Trends: Caregiving support for the sandwich generation

Caregiving takes a toll on an employee's job performance. Are you offering your employees the aging benefits they need? 

Transcription:

Alyssa Place (00:08):

All right. Good morning everybody. I am Alyssa Place. I am executive editor at Employee Benefit News. Thank you all for joining. We have a great panel today about sandwich caregivers and caregiving support. Joining me is Lisa Dollenbach, chief People Officer of Media Company, the Skim, Lindsay Juris Rosner, founder of Wealthy, a family care benefits provider Dr. Lisa Rill, executive director of Senior Life Source, a nonprofit organization that provides education on aging for all ages. And Lois Stoddard, vice President of Product and Business Development for MetLife Legal Plans. So we are going to talk about caregiving today and I think a great place to start is to just sort of take a collective deep breath on behalf of our caregivers. What are some of the challenges that your working caregivers and specifically sandwich caregivers are talking about right now, more than two years into the pandemic? Has the burden really lifted at all? Lindsay, why do not we start with you since you are kind of working in this space?

Lindsay Juris Rosner (01:11):

Sure. So I feel like this is heavy on top of heavy. We were just talking about the news is so heavy and there is so many heavy topics, and so I am hesitant to bring more heavy into it. But yeah, caregiving has not gotten easier for families. I would argue. It is gotten harder. The pandemic squeezed families especially sandwich generation caregivers put them into scramble and stress mode. And that has not led up. What we have seen is pretty significant care shortages, a real care gap. There are care workers who stepped out of careers as nannies or working in an assisted living facility and they have not returned, and workers feel that gap. And on top of it, there is pressure to go back into offices or work in a hybrid, a hybrid schedule. And it is very hard to set up care for a hybrid schedule. And so I worry that there is a little bit of fatigue on the topic. There was so much discussion through the pandemic. I am hopeful that we keep the pressure on the topic and we keep discussing it because we have not, out of the woods, things are harder than they were even in the midst of the pandemic.

Lisa Dollenbach (02:25):

And I know we will talk about this in a minute, but I think because nobody is really talking about it and we were just laughing sort of ugh, I will deal with that later. Thank you. Lawyers keep my own kick in the butt. And there is so much going on that is taking up our mental space that it is very hard. You just think I will do with that later. And then all of a sudden it comes upon you and you are scrambling on top of the other scrambles that we have that are new. And it is challenging.

Lois Stoddard (02:51):

I think it is definitely challenging. What we have also seen is just that people are now identifying as caregivers. And I do not know about anyone else in the room. I myself take care of seven elderly people and I never called myself a caregiver. But I think the pandemic, when you are dealing with doctors, when you are going to hospitals, when you are doing so much for those individuals, you ultimately realize, Hey, I am a caregiver and I need support in a different way than you been providing it to me before. So I think that is helping employers in particular and the HR benefit decision makers in the room to say, we need to do something about this. People are actually identifying that this is a role that they have and a responsibility that they need help with.

Lisa Dollenbach (03:32):

I recently so I have two aunts and uncles sets of them but do not have children. And so it is myself and my brother taking care of them. And then I have my own mom and I recently this is just last month to my aunt is in a assisted graduated care facility and we had to move her. She is now in the end stage. And so we had to move her out of her apartment and we had to do it in a very short amount of time in 24 hours. And she is on the West Coast. And I realized there is these three very distinct buckets. There is this productivity piece like this that you have to get done. There is this practicality of what do you have in place and what has to happen and what needs to, and then there is this emotional piece. So I was very much in the production, the practicality of everything to happen, and then I got home. And this emotional wave that overcame me and how you get the support in all three of those places is really critical. What are the things that you need to know and do so that the practical pieces and the production pieces are not so overwhelming? And then the reality of the emotional that will come, how do you get that support as well? That was a real eye-opener for me, those three different pieces that I went through.

Dr. Lisa Rill (04:41):

And I think everything that you all are talking about up here is if you take a step back as a sociologist here in the aging industry and you look at society and what is going on is this is all a result of an aging population. The boomer started turning 65 in 2011, so every 10 every eight seconds, someone turns 65, that is 10,000 people a day. Wow. So that is a lot. And on top of that, the long-term care labor force has a shortage. This has been happening long before Covid that we have known about, we have been trying to talk about. And so back before C O V D, in order for the long-term care labor force to actually keep pace with the aging population, it would have to grow 2% annually. But at that time it was only predicted to grow 0.3%. And now after Covid it is even worse. And so that is kind of what we are seeing. So family members are having to step into this position of helping care because there is just not an adequate amount and we are just going to continue to see this happening.

