Benefits of Employer-Sponsored Elder Care Programs: Case Studies and Policy Recommendations

As part of their corporate employee benefit programs, many employers offer services that are designed to help their employees deal with care for aging dependents. Such services are thought to increase employee effectiveness by reducing absenteeism and minimizing the need for employees to miss time from work or to drop out of the workforce because of caregiving responsibilities. Site visits were conducted at select employer organizations to learn more about what makes their elder care programs beneficial according to their employees. Employer organizations were selected based upon a nationwide survey that we conducted to assess employee user perceptions of employer-sponsored elder care services. These organizations had the best elder care service ratings from their employees among 108 distinct employers that were surveyed. The site visits involved personal interviews with employer management representatives who are responsible for their company's elder care programs. Using data collected during these site visits, we found a number of common themes that appeared to contribute to the effectiveness of the employers' elder care programs. First, employers' corporate cultures were supportive of work-life programs in general and elder care programs specifically. Additionally, these employers were all cognizant of elder care programs' (and more broadly work-life programs') impact on worker productivity and were in various stages of measuring this impact. Finally, the employers all were continuously scanning the external environment to see what other top companies were doing in the work-life arena as well as ensuring that their programming was up-to-date and meeting the needs of their employees.