BoomerGirl Diary

"My Plate is Too Full!"

A recent conference sponsored by The Foundation on Aging and the Kansas City (Mo.) Partnership for Caregivers was aptly named.

Many workers struggle to balance their personal and home life demands with their jobs.

One of those demands - caring for aging parents - is beginning to eclipse child-care concerns as a pull on workers' time and mental energy.

Demographics dictate it. The baby-boom age group constitutes the largest share of the labor force in most companies. For many, their attention has turned from raising children to caring for their parents.

Amy Winterscheidt, work/life consultant at Hallmark Cards Inc., analyzed Hallmark's workforce and found that more than 40 percent of its employees were boomers, "yet the majority of our work/life benefits were geared to parents with kids up to age 3."

Winterscheidt dug into some research. A report by MetLife's Mature Market Institute estimated that 15 percent of the U.S. workforce is actively involved in providing care for an older adult.

Nearly half of the workers studied by MetLife reported spending an average of $273 a month in elder-care matters.

Those facts, coupled with what Winterscheidt heard directly from workers, caused her to place Hallmark in what still is the vanguard of companies offering elder-care benefits.

"What if you work here and your mother in New Jersey breaks her hip? You need quick, trusted answers," Winterscheidt said.

An employee can spend hours on the phone trying to find appropriate resources, or take vacation or personal days off.

Or, with Hallmark's elder-care benefits, the employee can get company-paid consultations and personal family needs assessments from elder-care experts anywhere the need occurs.

Hallmark contracts with Kansas City-based Creative Care Consultants for crisis and long-term-care management. Hallmark also contracts with Work Options Group, an agency based in Boulder, Colo., that helps with backup elder care.

To sell the benefit to the Hallmark brass, Winterscheidt did a cost-benefit analysis.

Plugging in average consultation fees of $200, assessment costs of $300 to $500 (which cover a nurse and/or social worker visit and evaluation), and two days' worth of backup care at $500 to $600, the benefit sold itself when compared with the costs of lost productivity from workers struggling to find answers and make elder-care arrangements on their own.

National studies say companies without elder-care benefits stand to lose $2,500 a year per care-giving employee and that every $1 spent on elder-care benefits gets a return of $1.50 in productivity, retention, and reduced absenteeism.

But, Winterscheidt said, the most important part of Hallmark's elder-care package may be the part that costs nothing at all: flex time.

When elder-care needs arise, the company allows workers, whether salaried or hourly, to adjust their work schedules to accommodate their needs.

It's a benefit that often eliminates the need for some employees to deal with the complications of unpaid Family and Medical Leave Act leaves.

Other cost-free benefits include lunch-and-learn educational programs offered at Hallmark headquarters by area experts in Alzheimer's research, elder-care resources, medications, Medicaid rules, wills and trusts, hospice care and other topics.

There's also a peer-to-peer support program that confidentially matches Hallmark employees with others who "have gone through the same thing" and volunteer to provide advice and support.

There's an elder-care support group that meets monthly. And the human resources area holds every brochure and bit of information that Winterscheidt can collect on the topic.

She estimates that about 250 Hallmark employees used the consultation and assessment benefits last year, and that up to 400 used some or all of the elder-care benefit options.

That's 400 workers who otherwise might have quit or been too pulled by personal needs to do their jobs.