to
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32% of folks who are not caregivers and then finally 20% of caregivers have taken a leave absence or step back in
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their career responsibilities to accommodate their care caregiving duties now this one really resonates with me
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because you about 20 years ago I actually took a career break to care for my kids because at the time I really
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didn't feel that I could balance both and there really was not a lot of support for a working parents so that's
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a little bit about our study overall super interesting results what popped in my head as I was listening to you talk
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is how I think many people didn't hear a lot about caregiving and Trends until we
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were in the midst of a pandemic and then we started hearing a lot and I started thinking that some listeners might be
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wondering the relationship between the things that you're saying and and the
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pandemic or are these issues that are um you know a function of the pandemic or were they always there so I'm going to
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turn to Ellen um and Ellen you know certainly you've been doing research on this topic for for a long time and you
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understand the trends with things that are happening in society I am curious around your perspective on is this a
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pandemic aftermath thing or not or is this sort of how it's always been but I
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also want to know how what you think about this idea that you know Guardian has found that there's been a a sharp
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rise in workers providing care in addition to working full-time so how does that relate how do these ideas
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relate to the things that you're seeing in your own research and practice well Stephanie I think
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regarding the pandemic these uh demands were already there but uh was not always
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visible to the employer and when daycare centers closed nursing homes you know closed or wouldn't let families in
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people had to work from home if they were able to do remote work and there were still let's not forget the
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Frontline workers that were figuring out how to juggle care it became more visible and I did do a a report for the
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National Academy of Sciences I've done a couple reports but I did a study that
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looked at how stem academic faculty manage this change and we call it pushing the boundaries because there
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were all of these very highly educated um women at home over from all the stem fields of you know from
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Aerospace engineering to electron electrical engineering and they basically were very frustrated in how
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their organizations to combine with what Jennifer said responded to their needs mattered and how well they dealt with
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the stress so many people love their jobs and it's part of their professional
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identity just like their family and yet we found that you know just simple things like how do you manage Zoom
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during a call when your child is needs help or there's a a uh you know some people had autistic children that one
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woman that the child was having uh challenges and her boss is texting her where's this report so I think the
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pandemic made visible the need to respect work life boundaries and also I think the narrative that many women left
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the workforce is true and Men some men caregivers as well but many people were frustrated because they loved their
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careers and it's part of their identity and to go to Garrett Guardians report I
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think a lot of people feel stigma disclosing all the typ of care they're doing and besides some of the uh
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caregiving uh backgrounds that Jennifer mentioned a lot of people are providing adult care for children or people over
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18 uh you know a lot of uh people from college had returned to the parents' home and we're still feeling those
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effects spouses that are disabled and I 30% of uh families in America today are people that are not married they may not
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be living alone this this was a Pew charitable trust report uh but uh 133% of people are living alone if they're
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caring for others at a distance or for themselves these are things that we have not updated workplace policies to
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address the diversity and complexity of caregiving demands in our Workforce but also how normal this is if I if I
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combine what the stats that Jennifer shared I you you said seven in 10 people have some sort of responsibilities and
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then what you're saying Ellen it seems to me that you know workplaces and organizations are maybe operating in an
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alternative reality as compared to the lived experiences that most of us are having on any care given day um with
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respect to care so I I do find that interesting Ellen I want to dig a little bit more into the uh committee that you
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participated in the National Academy of Sciences committee um that was focused on family policies for the stem
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Workforce and and recently you uh released a rather extensive report I started going through it and I thought
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wow there is a wealth of information in this report so for those who haven't
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read it yet um what would you say are some of your personal top two top three takeaways from this
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report yes and just to be clear there were two reports I did I did one on stem women and and particularly uh women
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across many backgrounds of ethnicity prior or during the pandemic and then because of that I get a appointed to an
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expert committee um was the only business school Professor on this report called supporting family caregivers and
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stem a called to action and it was a two-year Academy of Science report and we went to all the funding agencies in
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the US uh we uh did extra focus groups with people that were underrepresented uh of uh different uh
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sexuality and other backgrounds and basically here is the top three takeaways number one that support of the
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stem Workforce and caregivers is a strategic labor force investment and an issue of equity but the US in particular
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but AC around the globe as well uh this is not seen as a priority the way we have policy set up today other problems
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in implementation and uh even taking a leave like Jennifer did that's a lot of
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Courage many people can't even afford to leave the labor force if they're The
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Sole Provider or in an expensive area with dual incomes so I think what we're
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not prepared for number one is we're going to have severe shortages of doctors
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Engineers uh we need to have the people if you think about uh our education Workforce in stem that over uh in some
