HOW TO HELP UNPAID CARERS ON YOUR TEAM

How to help unpaid carers on your team

Around one in seven people in the UK juggles work with caring for someone who is older, disabled or ill. Every day, some 600 of them quit their jobs – and their skills and experience are lost to the workforce.

In May 2023, the Carer’s Leave Act passed into law, and will come into force next year. Employers will be legally obliged to allow unpaid carers up to one week of unpaid leave per year to provide or arrange care for a relative or dependent. This right applies from day one of their employment.

It’s a welcome development – but does it go far enough? Let’s take a look at how responsible employers can go above and beyond the new law to support carers – and boost recruitment and retention rates.

1. Find out who your organisation’s carers are

Caring responsibilities often creep up on people. Your employees may not always define themselves as carers, let alone talk about it in the workplace.

Therefore, it might be a good idea to include questions on employee surveys, or design a questionnaire solely about caring to help staff members share the responsibilities they might face. Use the findings to inform your approach.

You’re likely to find that carers skew towards the 45-64 age bracket, making them some of your most experienced and valuable workers.

2. Embed caring into your workplace policies

Once you know more about carers within your staff and who those carers are, you can invite their input into an overhaul of your workplace policies. Make sure first that this is something they would be keen to get involved in as this can be a sensitive topic.

As well as drawing up a dedicated carers’ policy (covering the issues in this blog), you should consider caring issues in all your policies and guidance. For example: how are you addressing caring issues in recruitment? Are your job ads off-putting for carers?

3. Train managers in carer awareness

Line managers are well placed to offer support, especially during one-to-ones and performance reviews. But they don’t always know how.

Carers Awareness Training for managers and senior leaders can provide valuable insights and examples of best practice. You could even appoint a Caring Champion at senior level to take caring issues to the top.

By helping equip your managers with more skills in how to help carers you help take some of the pressure off your staff to know when and what they might need.

4. Offer flexible working and leave

The new Carer’s Leave Act will come as a huge relief to many. But could your organisation go further?

Flexible working frees people up to take their loved ones to appointments, or perhaps have some much-needed ‘me-time’. Remote working allows employees to be on hand for their loved ones if an emergency arises.

And paid leave, even just for a few days, demonstrates that your organisation truly values its workers.

5. Provide and promote support for carers

Carers often face mental health and emotional issues such as isolation, stress and grief. There are organisations out there offering support – but they can’t always reach the people most in need.

So promote groups such as Carers Connect in newsletters, social media, noticeboards and your staff intranet, if you have them. Include details of helplines too.

And if your workplace offers an Employee Assistance Programme, make sure to cover it in your induction process, and publicise it widely.

Such gentle nudges could make a long-term difference to somebody in the difficult dual role of working and caring.

How can StaffSavvy help?

A flexible workplace takes careful management. StaffSavvy’s workplace management platform automates many standard workplace processes, helping you keep track of flexible and remote workers, and plan cover for absences.

Plus, you can enable your staff to self-manage in many areas, lifting the burden on managers.

StaffSavvy also offers a simple and flexible process for staff members needing to transfer shifts. They are able to easily communicate with managers, and other staff members, securely and privately.

If you are wanting to offer flexible or remote options for carers in your workplace, at StaffSavvy we have the option to enable remote clock-ins. Additionally, StaffSavvy has worked to make training and documentation a process that can be completed almost entirely online.

We also have the option to create questionnaires and forms that can be completed online and submitted securely. There is also the option for these questionnaires for staff members to be completed on their profile or before clocking in depending on whether you need something more like a daily check-in .

Andrew Treadwell20 June 2023