Carer-Friendly Workplaces

Intro:
CCOHS is situated upon the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas. This land is covered by the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Haudenosaunee and Anishinabek to share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes. We further acknowledge that this land is covered by the Between the Lakes Purchase, 1792, between the Crown and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.

Ashley:
Hello and welcome to Health and Safety to Go, a CCOHS podcast.

Today we're exploring the topic of caregiving and carer-friendly workplaces. We’re joined by Nora Spinks, internationally recognized work-family consultant, and researcher, who is an expert on creating supportive work environments and healthy communities.

Thanks for being here, Nora.

Nora Spinks:
A pleasure.

Ashley:
So, let's start out by talking about who caregivers are in Canadian workplaces. How does our perception of what a caregiver looks like align with the reality?

Nora:
I think when people hear the word “care giver” they immediately think an older woman. Primarily because most care-giving happens to be provided by women. But when we talk about caregivers in the workplace, it actually is way wider of a population than that. You can have a young caregiver who may be responsible for caring for a sibling or a parent or a grandparent. You may have mid-career employees who might be caring for their own young children and their parents, at the same time. You may have a later career employee who's looking after a spouse or grandchildren or a family member with special needs or a parent. And so, when we think about care-giving and work, we need to think about basically every single employee at some time during their career, will either be giving and, or receiving care. So, let's just assume that at any point in time, you are going to have a share of your employees who have care-giving responsibilities. And either these are care responsibilities that they have as a result of a family connection, so it’s some kind of a relationship, or it's an obligation, or it's a commitment, and that commitment maybe to a neighbor or a friend, and not necessarily because of some kind of familial, biological, or legal connection.

Ashley:
I see. So, for colleagues, what are some of the, you know, colleagues and employers, what are some of the impacts of having a caregiver in the workplace?

Nora:
Well, there are many impacts of having caregivers in the workplace and it really depends on the type of care that the caregiver is providing, because we really look at it in two dimensions. There's the duration dimension and the intensity dimension. And so, if you have low, you know, a short duration and low intensity, it might be something like, somebody's just had day surgery and it's low intensity, low duration and it just needs you know they're going to be distracted for a little while with those obligations. But the other end it may be high intensity and long duration, something like a family member with MS (multiple sclerosis) or ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), it may be dementia, which the intensity increases over time, or it may be somebody who is providing palliative care. And you never know whether you're going to be providing palliative care for a week, a month, or a year. It's not as predictable, for example, as planning, a pregnancy and knowing when you're going to start to provide care. You've got a pretty good idea; you can plan and predict that. But with care-giving it's not always predictable. And you may have a spouse who is healthy and vibrant and strong and [an] unexpected diagnosis of cancer appears on your doorstep. And all of a sudden now you become a caregiver and it may be intense for a short period of time or it may be episodic. So, you're going to go through an intense period of chemotherapy and then you're going to have less care. But then you're going to go through another period of intensity when you're going through radiation.

So, there are no two that are alike. But what is alike and consistent regardless of intensity and duration is that your employee is going to have other priorities and commitments in their lives. And it doesn't mean that they can't work or that they don't want to work. I some cases, in fact, working is their respite!

Ashley:
Yeah. A sense of normalcy.

Nora:
Exactly. And the challenge here is to find the right balance. So how do you support somebody who is experiencing care-giving, regardless of intensity or duration? And how does the sort of the circle of support around this person in the workplace, their colleagues, their manager, their team members, help support them get through this period of care-giving

Now, a lot of people won't disclose necessarily that they’re a caregiver, if they are in a workplace where they feel that by making such a disclosure they will be penalized. They won't be given opportunities for advancement. They won't be given opportunities for training. That it will be seen as a disadvantage.

Ashley:
Additional scrutiny.