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areas women are half of the uh people getting their stem degrees if we're not
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keeping people working uh staying in Stam and many uh we're going to have shortages and we need to keep people of
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all genders and backgrounds working longer and uh right now not supporting family care people are deciding uh to
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either cut back on their own or leave the workforce or if they leave they leave stem but not necessarily work they
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leave masculine cultures that don't support care um the other issues we found were uh availability it's
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skyrocketing uh problems since the pandemic the cost of care uh the lack of policy awareness people are not able to
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afford uh to to even use some of the benefits available or there's once again
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stigma for using family and sickly there's not enough Staffing in some of our stem professions uh and uh basically
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an overwork culture where when people signal that work is not their Prime primary and O only identity it will cut
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them back Solutions are pretty mundane uh in terms of where we studied a lot of the
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universities in this country uh but simple things like a website with things easy to find uh and uh having Universal
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opt out policies so people don't have to ask permission but it might be in a
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certain stance of someone uh you know is hospitalized or something we we make it really hard hard for people to
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use the policies we have and people there is bias in our Workforce uh for using these policies in terms of
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Innovations we need companies to partner with researchers to do a lot more to Pilot interventions and uh some of the
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Innovative policies there was one at Stanford where they would let people who wanted to work more hours uh to bank
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some of their leave time and you give to other people that might you know had a catastrophe or needed care that didn't
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survive over the long term and I think we have a lot of pilot programs but we don't mainstream these the way our jobs
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are designed to be a director vice president uh they huge jobs requiring much more than 40 hours a week
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Innovations would be a job share but we would think of that at the higher levels
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we have a lot to go ways long ways to go to integrate Innovative work design and
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supporting people having a life outside of work and wanting to work longer for high-powered companies and firms so
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we're going to dive a little bit more into the some of the interventions that
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you've been raising in in a few minutes um but I think one thing that came up
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for me as you were sharing this and particularly it was actually an intervention around websites is I had a
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I have a friend who um is expecting her second child and she's moved universities and so she's understood
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that the policies are drastically different um in terms of leave and do you have to teach and how much do you
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have to teach even though right which I I do not have kids so I've not spent any
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time looking at these policies but she asked me because we used to work together different University and she
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says to me uh where where where's all your information on this and I said there's a website and I showed her our
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website and she says we don't even have anything that looks like that so so people I think sometimes will say how
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was that intervention information is power right for people who are trying to navigate these com complex systems
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around sort of like what are the available resources to them so that's sort of like what came up for me as you
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were talking but what I want to do is I want to turn to you um Jenifer and I I want you to uh see if there's any
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overlap between the types of things that Ellen has been sharing that her in and in her work but also um there was an
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Insight in in in the stem report that I'm curious to get your perspective on
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um and it was and this Insight is that while family caregivers provide care in many forms and for a wide range of
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relationships family caregiv is often viewed in a very limited way so how does that align with like what you've seen in
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your work and and I believe we've heard Ellen saying some of this stuff as well
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yes so it's absolutely aligned with what we we found as well you know the kind of
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narrow view of caregiving outlined in stem report is exactly what we found um you know in for you know probably the
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general stigma around even the term so there many people who don't even want to
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cons to talk about caregiving typically as being a parent they feel like that's
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something separate than caregiving more more broadly and even the willingness for our colleagues to talk about
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caregiving responsibilities they feel there's a stigma even to talk about the
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fact that you're doing this work outs out of your your office work and how that might be perceived by your
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colleagues the people who you work for and you know just kind of being behind the scenes and being quiet about and I
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think what you said you said earlier about the pandemic when our work at home life kind of came together that kind of
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lifted the veil of some of that but there's still a lot of stigma around it um you know and again thinking about
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really this population as a holistic Coalition because you as I said earlier seven out of 10 um people have some sort
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of caregiving duties this will really allow us to really think more holistically about how we are working
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with them and how we should support them and realize that this is you know a critical need within organizations when
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they realize how big this population is and how much this can really support their the organization's overall
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wellbeing so this may seem like a silly question but I think it's an important
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one and and this question for both of you is why do you think these insights that you gain from your various projects
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are important and relevant to employers and workers why should people be listening to this conversation that
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we're having um and you know investing which they will need to do significant
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resources in solving these challenges so Ellen I'm going to start with you um
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when you think about you know there's a number reports we could be talking about
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including the most recent one on supporting Fair family caregivers in stem but you have been down this road
