Why Traditional Benefits Miss Caregivers

With the growth of caregivers at work, we are seeing a gap in traditional benefits. Organizations are underestimating the impact of caregiving on mental health and the ability of caregivers to show up and be present in the workplace. While many employers offer strong benefits packages, employees who are caregivers still struggle, as caregiving needs often fall between benefits categories.

Medical coverage, PTO, retirement benefits, and wellness resources are typically provided and are still needed benefits. So why do caregivers continue to feel unsupported at work?

Benefits Were Built For a Different Workforce

Traditional benefits center around a very particular type of family unit: the nuclear family, a household consisting of only two parents and their children living together. When policies and plans were created, there were fewer multi-generational caregiving demands.

These benefits were made with the idea that the family operates as a self-contained unit for daily care, financial support, and decision-making. Meaning: the benefits only needed to support (one specific type of) individual employee needs. Companies used a one-size-fits-all approach, because they assumed workers shared similar career trajectories and life stages.

Insurance companies created group health plans assuming that families shared a standard, uniform demographic profile. Early labor laws and tax codes rewarded married household structures, making dependent and spousal coverage the easiest baseline for companies to adopt. Traditional benefits no longer benefit caregivers, who are often experiencing a very different type of home experience.

Caregiving is Not a One-Size-Fits-All Experience

The best benefits plans adapt to the life stages and unique needs of the current workforce. This allows for the growing of benefits to be flexible in its movement.

With the changing household landscape of the workforce, there will be many employees who are at different stages in their caregiving experience. For example, some might be caring for a friend who may or may not live close to them. Some might have caregiving responsibilities for a person with disabilities. Still others might be in the sandwich generation, caring for older parents and raising children at the same time.

Because caregiving circumstances might be completely different from one caregiver to another in the same organization, it can be difficult to fit the varying level of support needed for those individuals into those traditional benefits originally created for one “type” of worker.

There is a Gap Between Employees and Their Benefits

Often, good benefits plans do have the means to grow their benefits of support. One main problem is that resources exist, but employees don’t know where to start. The support they are given is directionless and fragmented. Unfortunately, this also means that the responsibilities of navigating existing support still fall on the caregiver, giving them additional logistical tasks.

What Modern Support Looks Like

Support that works for the modern workforce, and for caregivers, will treat the ecosystem around the employee, not just the employee themselves. Benefits currently exist for employees and their family members as separate individuals. To support the caregiver’s whole ecosystem, benefits need to cover emotional well-being, decision-making, navigation and planning, and practical support.

Uprise Health has programs that work in tandem with others to care for the entire system. Uprise AgeWell and Uprise ParentHood close the gap between the individual and their emotional well-being, their ability to make decisions and plan, and the practical support offered to them as they navigate caregiving.

Join us in creating systems that make caregiving more sustainable. Request a demo with us today.