Alyssa Place (05:48):

And I would like to ask about that kind of disconnect that we are experiencing. You have caregivers that maybe do not feel safe sharing that they are caregivers and that they have all this on their plate. At the same time many employers are saying, let us get back to work. So where is the disconnect happening? Why is it so difficult for these caregivers to say, actually, I need a little help here?

Lois Stoddard (06:10):

I think the environment at work was never really open to some of the personal problems in the previous group, I do not remember the gentleman's name, maybe it was Chad. He was talking about we do not talk about things with empathy. And I think that is very real. I never thought about going to my employer and saying, Hey, I am a caregiver. I need some more time to adjust that balance. But I think what is exciting, every single year we do an employee benefits trend study. And as we look at employer's role in benefits, it is changed. Pre pandemic, 72% of employers felt like they needed to provide benefits for their employees that really solved their needs. Not just the one size fits all package and post pandemic, that is uptick to 86%. So there is a real acknowledgement from HR be benefit decision makers. We need to do something differently and we need to do something that meets the needs of our employees. So I think that along with people to the realization that there is a change in the workforce has been helpful to get some changes done.

Lindsay Juris Rosner (07:19):

I mean, I will share mean, listen, caregiving is a women's issue. It is always been invisible, always, right? I have reading this book on invisible women. It is data looking at the role that women have played throughout our entire history. You know, think about the history of men. Were hunters and gatherers. that is what we learn. What were the women doing who were caregiving? we have always been in a caregiving role. It is never been seen, it is never been valued. It is invisible. And the challenge is it is hard for women to bring their, and there are many men, male caregivers, I do not mean to, but there are many women who I think want to advance their career and where they feel like if they talk about their role as a caregiver, they might not be viewed similarly to their male counterparts. And we are seeing that. we are seeing women. we have seen 6 million women still have the workforce through the pandemic. 2 million women still have not returned. Like this is a women's issue, it is a workforce participation issue. It is a women of color issue and it is in some ways just invisible in many work environments still.

Alyssa Place (08:39):

And Lisa, as someone who's running a company that is sort of geared toward women, I mean, how are you dealing with listening with that empathetic gear?

Lisa Dollenbach (08:50):

So that is a great question. And actually the two speakers before this morning Catherine and the father before, were both talking about how important it is to have that empathy and that ability to listen and let your employee base know that they have a place to go. And so we do a couple things with that one piece that is really critical to our culture is something we call sacred time. And so sacred time is something, and this goes back into how do we give them support as well as the listening. It really is about giving them their space. So sacred time is something they can put on their calendar anytime, anywhere. No one asks what it is. It can be here and there. It can be something that repeats every single week. It can be, I need to meditate, I need to go pick up my kids.

(09:33)

I need to take the dog to the vet. I take my walk, I take care, I make my lunch, whatever it is. And I do not think in my entire time at The Skim I have ever seen somebody book over anything that is sacred time. So culturally it is deeply respected. The other piece that we are trying to do in terms of listening is a couple things. So we are going to talk a little bit about data in a minute, but we really have a lot of places in our organization that people can come and give us and talk to us about what they need. So we certainly have a very open door, a very human resources people team. And we also have many places where they can be in touch. We try to take the hierarchy out of the conversation so where they can be in touch with their executives and people that are more senior at the company.

(10:20)

So every month we have lunch with executives, we have rotating executives hosting meetings that they can come every week. We have a team meeting that kicks off the week and we have ask me anything question box that they can put questions in there. So we try to just have a lot of places where we are listening to employees about what they need. And it is important to come back and let them know what they are asking and what we are saying to them. And sometimes the answer is, we can not help yet, but we hear you. we are working on that. And sometimes we can have solutions, but I think it is really important that we are coming back to employees to say, we are listening and we are a place that wants to hear from you. We do a lot of work around surveying and we will get into that in a minute data. Cause I think the data is so important, both from a qualitative and a quantitative perspective to really understand what your employees need. And we really use the data to understand what we offer.