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for some time um in a variety of projects that are all alluding to the same conclusion that we need to be doing
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a better job of supporting caregivers so why is this something that employers and
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workers should care about well we know that you know 80% of employees have have f considered a family even if they're a
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single person family and work and life are not separate we saw this during the pandemic it's really increasingly
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related with the digitalization of work and life even if you're a Frontline worker you can still get called in at
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the last minute from home and we have not updated our policies in terms of flexibility uh in a way that is
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mainstreamed we're seeing the fights right now with uh back to the office mandates uh so I just think companies
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have not evolved and people are going to walk with their feet and not want to work for big firms that aren't more
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flexible in terms of implementing the policies they have well I also think in terms of supervision and Leadership this
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is an issue where companies have a lot of symbolic or underutilized policies even universities with paid leave and
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sickly people can't use these policies effectively and you know we have unpaid
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leave in this country right now for family and sick leave so your listeners your employers have are picking up the
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slack the US caregiving policy is in the hands of employers and if they want to have a Workforce that's ready and not
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stressed out they are going to have to leave on Innovative practices just as they would to find the best way uh to
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implement some of their Innovation such as hybrid work this is all linked people
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are going to be working at home or need flexibility to integrate all of these complex parts of their life again I feel
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like again silly question around why human beings matter but turning it to you Jennifer when you think about the
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insights in in Guardians modern look at caregivers in the US report what stands out to you as being uh the the reason
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for why this is important and relevant absolutely so let's start with 70% of
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workers have caregiving responsibilities and this is expected to grow and in particular particular what we call the
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sandwich group so people who are caring for both children and aging parents so with this understanding in mind uh it
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really should be a strategic priority within our organizations you know all organizations are or maybe I should say
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should be focusing on ways to stay relevant given the rapid changes in Technologies how the new generations
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want to work shifting demographics and so much more so kind of listening to our colleagues understanding their needs and
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providing them the right support is key you know this is why people join stay or
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unfortunately leave an organization or even the workforce more broadly you know a guardian we are our purpose is to
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inspire well-being and we really take a holistic approach to ensure that we are Equitable for and inclusive of all of
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our current and future colleagues we're examining all of our systems processes
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practices policies and Norms with with an equity and inclusive lens lens and that really includes caregiving you for
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example we recently introduced a service called wealthy it's a coner service that
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supports managing healthc care needs for employees as well as their loved ones so
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I am personally a user of this service and I have to say it was transformative so unfortunately my Dad recently fell
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and he broke his hip but using the service we're able to have our health care partner research and provide us
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with recommendations on the best support for him given like the criteria we provided them they literally saved my
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family and me hundreds of hours of research and stress you know I was able to really kind of show up for work and
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be focused on my job responsibilities while also knowing that my dad's needs
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were being managed this is one Innovative and like powerful example of how employeers can support their
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Workforce I I have to say personally as an employee Guardian I am so grateful that we had that kind type of benefit
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you I've used it then I'm still using it you know today that's such a great idea
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and it's not easy nav I used to work in healthcare it's not even when you work in it it's like
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impossible so to have someone there an employer sponsored benefit that allows someone to help you figure out how to
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like get your your your you know your loved one the care that they need that's
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kind of uh invaluable yes I I can't rape about it enough it's been amazing so
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Ellen I would love to now you mentioned like a number of of interventions you know I keep I keep thinking about the
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fact and and you'll get this as much as I do because you know both of us have
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been studying workplaces for a long time is when I see another headline around you know return to office and remote
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work and people batting that policy around I'm like we've been batting around this policy for I don't know
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however many decades since we had it back when it was the policy for women right or the policy for caregivers uh so
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it's always interesting to me that people think that remote working emerged with the pandemic if anything I would
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say the fact that we already had these policies in place for caregivers allowed us to transition very um quickly to that
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environment that said that's just one way that I've seen you talk about and
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other people's have talked about in terms of flexibility but like what are some of these other uh potential
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interventions that you think are on your top you know two or so list of things that employers should be putting in
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place to support working caregivers well number one is to think that every job needs some sort of work
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life support and I think one of the reason that Jen was talking about how some people don't want to be called
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caregivers is companies went through a language narrative where they didn't like using the term work family because
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they thought it was not including single people and other types of needs but everybody needs care from self-care to
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caring for all the dependents that we've talked about so I in a study I just did
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that was published in human resource management we found that people in jobs that didn't have a lot of schedule
