“The Great Resignation.” “The Big Quit.” Buzz phrases that are now popular for all the wrong reasons.
You’re probably seeing this in your own organization; long-time, valued employees suddenly hanging it up, leaving you with gaping holes to fill.
According to Microsoft’s Work Trend Index 2021 report, 41% of the 31,000 workers they surveyed, are considering quitting their jobs because they feel overworked and exhausted.
As the pandemic relegated most of us to working from home, it also made it easier to navigate some work-life challenges.
While teaching elementary school math to their kids and simultaneously Zooming with co-workers seemed stressful at the time, employees sending those kids back to school with the delta variant looming large, while navigating carpools and after-school care, has been even more stress-inducing for some. Going back to “normal” has been simply too much for too many.
Imagine that stress compounding if your employee is raising their children while also caring for sick parents.
At Homethrive, we wanted to get a better sense of the issues employees in this situation are facing, so we surveyed several hundred of them.
According to The Homethrive 2021 Employee Caregiving Survey, 43% of respondents are distracted, worried, or focused on caregiving (and not their job) 5 or more hours per week, while 20% are distracted at work more than 9 hours per week. Sadly, this is not surprising.
The U.S. is in the midst of a hidden caregiver crisis that impacts companies and employees alike, according to a survey from Harvard Business School, “The Caring Company: How Employers Can Cut Costs And Boost Productivity By Helping Employees Manage Caregiving Needs.” Without adequate caregiving support for employees, companies incur millions of dollars of hidden costs through employee mental health issues, turnover and substantial productivity costs such as absenteeism and presenteeism.
While one in five Americans is a caregiver, according to AARP’s 2020 research report Caregiving in the U.S., employers are not aware, nor focused enough on how that outside responsibility may impact their workforce and workforce performance.
Nearly 40% of respondents to the Homethrive survey either said that their supervisor is not aware of their caregiving responsibilities outside of work or weren’t sure if their supervisor was aware.
Additionally, more than half of respondents to the Homethrive survey indicated their supervisors were not as supportive as they needed them to be about their outside-of-work caregiving responsibilities.
One third of respondents to The Homethrive 2021 Employee Caregiving Survey said that their supervisor had noticed a change because it was impacting their performance or because they were noticeably under stress because of their caregiving responsibilities.
Despite the growing need for employee benefits that support caregivers, 79% of employers are not yet offering them or are not communicating about such benefits.
The Homethrive survey also found that the vast majority (84%) of respondents were receptive to the idea of their employer offering a benefit that provided them with resources, guidance, or support for caregiving.
Taking steps to address your employees’ caregiving concerns now will save you time and money later so your organization doesn’t become the next casualty of the “Big Quit.”