Alyssa Place (11:14):

And I do think an area that has seen a ton of data over the last couple years is obviously the topic of mental health that is very closely tied into caregiving. Why do you think there is been a bit of a lag in terms of this recognition that caregiving is also an area that we need to destigmatize and really dig into that data? Lisa, I do not know if you have any data that would support that or

Dr. Lisa Rill (11:36):

Sure. I think that in general unfortunately we still have to deal with aging ages, society. It is the lastest that is recognized ages in our society. So caregiving comes along with that. We do not like talking about aging, we do not like talking about these difficult conversations. Even though most likely most people in this room have a story. Anytime I tell somebody what I do, they always come back with some kind of story of being a caregiver for their loved one or aging themselves. So we are all going through it, but nobody's talking about it. And so I think that is really a big part is I love what you are doing at your company. Talk about the stories in those times that you have together, the difficult times and let people feel comfortable talking about it. Why are we comfortable saying I am going to leave work early to go take my kid to the dentist, versus I need to leave work early to take my mom to the doctor. So things like that just normalize the conversation to destigmatize.

Lois Stoddard (12:37):

I would just say normalize the conversation, but also understand that there is no clearcut definition to caregiving. Yes, quite frankly. Caregiving for me, caregiving for you. They are too very, very different solutions. And I think one of the things that is, we talk about the legal plan. The legal plan has over 80 things that you know can solve for. And what is interesting when you are meeting with someone who handles benefits is they are like, but do you solve for this or will it handle this situation for this person? And I think that because it is not a clear cut definition, it is really hard for people to figure out what is the solution that is going to solve for all of my employees and all of their very, very different needs. So listening is key. Yeah. I do feel in my experience, the conversation is definitely bubbling up more and more and more. We have 5,000 customers. Caregiving for us has been the number one topic in our stewardship meetings this year alone. That is the thing that we are talking about at every single meeting. Well what is caregiving? Is it just elder care? Is it just that

Lisa Dollenbach (13:50):

Excites me to hear that. So that is different than priors. I think that is great.

Lois Stoddard (13:53):

it is different than entire years. I am seeing a major, major shift.

Lisa Dollenbach (13:57):

And I think it is interesting that the care caregiving,

Lois Stoddard (14:01):

You said you were

Lisa Dollenbach (14:02):

One need your coffee, I did not have coffee.

(14:07)

The caregiving dynamic I think that we do not talk about when we think about how do we support employees is there is the whole dynamic of okay, I am going to take care of them, whoever they are. But then there also is, which I found personally, there also is often a dynamic that goes on in the family helping to care. So with my siblings, that was an extremely stressful situation cause we did not agree on what to do. So that becomes very stressful. And then PS, while I am dealing with all them and the person I am caring with kind of went to hell back on the back end at home. So what the support, let us say I personally needed or employee personally to your point, can be very different. What I might have needed was just some support on the back end with my kids so I can go deal with these two pieces over here. It might be how do I care for that elderly person? It might be help in the mental stress I found with the family dynamics going on. So there is a lot of pieces that happen in it. And I do think that trying to have one solution that fits all, although I will back up and say let us start with trying to have more solutions and conversations and transparency around this one size that fits all is really challenging and difficult.

Lois Stoddard (15:11):

It is challenging, but I think there are solutions that personalize for the individual. So we partner, agree, agree with family first. And I think what is really unique is we have deployed that and market people are literally calling me and we deployed it to MetLife employees. We also deployed it to several customers. Oh my god, Sarah is amazing. Sarah will sit on my doctor's appointments, she will send me questions ahead of time. she will look up the definition of this, we will debrief the fact that they are tailoring for this individual. And then I will get another call about someone else, oh, they helped me do research on this and my case was handled. That way when you have something that can pivot

Lisa Dollenbach (15:54):

That

Lois Stoddard (15:55):

Person's needs, it is a game changer because that is what society's about right now. When we think about the pandemic and what is what, it is really enabled. I do not know about you guys, but for the first time I used Instacart, Uber Eats, all of these things that I was not really into cause I did not wanna pay the fee. And I think that a little cheap. I think that people are looking for solutions that are the Uber to their benefits because it is meeting me where I am at that point in time.

Dr. Lisa Rill (16:22):

And it is important to understand that there is so many more resources out there right now and different things will work for different people, but it is more, it is not just, let us throw a bunch of things, like more flex time and things, but really looking into the different types of resources that are out there, caregiver resources and things panels like this that are for education and things. And so it is really just taking the time to see what is out there that would fit your employees needs.

