Supporting Employee Caregivers

“Today over 70% of our workforce today is an active caregiver either part-time or full time in capacity. But that perception gap is real. Most C suite executives today only think that their workforce is about 20 to 25% caregivers so that’s a huge gap in what we’re actually facing in reality at home outside of work. They’re missing that data that tells them more information about who their workforce really is, and what they are experiencing on a daily basis.”

Sarah Johal, employee rights activist and serial founder of ERGs (employee resource groups)

One in six U.S. employees are spending an average of more than 20 hours per week providing assistance of some kind to a friend or relative. Caregiving can be beautiful, an honor, and a deeply fulfilling part of our lives. But it can also be a financial, social, emotional strain — and it certainly affects productivity and performance at work. Working caregivers are experiencing heightened stress, depression, and trouble sleeping.

In this episode, Sarah Johal joins us for an insightful discussion on some of the different ways that inclusive leaders can take better care of employees who are taking care of others.  

Sarah Johal is an employee rights activist and is a serial founder of ERGs (employee resource groups) that have been featured by Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Slate for her successful advocacy expanding working-family policies in the workplace. She is sought after for her suggestions to employers on how to de-stigmatize caregiving in the workplace, showing them they’re not alone and providing help and resources. 

Watch the interview:

Or read on for the transcript

Queing (she/her/queen): Welcome back to Voices. We are having a very important, insightful, and inspiring, but the in-your-face conversation today about the support that is needed in the workplace for working parents and caregivers and we’re really grateful that we have Sarah Johal with us today. She is an employee rights activist, and you’ll learn a little bit more about her work later, but we’re going to get right into this conversation that needs to be had and needs to continue to be had. So please bring this up in your ERG groups and bring this up in leadership, bring this up in surveys because we’re behind as it relates to other countries especially when we think about things like parental leave and all of that. Let’s talk about how we can catch up and at least how we can make a difference in our own corner of the world. Sarah, thank you so much for being here.

Sarah Johal: Thank you so much for having me. Wildly appreciative of addressing these important topics that really do impact almost everyone in our shared communities and workforces. So wonderful to be here.

Queing (she/her/queen): You know, I’m glad that you said that. You just said it impacts everyone because some people have this idea of what a caregiver is. A caregiver is a mom who just had a baby or a dual career couple who’s adding to their family in that way. Or they see a caregiver as maybe it is in today’s age, a millennial or a Gen Xer taking care of an aging parent but there’s more to what a working parent and what a caregiver is. So, let’s just start breaking that down. What are your thoughts about that?

Sarah Johal: Yes, it’s absolutely true. Most people who are caregiving in some capacity don’t even resonate or identify with the word caregiver even though that’s exactly what they’re doing day in and day out and how I have defined it over the past several years is really anybody that you are caring for in capacity within your chosen circle of family and friends, you are caregiving and what that looks like in practice could mean taking your sister to her chemo treatments three times a week, checking in on your elder neighbor when you get home from work in the evenings to planning your return to office experience after having your first child. There are all these life moments. At some point, we know the data tells us that you are most likely going to have some type of caregiving responsibility at some point in your life and career journey. And even knowing the stats today over 70% of our workforce today is an active caregiver either part-time or full-time in capacity but that perception gap is real. Most C-suite executives today only think that their workforce is about 20 to 25% caregivers. So that’s a huge gap in what we’re actually facing in reality at home outside of work.

Queing (she/her/queen): Right. That is huge, over 70% and if you were to ask these leaders about their culture, they would probably describe them as family friendly. We have family values. What do you think they are overlooking that is right there in your face like back in the day when grandma said things like you can’t see the forest for the trees? What is that in-your-face thing that although we’re hearing, you’ve got family values, or we are a family first corporation? What are they missing? What are they not seeing?

Sarah Johal: Right at the bat, they’re missing that data that tells them more information about who their workforce really is and what they are experiencing on a daily basis and that’s why for several years, myself and other colleagues in this space have been asking more businesses to identify caregivers in their diversity and inclusion talent strategy. Already out of the gate most people do not know how many caregivers they have on their teams and that is hugely valuable data to make sure that you’re thinking about their employee experience from day one. It also is really putting those types of practices into place that they can genuinely blend work life. I never say balance because I don’t think that’s ever based in reality. It will always be a blend of work life.

