Keeping family care benefits up-to-date 

From eldercare, to childcare, and even petcare, employers would be wise to reassess their family care benefits to stay competitive and meet evolving needs. Here’s how to ensure your family care benefits remain relevant. 

Research conducted in 2023 indicates UK workers are more likely to be caring for adults aged over 65, than children under 15¹. Plus, a 2020 survey revealed that one in four working carers have considered giving up their job entirely due to struggles balancing responsibilities². Sandwich carers in particular, with dual responsibility for elders and children, suffer a deterioration in both their mental and physical health³.

Furthermore, as the UK population continues to age⁴, women are being disproportionally affected. Female carers are seven times more likely than men to be out of work because of care duties⁵. Critical to attracting and retaining female talent is recognising the extent to which eldercare responsibilities may force women to step back from their careers, compounding gender pay and benefits gaps.

A common issue may be feeling compelled to drop everything if their relative is unwell or has a fall. At this emotive time, there’s very little time to research emergency care. If they don’t already have someone they trust to step in or don’t feel able to ask anyone they know for support, they may be forced to take unplanned time off.

The Carer’s Leave Act has gone some way to reducing the strain on carers, by allowing them to take up to a week of unpaid leave a year for planned and unplanned caring. However, employers that go above and beyond this can significantly ease the burden.

Make sure you remind employees about existing eldercare benefits and access to guidelines on everything from flexible working and taking emergency leave.

If you have employee benefits software in place, you can use it to help employees easily access support in one place, instead of them having to wade through emails, the intranet and joiner packs to find the information they need.

49% of carers say they feel depressed⁶, meaning communicating emotional support also matters. An Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) can help carers by providing a service that allows them to talk through their challenges with an independent third-party.

Childcare costs remain a challenge, so signposting employees to government schemes and benefits matters.

However, these schemes can be complex to understand, with restrictions on which nurseries are in the scheme and limits on how much parents can earn to participate in certain benefits. Employers that help employees navigate the system, to unlock savings, can boost loyalty and engagement.

Emergency childcare is also essential, 76% have taken unexpected time off work for childcare⁸. Investing in support can be the difference between employees being able to attend work and meet deadlines or not.

In addition to supporting employees caring for elders and children, it’s also important to recognise other types of family care. Over half of UK households have a pet cat or dog who is considered one of the family⁹.

Having a sick pet, or pet care arrangements falling through is no less stressful to these employees than any other care challenge. By broadening your definition of ‘family care’ to include pets, you can make your family care benefits even more inclusive.

You could consider including access to pet care providers among your ‘care benefits’ or a reimbursement scheme for employees that incur pet care costs when travelling for work. Other pet benefits range from discounted veterinary care to vouchers towards pet food or contributions to a pet saving account. 

To ensure employees know what benefits are available, use your benefits technology to run a campaign, to let employees know about all the family care benefits available. Encourage them to go into their account and select what type of caring responsibilities they have – children, elders, pets – to deliver more communications tailored to each demographic.

Instead of designing your benefits to meet the needs of the majority, increased choice and personalisation allows more employees to feel supported. 77% of employees with access to personalised benefits say these meet their needs, compared to just 22% of those without¹⁰.

Increasing choice can be an administrative burden, but modern benefits technology and AI can not only automate access to benefits, but better understand employee needs to signpost them towards benefits in keeping with their needs.

While family care benefits will be seen as innovative in some industries, they will be seen as an expectation in others. It can be helpful to benchmark your offering against your competitors and align it with broader organisational goals. For instance, if reducing gender pay gaps and promoting more women into senior roles is a priority, how can better support for carers advance that?

Critical to success is ensuring support is immediately accessible via an app like Benefits You. If someone is dealing with a sick child and they can’t access emergency childcare, they may have to stay home or miss work to look after their child.

It’s also important to get senior leaders to role model using the benefits on offer. If employees see their manager using their back-up care, it will create a culture where employees feel safe discussing their challenges and seeking support.