Alyssa Place (16:49):

And Lindsay, I mean when you are talking to clients, how has that conversation changed? I mean obviously it is maybe become more difficult for caregivers. Has your job become easier? Are you just throwing this benefit at everybody now? Well,

Lindsay Juris Rosner (17:01):

We have seen a really interesting shift. So we have been providing support for caregivers the market before it was cool since 2015, 2016. And supporting progressive employers. We have seen a really interesting shift. Well we have expanded our offering. So meeting caregivers where they are with different types of solutions. The kind of high-touch concierge is supportive for certain situations, more digital content and education. Then we have community. But what is interesting is we have seen a big shift from more kind of the tech companies, professional services, financial services companies, sort of desk workers as we call them to now we are seeing a real interest in embracing a caregiving support by workforces that do not have the luxury of being able to oh, step away and deal with a phone call, deal with a child's care needs or mom's care needs hospitals. we are seeing, we just this year launched with our first hospital, Memorial Heron, a great partner bars and launching with a bunch more now retail. We have a great partnership with Best Buy and they are really embracing caregiving. And then we just launched with Hilton. And for those companies, Hotels, hospitality, retail, what they see at hospitals, it is not just about like, oh, it is hard on in place. This is a major reason for missed shifts for people showing up late to shifts for turnover. People can not stay in their job if they do not have the care infrastructure to support their families. And so we are seeing a massive shift in the types of employers that are embracing caregiving, which has been great.

Dr. Lisa Rill (18:46):

And I just have to share, you know, can not ignore it anymore. Between 60 and 70% of your workforce are going to be caregivers. So you really have to just be aware of that.

Alyssa Place (18:57):

And for employers who are feeling like, I hear what you are saying, but we do not have caregivers in our company, they are not asking for anything. How can they dig in and talk to employees in that data driven way to figure out these are the benefits that we need and how are you doing that yourself?

Lisa Dollenbach (19:15):

I will speak to just overall we do a lot of quantitative as well as the qualitative in terms of just understanding what our employees need. I am sure many of you, we do a once a year, very in depth survey. There is a lot of questions in there about benefits de and i their careers. And it is the number one driver that in informs us of what we are going to put out there for our employees. The other thing that we do that is once a year and we have a very high engagement rate as well. So we have close to almost 90% of our employees will fill that out for which is extremely high. So we have a very good sense. The other thing though that is important to note I feel is once a year is not enough I think given everything going on in the world. And so we do a lot of pulse surveys and the reason and this, that is not rocket science by any means, but I think the really interesting thing we just did.

(20:06)

So our pulse surveys are planned throughout the year on different topics and then if something comes up, we switch the topic. So we just did one on the hybrid workforce. And the reason I think it is so important is because, so we are a fairly small organization, we are only 200 employees, but we are growing quite fast. As you grow, you are not going to be able to make everybody happy and you are always going to have pockets of employees that are not happier, have issues with what you are doing, the people that are going to dump on you on Glassdoor, fine. The poll surveys are so important because it is not that you do not want to listen and still hear from the smaller pockets, but they can be a big distraction in what you are doing. And the poll surveys help you see, am I largely on track or not with what I am doing?

(20:48)

And so as it relates to our benefits, as it relates to, for example, for our hybrid workforce, what we are doing there, it helped us see that largely people are really happy with what we are doing. We still have some folks over here who we need to address and make sure we are listening to and talking with and understand more what is going on there in case that is become a larger issue. But it helps you understand are you on track or not with what you are providing. And then back to Lloyd's point around it helps us then we can slice all the data to understand this age group, this department, these people need this, these people need that. they are not happy with that. So the data is just so important to understand how can you then be very specific and very intentional with what you are offering and how you are talking about it to your employees.

(21:33)

So the qualitative data is equally as important. As I mentioned already, we do a lot of things where we try to have places where people can come talk. We have the culture that is open door and then just lots of opportunities, whether it is the Ask me anything lines, the lunch with executives, all the different sessions that we do and whether people ask the questions or not and ours ask a fair amount. I think the fact that you we are doing it as an organization and any of us doing that sends the message, we want to hear from you and we want to know, which I think is huge.

