Elder care obligations challenge the next generation

HR Magazine, July, 1996 by Kate Walter

EDUCATION AND COUNSELING SUPPORT

In addition to a resource and referral service, The Prudential sponsors a dozen brown bag lunch seminars covering various topics such as wills, estate planning and health. Some are run by the outside vendor; others are produced internally.

Prudential employees can also use benefits developed to address other issues to help meet their elder care responsibilities. "We offer a spectrum of alternative work arrangements," says Teehan. For example, employees may arrange a compressed 4-day week, telecommute from home, work from different offices, or change their employment status from full-time to part-time.

Office furniture manufacturer Herman Miller, Inc., of Zeeland, Mich., has been providing 5,000 eligible employees with elder care services since 1989. Local vendor Home Health Services runs a care management program for employees with primary care-giving responsibilities. Most live in nuclear families in Western Michigan and have older relatives nearby.

For those with relatives in the area, a nurse or social worker visits the employee and family, completes a personal assessment and develops care recommendations. If the elderly relative lives outside the area, the employee can receive information on resources and referrals in the parent's community. In both cases, care management staff members help arrange required services, monitor the situation, and decide when changes are needed. They also help families determine other sources of financial aid.

"We decided to use an outside vendor because we wanted a network of services that covers many communities," says Deb Bailey, director of rewards and recognition.

Bailey sits on the vendor's board of directors and in that capacity she went through a simulation of what employees experience from their first phone call through the interviewing process. "This gave us a feel for the quality of services," she said.

Herman Miller also makes financial contributions to Evergreen Commons, a senior center minutes from the company. The center provides adult day care, a noon meal and courses for seniors. Seminars are provided internally and externally and the company offers counseling through its EAP.

"What we're discussing now is how to make employees more proactive and preventive, rather than waiting for a crisis," noted Bailey. "We don't want to become paternalistic. We want our employees to develop self-sufficiency."

A COST-EFFECTIVE OFFERING

Philosophies and approaches to dealing with elder care have not changed much in the past few years; larger companies are usually the ones offering these services. Smaller companies offering elder care benefits tend to come from a progressive tradition.

"I see referral services trickling down into the smaller companies, because it's fairly easy to add," says Buck Consultants' Kidd. "But in smaller companies, until somebody really sees the need-like a CEO gets hit with problems - it's hard to convince them. They don't think they'll get enough return for it."

Although cost issues remain among the most understanding aspects of elder care, The Washington Business Group on Health applied its knowledge of elder care to data from a manufacturer with 87,000 employees. The group estimated what the company was losing in productivity and increased health care costs as a result of employees providing hands-on elder care. Although only 2 percent of employees were providing personal elder care, the company lost $5.5 million in productivity in a single year. Included in the analysis were costs for worker replacements, absenteeism, partial absenteeism, work day interruptions, crisis handling, supervision of care givers, increased physician care and increased use of mental health and EAP services.