Nora:
Exactly. And so, there's that. The second thing to keep an eye open for whether you're a manager or a business owner or a union steward, is potential backlash. So, what we tend to see is coworkers are very supportive at the beginning. “Really sorry to hear that your mom is dying. Really? Sorry to hear that your husband has a cancer diagnosis, really sorry to hear you have a child with a disability”. But then if there aren't the supports for the co-workers to continue being supportive and attentive, then there can be co-worker backlash building and it may be very unconscious to start with where, it's just like, oh, they're away again. Like, “there's another emergency!”. So, it just starts to build and so you have to be really careful about that.

The other thing is, that there will be moments of distraction. I remember talking to one workplace that I was brought into because they had had a crisis. And what had happened was there was a woman whose husband had a heart condition, and she was away a lot dealing with his heart attacks. And then finally, he got his appointment for open heart surgery, and she asked for the day off and she was denied. And she worked in a manufacturing facility on a production line. And he went into surgery at 11 a.m. and her boss said, if you, if you're away, don't come back. And so, she had to choose a job that had the benefits, and the health care benefits that he needed or…

Ashley:
Be there for him…

Nora:
…and right. So, she chose to go to work that day. The surgery starts at 11, at 11:15 there's a catastrophic accident in the workplace because she was distracted. Because she had been crying on the production line, she made a mistake. There was an error made. The whole line shut down and it cost the employer a million dollars for every 15 minutes that line was down. Had they just given her the day off…

Ashley:
…to do what she needed to do.

Nora:
…to focus on where her heart was that day. They would have saved, not only the millions of dollars, she would not have got injured and would not have been away for short-term disability thereafter. And the manager then had backlash from all the co-workers because then the colleagues and the co-workers saw her being ,what they felt was being treated, unfairly. That changes the dynamics in the workplace. Well, what if it's my kid? What if it's my mom? What if it's my partner? And that resentment starts to build up against management? So, it's a very delicate balance between being supportive and being responsive and remaining productive and high performing.

Ashley:
So, let's talk a little bit about out how the pandemic has impacted the makeup of caregivers in the workplace. What are we kind of seeing with people adjusting to long COVID or having to care for family members themselves? How’s COVID-19 impacted the care-giving landscape?

Nora:
I think COVID-19 has, since its inception, since way back in the spring of 2020, COVID has magnified, amplified, and intensified every system. The strength and weaknesses of every system. So, the things that were really good, like the dedication, the professionalism, the, efficiencies were magnified as were the weaknesses. And so, when we think about caregiving and caregiving and work, those employees who may have been able to hide, the fact that they were providing care are now on Zoom.

And their adult sibling, who has a disability, keeps wandering past in camera. Arrange. Mom may be physically present and needs to be reassured from time to time. We've all seen pets and been in each other's homes, right? Our kitchens are bedrooms, our living rooms. So, it's given us a sense of intimacy with each other, very quickly. We've all been worried about our colleagues. Have you been sick? How are you feeling? How can you? How can I support you in your recovery of whatever you're dealing with and so that support has also been magnified and intensified. But it also means that we've seen what little things employers can do that can make a big difference. So, one of those things is flexibility. The ability to work from home, the ability to work remotely, the ability to have to control and manage your work. Your workflow when and where you produce, whatever it is you do for a living. And so that has been a real bonus from COVID19 but not everybody works from home.

So, you've got employees, who are on a production line or who have a job that involves mobility. They might be truck drivers. They might be airline staff that whose job is constantly moving. So, they need a different kind of support. And so, there is no one-size-fits-all even though everyone of us will be a caregiver at some time, in our career, the chances are that what you need and what I need at that moment, may be very, very different. Our individual circles of support may be different. So, you and I may be siblings and we can off shift each other, and it will have less impact on our jobs. But you may be living on the other side of the country and I'm still carrying the load. So, every family situation is different. And again, that intensity and duration just increases when you add complexity and there's nothing about caregiving that isn't complex. So, there's a financial element. There's an emotional element, a physical element. You might not be sleeping well, and that's going to impact your ability to concentrate. Your ability to focus. Your risks go up. So then as an employer, what do I need to do to make sure that that employee is safe, that they can continue to be productive, that they continue to make a contribution? And it may be shifting hours, it might be extending the work week so it's fewer hours over more days. It might be an alternative work arrangement of fewer days or fewer hours. So, there's just a number of different ways that employers and teams can support an employee, who has these caregiving responsibilities.