Lois Stoddard (22:02):

I totally agree with you. I think that the Pulse surveys for us in particular, and as we have, we will work with an employer and develop a pulse survey, you get really rich feedback from employees that

Lisa Dollenbach (22:14):

You might walk, sometimes

Lois Stoddard (22:16):

Rich than you might walk. But with the annual survey, and we saw it earlier this morning, it is comp, it is my vacation time. It is the main priorities of what is going to change their life. But I think in those Pearl surveys getting to a specific topic, if that topic is important to an individual at your firm and you are not sure whether or not it relates, they are going to dive in and they are going to dive in a rich, rich way. So that is a good opportunity to collect honest feedback from your employees and really develop solutions that are targeted.

Lindsay Juris Rosner (22:47):

And I will add one final point, which I, I will just to add to everything that you both are saying, which is great. We have seen who does this really well is Facebook Now Meta they have been doing this for years. They survey their employees on caregiving, but they do not use the word caregiving. They use who is in your care circle. And the reason they do that is because they found that people as caregivers, they are like Lori mentioned, maybe taking care of multiple family members, they just do not think of themselves that way. They think of themselves as a daughter, a son or husband, wife, but they are actively involved in care and it is part of their life. They found that the language care circle is somehow kind of more open and allows people to respond. And you think of a company like Facebook as being pretty young. These tech companies have kind of younger skewing workforces and in their first year of doing this Care Circle language language, they saw the number one relationship in People's Care Circle. The most commonly answered was parent and then self, which I was like, wait, that is really confusing, but okay,

Alyssa Place (23:59):

Self care is important. Self-care

Lois Stoddard (24:01):

Is important. I agree with that. Yeah. I also think that their population in particular is very diverse. So when you think about your diverse employees, and I can speak for my own experience, saying you are a caregiver was almost like an insult. My mom came here to the United States literally on a boat and brought her nine siblings here. So talk about being a caregiver, but that was her responsibility. Some cultures take real pride in the fact that it is a great, I can take care of this individual in my life. So for me in particular growing up it was a responsibility that was assumed. And we also have to keep in mind that individuals are coming from countries that do not have the support system that we do. Jamaica for example, has no social security. So it is an automatic that my parents going to age out, they are going to stop working and there is something that I am going to have to do for them. And I think Facebook in particular, when you look at the demographics of their population, especially in their executive cohort, it is very diverse and they are experiencing it firsthand. So I think that is why they were able to get to those questions pretty cleanly.

Lisa Dollenbach (25:12):

But it is interesting, I found myself last, so my mom is 83 and we have had some issues with her, but she's pretty healthy. And my aunt and uncles, which I mentioned, this is just last month, I found myself being like, oh, oh, I am caring for elderly people. I mean why was that a aha moment for me? I think there is something about where you realize, even my own right aging, like, oh, I am at this age now, this is what I do and we will come back to this in a minute. Have I prepared myself and my own children yet? Or what could they have done differently to make this easier for all? I think, and back to the point, Lindsay, I were talking about earlier, no one wants to deal this does not enough to deal with in the world right now. Yeah, no one wants another big, hard, difficult thing to deal with.

Dr. Lisa Rill (25:55):

And just to go on your point about different words and things also the term care partner is coming out. I have written an article on that before cuz it is more than just you providing care for someone, it is an interaction between you and the person. It is very intimate. And so people are talking about changing the terms and also they do not know what they do not know. So it is hard for people to, if you say what kind of resources would help you, well what is out there? We do not know. So maybe talking about it in stories through the qualitative research where they might talk about their issues and that is when you can really get to see what their needs are and go from there.

Alyssa Place (26:35):

I would love to talk about some of those solutions. I mean, what are you seeing that is getting you really excited to see the change that caregiving has gone through? Lindsay, if you wanna talk about some of the changes you have made even with your own platform. I know that you have mentioned in the past that you have expanded to Spanish speaking caregiving. What are some of the things that are sort of developing in this space right now?

Lindsay Juris Rosner (26:59):

Yeah, we have developed a lot through the Pandemic I, we came into the pandemic ready to see some growth and we I think grew faster and more than we were even expecting and have taken a deep breath and done a lot of learnings and we see really fascinating kind of data, which I can talk a lot about. But one of the things is especially being a caregiver, being a caregiver is really hard for all the reasons Lisa especially talked about, especially what we see is the intersection of care and financial hardship is really challenging. So that is an increasing area of interest for us at Wealthy. And we have developed our platform where we have now centers of excellence. So we have care coordinators who work with families and then we have an entire team, a hundred people who are functionally organized. We have an entire Medicare team, a medicaid team, a veterans team in-home housing, financial because these are the components of care that people really struggle with and need the expertise on.