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control or boundary control they had higher emotional exhaustion so think janitors thinking nursing assistant food
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service so we and we found that we could improve uh emotional or this exhaustion
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by just training leaders to be more supportive of care and nonwork needs so first intervention to me is just trying
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to change the culture and make work life support just like supporting people and
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how as part of you know making your marketing goals this is the path to meet these objectives and we don't integrate
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work life support from leaders into a lot of leadership training number two I think is the fact that if we're going to
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make these hybrid and future of work uh policies really mainstreamed uh we need to really uh
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Implement policies to support people's ability to turn off work connectivity
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manage care while they're working in the home and lastly I've done some work with
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Frontline workers and there are things that we can do for the people that have been left behind I did a recent study
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that I'm writing up on a cell phone policy at a big box stores and you have to lock up your cell phone uh you you
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can't even get a text during the day if your kid gets home from school or a doctor needs to call you you can call
00:26:43
them at break so just allowing people the the ability to take some of these uh messages not on break and step off the
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floor was an intervention that we did uh we also have looked at things like with
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Union ized workforces shift trades if you think about jobs that are 247 uh you can put in some flexibility
00:27:05
making it easier for people to get time off and in things like healthc care where you have to have employees trade
00:27:12
jobs that have the similar level of skill to care for the patient Acuity you need to train workers and think about
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your culture to put that flexibility into your system so I think we could do a lot more Innovations to support
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people's ability to have flexib for every type of job and that's important to me to not just make this uh
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something privileged for people that can work on a laptop at home yeah I truly appreciate that focus on you know we
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think about like the the salaried workers like those of us who who do um have the ability to work on that laptop
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from home versus those who don't and and and and just one thing though on the
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salary workers there is still a tremendous Gap in terms of uh people who are caregivers rising to the highest
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levels of the sea Suite while they are doing care so I'm not saying we don't
00:28:04
care about Sal workers we do and there is an adverse impact and that would be the leadership pipeline is still having
00:28:12
problems because they haven't figured out how to support growing in a career
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and Care yeah with some slight ability to uh manage load uh during peak times absolutely absolutely so Jen I'd like to
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turn to you and give you an opportunity to share um any other you know thoughts that you have on the idea of supporting
00:28:33
caregivers in the workplace whether that's you like an experience insights from the report or interventions what do
00:28:39
you what do you think so this there's so much and I think you know a lot of what
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Ellen says really resonates with me um but I guess maybe something that I can take away for the listeners is that they
00:28:52
need to really remember that the caregiv population is really much larger than they assume and it is not solely a
00:28:58
women's issue it's an organizational issue you know with 70% of our Workforce
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having caregiving um duties we know that 70% of the workforce is not women so this is impacting men as well and this
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is going to continue to grow so you know benefits and accommodations that may have worked you know five 10 15 years
00:29:20
ago are no longer sufficient for today's Workforce it really is a way in which we
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need to kind of really transform trans form how we think about our organization and and really how are we thinking about
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what the company should be doing you know what's the lip realities of the folks who are now part of these
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companies because you know any compan is just a collection of people um and you know the fact that this cohort is so
00:29:48
expansive this again needs to be a strategic priority within organizations you know they need to really make sure
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they make these changes because you know kind of what Ellen said earlier if people aren't going to aren't doing this
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if organizations aren't doing this people are going to leave and so if you want to stay relevant you want to be
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Innovative you want to have the best talent and continue to attract the best talent you have to do this um you you
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have to ensure that your organizations are Equitable for and inclusive of all of your current and future employees
00:30:20
your leaders really need to understand that what may have worked for them may not be somebody else's lived experience
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so they need to really be empathetic and humble enough to kind of listen to really interpret what they're hearing
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and then to act so that's probably what I I would want to leave you with excellent thank you so much uh Alan
00:30:43
final thoughts on this topic at least for today just I think uh the listeners that
00:30:52
are in Key decision-making role you have the power to make the change and I think
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this issue of care and work life resonates with many people personally or you have sons or daughters or you see
00:31:02
other co-workers and the US is a pretty individualistic culture and we've sort
00:31:07
of told people you got to figure this out by yourself but these uh issues are in work teams and are occurring in
00:31:16
organization cultures and these Dynamics can really only be solved with uh work teams working uh differently and leaders
00:31:25
uh acting to make this a top priority and you know it really is part of being a sustainable Workforce uh just like we
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think about sustainability for the UN goals uh I think that this is the future and we for the first time or not the
00:31:43
first time but for a long time now we are lagging in the US in terms of rankings of equality Health well-being
00:31:51
and other countries are if the war for talent goes Global uh they they have better work life and better reports than
00:31:58
we do absolutely well you know I'm so delighted that you two were able and willing and available to come on uh the
00:32:06
show today I want to thank you Dr Ellen Ernst KK from Perdue University's Mitchell uh e Daniels Jr School of
00:32:15
Business and Jennifer Andrews from Guardian Life for joining us today for sharing your insights your expertise on
00:32:21
supporting caregivers in the workplace and and and definitely for the work that you do more broadly related to equity
00:32:26
and inclusion in organization that does not go understated um in terms of like this as part of this broader
00:32:31
conversation the two of you are helping to continue to grow um so thank you for sharing your insights and your expertise
00:32:38
today I truly appreciate you for being here uh so that is all for today thank you for joining us to our listeners and
00:32:45
for listening to this episode of the knowledge at Wharton leading diversity at work podcast series goodbye for now
00:32:51
for more insight from knowledge at Wharton please visit knowledge. won. up. you