Aging America Affects Your Business in More Ways Than You Think

By Rieva Lesonsky

Americans are getting older—that’s no surprise. But while seniors can be a booming market for some businesses, for others, they’re creating new workplace issues. Nearly 10 million adult children over the age of 50 care for their aging parents (that’s one-fourth of all adult children), according to the recently released MetLife Study of Caregiving Costs to Working Caregivers. And working and non-working adult children are almost equally as likely to provide care to parents in need.

If someone in your work force is caring for aging parents, it’s having an impact on your workplace. The amount of wages, Social Security and other benefits caregivers lose by taking care of aging parents is estimated at close to $3 trillion over their working lifetimes; per working caregiver, the average is more than $300,000.

The impact on working caregivers is more than just financial, of course. Adult children 50+ who work and provide care to a parent are more likely to have fair or poor health than those who do not provide care to their parents.  And while both sons and daughters were about equally likely to provide care, women were more likely to provide actual physical assistance, while men were more likely to provide financial assistance.

What does it this trend to your business? First, every workplace is likely to be impacted by the aging of America. Be sensitive to the needs of working caregivers caring for a parent, just as you are to parents in your workplace caring for children. To get the most productivity from your workforce, you’ll want to help them manage both their responsibilities with the parent and with their jobs. Some ways to do this include:

• Offer flexible hours so employees can fit their schedules around the needs of aging parents.
• Create policies so working caregivers can take time off for things such as taking parents to the doctor or other appointments that may occur during typical work hours.
• Consider allowing employees to work at home, either occasionally or as a regular policy; this could help them better balance their caregiving and work duties.
• Be sensitive to employees’ stress and emotions. Sometimes being understanding is all it takes.
• For a caregiver providing financial assistance to a parent, money may be a big motivator. For someone who’s providing physical care, time off may be more valuable than money. When motivating employees, consider whether comp time or a monetary bonuses will be most rewarding for that person.

In all your policies, it’s important to be fair but also to stay on the right side of regulations regarding employees. Caregivers are typically older employees, which can be a sensitive area—you don’t want to discriminate. Talk to your attorney or an HR consultant to make sure your policies aren’t running afoul of any laws.

Image by Flickr user Ann Wuyts (Creative Commons)

This entry was posted on Monday, August 1st, 2011 at 6:00 am and is filed under Small Business, small business, Workforce. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.


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