(28:10)

We see the other piece that gets really complicated with care is first generation individuals where you are not only navigating the system, you are playing the role of translator for your family members. We see this especially with certain workforces some of the ones I mentioned, tech workforces, certainly hospitality hospitals. We see it too where there are large swaths of the population that feel more comfortable engaging in a language other than English. And so yeah, we have converted full end to end of our platform in Spanish. Not just the platform, not just our service team members, but every marketing material, all the webinars, we do full end-to-end Spanish translation and then we are getting pushed by our clients who have international presence and they are saying this is not just a US issue. And even though we think that there are better kind of systems, there is more social support in certain markets in certain countries, there are different challenges that we have seen families face. And so we expanded in the last two years outside of the US now provide support in Canada, the UK and the Republic Ireland, and looking at more countries. India's the big, big need that we hear especially from the tech clients we support. But yet to everybody's point on the panel we have barely scratched the surface. The need is so massive and it is growing and the needs are diverse. And so as a business we are pushing ourselves to keep up with the needs that we are hearing people come to us with.

Alyssa Place (29:40):

Lisa, how are you addressing this at the Skim in particular?

Lisa Dollenbach (29:47):

So for those of you that do not know the Skim, the Skim is we are a women's media company and we really are focused on helping millennial women in particular live their smartest lives. And what we mean by that is how can we get them the information they need to know on the really complicated topics, how can we break that down so that they can be informed and take action and make their own decisions. So that can be across the news, finance, health, wellness, etcetera. So we would like to skim it, get it for our audience. So one of the things that we are looking at doing both for our audience, we are following again, most of our readers and our audience, our millennial women, but following them in their life journeys. And so this is going to become something that is very important for them and also for our employees is how can we skim what you need to do and educate them so that they can be prepared not only to what to expect in terms of what it looks like from a caregiving perspective as the parents' age and other people around you.

(30:44)

You need to be taken care. And then also for even us, what can we do so that we are prepared and how do we have those conversations with the people we will be caring for and with our children? Because again, people do not want to talk about it. And so how can we take some of that stigma away and difficulty away and educate in both directions and be prepared? And it can be little things, it can be little things around do you have a living will? Do you have powers of attorney? Do you have things in trust? Quiet Lloyd was getting all those things that people just tend to not know about and know they are not particularly difficult to do if you do not do them, how significant the consequences can be. Some of the other things we are looking at doing is we tend to be an organization that really in many, I am a big fan of the micro movement and in many small ways we will support.

(31:36)

So if we have someone who has a caregiving situation, we will provide them. I just gave the example of myself, the care that they might need to take care of their family on the backend. Even if it is something like, okay, so you have a meal expense for a couple times a week, do you need help with gas to get back and forth? Where you going? All those little things just help take some of the burden off of the employees. Those are the little things versus the larger things. I think one of the things that gives me hope though is as we collectively all of us, you are hearing us talk about this today, move to a place where this is something that is talked about and not so stigmatized and not discussed when, I do not know if any of you are familiar, we recently did a campaign called Show Us Your Leave.

(32:15)

And it was around paid family leave and it was something very small that we started when the build back better infrastructure camp, it was removed. We said, gosh, is there something we can do? And we said, Hey, show us your leave stories. This is something we did on social media. And people got out there and were telling us these really horrible stories of how they did not have leave and they did not have support. And that then turned into a larger campaign and this was all viral where we had almost 600 companies get out and post in this database that we now have what their leave policies are. And we were able to help educate people, this is what is out there, this is what is possible. And educate them how to go talk to their employees sorry, employers around, Hey, can I set up a lead policy? Can it be broader?

(33:01)

Can it include these different things? Even ourselves at the Skim, we have a pretty generous policy, we have 18 weeks, but it was not gender neutral. So we did that and we also included NICU care, which we did not have before. And so even we improved from that. So I mentioned all that because I am hoping that some of the smaller moves and things as we start talking about this and putting things in place will start a larger movement that really gets to the broader care that LO and all of you are talking about that supports a really critical need. I mean, some of the statures sharing,

Dr. Lisa Rill (33:32):

I really love what you are doing and saying and it, it is an important point to just take the time to let your employees know the benefits that they have, show them, teach them, train them so they can utilize them properly. If you give them a wearable tech or a new app, take the time to train them, show them because they are working and then they are caregiving an extra 20 plus hours. Any help you can give them to help them understand better their benefits is going to be really beneficial for them.

