The Invisible Workforce Crisis: Why Caregiving is the Next Mental Health

Over the past decade, mental health quietly moved from a personal matter to a strategic business priority.  This transition occurred because employers started connecting the dots between employee wellbeing and the impact on the business of:  retention, performance, healthcare costs and culture.

Caregiving is on the same trajectory.  The cost is real and most organizations have not yet adapted.  The time is now and benefits leaders are in the best position to lead the change.

Caregiving is Following the Same Pattern as Mental Health

Before mental health support was widely adopted and supported, it too was underreported.  Employees rarely disclose it directly.  Instead, it surfaced as chronic absenteeism, quiet disengagement and unexpected departures that did not get explained during a typical exit interview.

Caregiving is in the same place right now.  Employees are supporting aging parents, spouses with chronic conditions or adult family members recovering from health events, yet they are not sharing their challenges.  They are absorbing the load, quietly and at a significant personal cost.  This cost is spilling directly into your organization.

The Scale is Already Significant

According to Guardian Life, between 23%-43% of employed adults are currently managing caregiving responsibilities alongside their work.  In a workforce of 1,000 employees, that is 230-430 people carrying what amounts to a second, invisible shift. According to CaregiverAction.org, the average caregiver provides ~25 hours of care/week. 

Unlike parental leave or childcare, elder caregiving does not come with a defined start and end date.  There is no developmental milestone chart.  Instead, there are emergency department visits at unpredictable hours, multiple physician appointments, care transitions and the constant weight of managing the current situation and fearing what may come next.

This is ongoing, not temporary and it is happening inside your workforce right now.

Why Employers Are Still Underestimating the Impact

Most organizations are not ignoring caregiving purposefully. They are underestimating it because it is structurally difficult to see.

It is hidden.

Employees routinely conceal their caregiving out of fear.  Their fears include being perceived as less committed, being passed over for a well-deserved promotion and for being seen as a liability in the eyes of the manager.  The organization only sees the downstream symptoms of caregiving: missed deadlines, inconsistent availability, a drop in work productivity from someone who was a high performer just a few months ago. 

It is hard to measure.

Caregiving does not appear as a line item in your benefits utilization report.  It does show up though in unplanned absences, presenteeism and increased use of EAP services or health care claims. 

It is often miscategorized

When caregiving does show up, it may be treated as a personal situation, not as a work issue.  Responding to these situations with empathy is kind, but providing an infrastructure that supports caregiving is more beneficial for the long term. 

Why This Mirrors the Mental Health Shift

Mental Health became a strategic priority when employers made two connections: first, that it was costing them real money, and second that the structured support could meaningfully reduce that cost.  Caregiving has the same effect but with added complexity.  A caregiving employee is not only managing their own wellbeing but that of another person.  They are coordinating between providers, making financial and legal decisions and doing it all while trying to perform at work.  The cognitive and emotional weight that a caregiver carries is extraordinary. 

According to MIT Sloan Management Review, caregiving skills achieve a 100% overlap with the top leadership skills in demand: adaptability, problem solving, decision making and resilience to name a few.    Your caregiving employees are not a liability, but rather they are among the most capable of your organization.  The challenge though, is how long can the caregiving employee sustain that capability without meaningful support. 

Mental health became a priority when employers saw its impact on performance and retention. Caregiving has the same impact, with added complexity: employees are managing another person’s health entirely on their own.

The Risk of Waiting

Organizations that delay the implementation of a caregiving structure will not be spared the cost.  It will be absorbed, without a framework of support.

In practice without support this is what occurs: productivity losses compound quietly across the caregiving population.  Attrition in mid-career and senior employees who feel unsupported at a critical life stage.  Managers are absorbing informal caregiving requests they are not equipped to handle. Eventually, a benefits strategy that is visibly behind where your employees need it to be.

There is opportunity to lead now with a proactive benefits strategy.

What Forward Thinking Employers Are Doing

These are examples of deliberate processes that organizations are making:

• Recognizing caregivers as a defined employee population and building an infrastructure around the recognition.
• Investing in proactive, continuous support rather than reactive, crisis-driven resources that employees reach for after they are already overwhelmed.
• Extending support beyond the employee to the person the employee is caring for and the whole family unit.  This acknowledges that the employee caregiver needs support with the entire situation.
• Aligning caregiving with the broader wellbeing strategy, alongside mental health, physical health and financial wellness as an integrated pillar.

This is not about adding another point solution to the benefits landscape but recognizing the gap that exists and intentionally closing it.

The Bottom Line

Caregiving is the next major workforce challenge.  The data is already available.  The cost is real at an average of $5,600 per caregiving employee according to Value Health 2023.    

The mental health parallel is instructive because it is a proven path.  Employers who invested early in a mental health infrastructure saw returns in retention, performance culture. 

The question is not whether your organization will eventually address this.  The question is whether you will address it before the cost becomes impossible to ignore.

Learn how Arlow can help your organization build a caregiving ready workforce. Visit www.arlow.ai to schedule a consultation. ‍