Ashley:
Nora, a lot of our listeners come from the occupational health and safety field specifically, so what advice do you have for them regarding the changing demographics? The changing face of caregiving in the workplace.

Nora:
Well, I think occupational health and safety, along with human resources, has a really important role to play. One in education and awareness for all employees. Management training, helping managers understand how they can make it better or worse for an employee who is managing caregiving responsibilities. And they have a role to play if they see somebody is struggling. Occupational health and safety and human resources can help managers and colleagues with strategies and techniques that are effective and proven, that maintain an employee's dignity and privacy, and yet not put them in a position where they or their colleagues may be at risk.

And I think what's really important here is that we all have an important role to play to play. And that the most important thing occupational, health and safety professionals can do is to keep caregiving on the radar. Keep it in their lunch and learns, keep it in their communications, continue to educate themselves, and managers and employers, and bring it up on the meeting agenda when you have your occupational health and safety committee meetings. Keep it on the radar because that's the way we can keep everybody safe.

Ashley:
Are there any final thoughts that you'd like to leave with our listeners? What's coming up in the caregiving world? Or what would you like them to take away?

Nora:
Well, I think there's a couple of things that are happening in the workplace and in the workspace, the conversations around caregiving and work. One, COVID-19 is taken the issue out of the closet. So, people are talking about care and care giving. The aging population: people are talking about aging and caregiving of seniors. The aging population, they're both caregivers and care receivers, many of them.

We have more resources available. So, there's the care-giving standard, care-giving caregivers at work standard. That's now available that people can use either as a frame for their planning in their preparation and sort of a self-assessment, or they can actually go through the process and apply this standard.

There's more examples of flexibility and the benefits of autonomy. And the ways in which people can manage work and family when they have some control over, how, where, and when work gets done.
And I think the other piece is, in terms of community supports, there is an increasing emphasis on creating age-friendly communities, which begins to offer some supports to caregivers and helps to share the load. And so, as we have age-friendly communities, we have the opportunity to support caregivers so there may be less stress and strain on them. Either for a short period or a long period of time.

The interesting thing about care-giving and work is that we're now having a lot of conversation about care, about care-giving Many employers now offer as part of their employee assistance program, some Services supports sometimes consultation counseling on care-giving and self-care. So, the importance of self-care as a caregiver. And if you're in the thick of it, as a caregiver, the last thing you want to hear is “you need to take care of yourself. You'll be fine.” What people really need is the kinds of supports that maybe not the kind that people will stop and ask for. So, it's like when you have a neighbor who's struggling, you won't ask them necessarily. What can I do for you? You just take the casserole, right? You double up your lasagna and you take them half because you know they're going to appreciate it, value it, but they won't necessarily ask you for it. And the same thing applies in the workplace. If you see somebody who you are working with or who reports to you or who you report to or colleague or even a customer or client, who, you know, is dealing with care-giving Sometimes just a little you're doing okay, bring them a cup of tea, if they haven't asked for it, double up your lasagna and gives them a lunch because they probably won't be eating dinner, if they've got, you know, to be in three places at once.

So, you know, sometimes it's the little things that make a big difference. So, we can do it as individuals. We can do it as colleagues, we can do it as managers, we can do it as employers, we could do it as unions. The more we work together, the easier, it will be for individuals, and organizations, and ultimately, we will create communities where people can be caregivers and active, vibrant participants in the paid labor force at the same time.

Ashley:
Nora, that's wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your expertise.

Nora:
Ashley always a pleasure to speak with you.