Lois Stoddard (34:04):

So I commend you as well, especially for advocating for the legal plan. From a legal plan perspective, a couple years back we came out with a package that was plus parents because the most common thing from the caregiving world I think we see is a estate planning. How do I handle the estate planning of my parents? How do I have them get a well done? And we probably deployed that four or five years ago, we have seen over 40% of our population take on that coverage and we cover up to eight parents. When you think about the modern family in-laws, grandparents, there is a lot of people in your households. And just recently we added caregiving as another tier of benefit. And that is why I said it is coming up more and more as a prior priority for employers to cover for. And I think when you are really listening to what your population wants, and for us, we have a website, we are listening to NPS feedback. I think the fact that we had that first tier coverage of plus parents made employers say to us, well, can you do more? Like you are helping me get estate plans for my parents and my grandparents, but what about all the other stuff that comes with that? And as we develop solutions, as we think about the future, that feedback for us is really, really vital. So having a solution, I gave the example of Sarah that can meet employees where they are to me is really the next year of focus.

Alyssa Place (35:27):

And I think when you talk about caregiving, there is, you are obviously working in service of others, but what about that caregiver? And I would love to know what either you yourselves or how you would recommend that that employer's help that caregiver and that employee take care of them and not just offer those benefits for them to help other people. So if anybody wants to share that self-care idea, how are you taking care of yourselves when you are juggling so many things?

Lois Stoddard (35:53):

So I think we heard it when you talked about Facebook. I am in the circle. Yeah, too. Our solution in particular with Family First focus on focuses on the caregiver as well. So they are doing the diagnostic of here is what you need to support the individual, but hey Lloyd, how are you doing right now? What have you done for yourself recently? And when you get that question on the phone as a caregiver, oh well I am talking to you. I have this list of things that I need to you not get through. And they really stop you and say, are you making sure you are, you have goals of X, Y and Z? Are you making sure that you are achieving them as your weight fluctuated? And for a woman, that is a scary question. Yeah, it has. we are stressed. But getting back on track with what I am trying to achieve as an individual, I think having a partner that is going to hold me accountable as well, and it is not just me is really powerful.

Lisa Dollenbach (36:48):

And that is the piece, I mean that I feel needs such an underscore because if you are not taking time for self and you are not fueling self, can not be spiritually, physically what you need to do, you are not there for any, right. You need to start there. So I underline that

Lindsay Juris Rosner (37:03):

We have this mantra wealthy about helping caregivers unburden and uplift. We just see people so many, especially women, men too they are just totally exhausted, physically, emotionally exhausted. And so yeah, very similar I think to family first. It is always been part of the wealthy way to really tune in to the needs of that employee as they are taking care of others. We see caregivers have 26% worse health dealing with obesity and substance abuse. We see them, that is me more likely to suffer from anxiety, depression on their mental health challenges and heightened stress when we survey caregivers heightened stress to the point of suicidal thoughts. And so one of the things we see have just tremendous impact, very similar to what Louis said, is just seeing that caregiver for all who they are and all that they are doing and all that they are juggling. One of the things we saw early in our service delivery model is just even empathizing with the situation.

(38:14)

You are an incredible, incredible daughter and an incredible mom. You are juggling. So that is just like water works. Nobody says that in our healthcare system. you are the daughter, you are the annoying daughter asking all the questions in the hospital or in the doctor's office. Nobody wants to deal with you. Nobody sees that caregiver for the role and the importance and just the impact they are having. And that goes a long way. So I do not know if companies could do a, we see you caregivers campaign, we have seen some companies do that in interesting ways but it is something we do one, one one-to-one in our concierge delivery model.

Dr. Lisa Rill (38:56):

And that is so important. And what we try to do at Senior Life Source is education on aging. We say for all ages, we want preventative. We want education so that people are not stuck in just this crisis situation and trying to navigate. We wanna educate people ahead of time, make them feel comfortable, understand all the things that are out there. So it is not these scary terms. And so talking about it, educating and that is kind of where we are at is so that you do not have to be at it alone.

