Carers Week 8th – 14th June

This week marks Carers week in the UK so it is a great time to reflect on how you can support your employees to balance their work life with their caring responsibilities. The Carers Week website remarks “This year, people across the country are continuing to face new challenges as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. Many people are taking on more caring responsibilities for their relatives and friends who are disabled, ill or older and who need support. They need to be recognised for the difficulties they are experiencing, respected for all they are doing, and provided with information, support and understanding.”

So how can you help your employees who have responsibility for caring for adult dependants?

Firstly, it is important to recognise that the needs of carers can be different from the needs of employees with routine childcare responsibilities, and the circumstances and milestones of caring can differ from those of routine childcare. Caring for adult dependants can be unpredictable and emotionally upsetting. The responsibility may be acquired unexpectedly, for example in the case of a sudden stroke or as the result of an accident; or perhaps the responsibility becomes greater over a period of time, for example as an elderly parent becomes frailer and needs additional support.

There are a number of steps that you can take to help and support employees who have caring responsibilities.

1. Carers Policy

Develop and communicate a Carers policy that sets out the support available to employees with caring responsibilities.

2. Policies and Procedures

Make sure that company policies and procedures in areas such as flexible working, equality, harassment and bullying take into account the specific needs of carers.

3. Support Services

Provide access to confidential support services or Employee Assistance Programmes where possible, or guide employees to external support services such as Carers UK and Carers Trust

4. Training

Train line managers to understand the issues facing carers and encourage a supportive approach towards employees with caring responsibilities.

5. Positive approach

Encourage a positive and open-minded approach to requests for flexible working options to agree workable solutions. Think about options such as:

6. Flexible working

Treat flexible working requests by employees with caring responsibilities with the same priority as requests made by employees with children.

7. Flexible leave

In addition to the time off permitted under the statutory right to take time off for dependants, be prepared to consider flexible leave requests to accommodate unexpected commitments.