How to support the emotional wellbeing of working carers
As Carers Week draws to a close, employers should consider the benefits available to their caregiver employees, such as caregiver insurance, care co-ordination apps, care concierges or backup care providers. These would undoubtedly benefit employers’ working carers’ emotional wellbeing.
To complement these benefits, here are some key steps that can be taken towards fostering a culture that prioritises working carers’ emotional wellbeing.
1. Give formal requests for flexible working serious consideration. Ultimately, when balancing caring and work responsibilities (not to mention other relationships and commitments), providing flexibility in one domain inevitably benefits the other.
2. Give informal, ad-hoc support priority too. Carers can’t plan for every eventuality, so an early finish here or a phone call there may be necessary, and being supportive and understanding removes one source of stress in what might be a very challenging time.
3. Facilitate uptake of employee benefits that are geared towards self-care. Remind carer employees of gym membership, private health care, leisure perks, the employee assistance programme, counselling etc that might be of particular use to them.
If they face barriers to using them, such as time available, help them think creatively about it. Perhaps helping them book a private room for counselling if they lack privacy at home to do this, or scheduling a longer lunch once a week to enable them to go to the gym.
4. Foster psychological safety wherever possible, including taking an interest in carers’ health, wellbeing and experiences (but try to read their demeanour and comfort with this, following their cues and how they initiate conversations). Assure them about confidentiality, and that their being a carer won’t ever be a negative association. If your organisation has capacity to, consider creating a carer’s group that can help facilitate peer support and demonstrate the importance you place on carer wellbeing.
5. Get comfortable with the uncomfortable. All line managers should ideally be able to have conversations that include the realities of care and how their direct reports are experiencing this. To help, do a little reading into the challenges carers face, browse the Carers UK forum, Carers Connect, to see what people are talking about, or look into the condition of the person they care for so you can show some knowledge and help ‘short-cut’ to the point when they talk about their experiences.
Carers with understanding employers frequently talk about how transformative this can be, and with a little consideration it is possible to have a significant impact on the carers in your organisation.
In partnership with Yurtle
Yurtle is an insurance-based employee wellness benefit helping companies to combat caregiver burnout (and the associated productivity and employee turnover losses) in the workplace.