Alyssa Place (39:29):

And I would love to finish and everybody can take out there notebooks and take down that one takeaway tip that you wanna give to everybody here today. what is that thing that they can do when they leave this room to support their caregivers? What would you advise them to do today?

Lois Stoddard (39:46):

I would say if you have not done it, do a pulse survey on your population. Understand what their needs are and where they are at that moment in time so you can really provide them a solution that works for them. I think what you have heard us all consistently say is people want something that is going to take the burden off of their plate so they can be present where you need them to be. Nobody wants to leave their job. I think we all enjoy showing up at work. I do not want the medical professional calling me a lawyer or asking me all these questions because I get super aggressive in the room. I want someone to help me achieve what I am trying to achieve. And I am trying to become a professional and I am also trying to support my family in this new world. So really understanding what your employees are looking for.

Lisa Dollenbach (40:34):

So I was going to say the exact same thing. that is

Lois Stoddard (40:37):

Weed

Lisa Dollenbach (40:37):

Question. I know we did, we did

Lisa Dollenbach (40:42):

Ask the question. But I will also say in some way, you all are here today. you are going to go back to your offices with your employees, your teams have, oh, find a way to talk about this session and have the conversation start to talk about the fact that this exists and this is a need people have and you are going to have and just try to take the stigma away from it. Find a way to do that in your everyday conversations and meetings with your teams or with your companies at large. If there is a large team meeting where you can talk about, I was at this, it is something that we are going to really start really focusing on. And we need to all of you, all of us, because it is a reality of what each of us will deal with. I think that would do so much just for us societally at large. Is that a word, societally? I do not think this agreed

Lois Stoddard (41:27):

Up today. I am going to say it is. It is.

Alyssa Place (41:28):

Thanks.

Lisa Dollenbach (41:29):

Lloyd's there for me. that is good.

Alyssa Place (41:30):

I like

Lois Stoddard (41:31):

That. This is the L panel. we have all got a right.

Lindsay Juris Rosner (41:35):

Well I will do one takeaway for the employer and one takeaway for just all of us as individuals. The one takeaway for employers is I, I will just kind of echo what everybody said here just the more we can open up and share what we are experiencing as caregivers. I love the sacred time idea. I personally put on my calendar every day from five to seven is kid time. And I put it on there, and bedtime and dinner lost my mother-in-law a couple months ago and would put on my calendar visiting my mother-in-law or for her funeral. It put it on my calendar. It was visible, it was talked about. It was out in the open. Just trying to model the behavior of de-stigmatizing and normalizing what we are all kind of silently going through. So that is my ask of employers and then individuals, I will just say, I feel like we have a moral authority.

(42:27)

So darn frustrated every single day. We support families who are in total crisis. Total crisis. And we have a really high MPS score. It is where wealthy shines. We can save the day, we can be the heroes. But if we as a society, and we are going to start doing more around this, but if we as a society could start talking about planning for care, we plan for our deaths. We go to financial planners, we plan for our financial future. We do not plan to care. And it is shockingly expensive. we are all kind of one fall or phone call away from being in total crisis. Sorry, this is so heavy again. But we just need to have the conversation. We need to put some plans in place. We need to do some preliminary research. We need to have a sense of won't as a financial and then it is not as heavy and you can sort of anticipate. So nobody plans for care. I wanna start a big campaign. Maybe you all can help me to start talking about planning to care.

Lois Stoddard (43:29):

I think that is amazing. And I think when you understand someone's plan, what they want, that as a caregiver, it is just like, what do you really want in this situation? And it is too, you are in crisis mode. The person does not know how to respond or they can not respond. If you actually have that plan, you execute. It is so powerful to execute against and not be stressed as is this what mom really wanted in that moment? that is really amazing.

Dr. Lisa Rill (43:54):

And I think as employers, it is hard. You can not to say just, well, how do we help them do this? So reach out, bring in people to train your employees how to talk about things, what to look for and utilize that. And also then you can look at after you decide on the benefits that you want, look towards your data, who is utilizing the benefits now that you have have them in place? And then also look at the impact it has, not just on the employee, but also from a financial perspective with turnover and productivity. So those are the things I think you could add

Alyssa Place (44:33):

To. All right, great. Well we have one second to go. So thank you all so much for joining me today. And feel free to find us in the exhibit hall. we will be here the next couple of days. So thank you all. And that concludes our chat.

Lois Stoddard (44:47):

Thank you.