So, what does that really look like in practice by your day-to-day managers and decision-makers? Is there a culture of having important meetings at 7, 8, 9 am during that window hour of school drop off and pick up? It does not have to cost anything to adjust to say, hey, we’re going to have all of our important team key meetings between the hours of 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM. We know that doesn’t always work; time zones don’t wait for anyone if you are in a global multiregional space. But little moments like that can go a huge way of adjusting to make sure you really are trying to include everyone and every experience there.

Queing (she/her/queen): Right. What you’re getting to is work culture and that is where that transformation can happen. But to your point about asking questions and how they need to identify who the caregivers are and back to what we talked about earlier, the fact that some people don’t even realize that they are in a caregiver position. What are the specific types of things? Cause we do these surveys. Everybody gets the employee survey. They may not be asking the right questions, or they think that they are, but that question is not going to reveal what they need. Specifically what types of questions should they be asking to get the data that they need and so that employee who is taking their cousin to dialysis every Tuesday and Thursday knows that, hey, this is for you?

Sarah Johal: Absolutely, and I think a lot of the work in that space. I want to give credit to Joseph Fuller, who has worked through his body of research with Harvard Business Review to come up with a suggested list of those questions to pose to…

Queing (she/her/queen): Okay.

Sarah Johal: …key players and build into your survey mechanisms or your HRIS systems to be able to do that at scale. And to your point, it can really be a small, nuanced change of, instead of asking the worker, are you a caregiver? You could morph that question into do you take care of someone either partially or fully on a regular basis. I think it’s really helpful when people see the magnitude of options of what it does mean to care. Are you caring for a family member or friend part-time or full-time? Does this person, or does a person depend on you, for care and daily life support? So really just thinking about the questions and again, don’t be so hung up on the term caregiver because there’s still a lot of education to be had of understanding what that really means in practice.

Queing (she/her/queen): Thank you. And one of the things that have been making the difference is this tending to care pledge. Could you talk to us about that too?

Sarah Johal: Absolutely. So, one of my brilliant colleagues, Amy Henderson is the founder and CEO of TendLab, and her body of work has really stemmed from our shared call to action on employers on this measurement question and within our community of us, within our parents, and tech alliance. That is our community where myself and Amy and others got involved early on many years ago of really bringing this question up more, and her and the two brilliant students Lola and Pilar are founders of Project Matriarchs, and they help address the gap in awareness about these caregiving issues with Gen Z and younger college students that aren’t even thinking about this world. But let’s give them the arms up before they’re entering the workforce and finding that students genuinely care about these intersectional topics.

So, between TendLab and Project Matriarchs, they created the tending to pledge campaign activation of going to businesses and saying, will you pledge to measure and identify caregivers as part of your inclusion talent work? And the unfortunate resounding response that they got across their campaign was a majority of no’s from business leaders. And when they pressed in on, we will keep this data secure. This isn’t meant to be used to overtly share that information. It’s meant to really again, improve the career trajectory for parents and caregivers and a majority said no, simply because they don’t have to. That is just not a data segment that companies in the US are required to submit in the way that they are required in EEO data by the federal compliance on race, gender, other identifiers. So that is a piece that we’re consistently asking companies. They’ve gotten some early adopters to begin measuring that in practice this year. Even further would be even to submit that so, there’s real transparency behind what all of this looks like as well.

The reason why measurement is so important, it goes back to naming the challenge that our workforce is, is really facing. If we take the current stats that motherhood bias is the top driver to our gender and our pay gaps, but you never hear motherhood bias pop up in the world of DEI communications or talent strategy. Same thing. One in five mothers are experiencing pregnancy discrimination at work, but we’re not hearing pregnancy discrimination as part of that DEI talent strategy. So, the very first part is we have to get more companies and business leaders to name those challenges out loud. Once we begin naming them, then they realize they’re on the hook for how they’re going to solve and measure that challenge long-term.

Queing (she/her/queen): Thank you. It’s so much in there what you just said. I am surprised and very disappointed to hear that some of the reasoning was we don’t have to. So, do you think that this should come from the federal level, or should it be left to state legislatures, or should it be something that global companies should do? So, if you’re based in the Netherlands and you have this dream package, the way that they honor families in these other countries, and we can get to that later you all. But should it be that if you’re a global company, then you should commit to it since you’re doing it in these other areas? Should it be the states doing it? Because for these people who are saying, well, we don’t have to, do you think they should be made to, and I’m wondering what the response would be socially…

Sarah Johal: Yeah.

Queing (she/her/queen): …if it were made that way.

Sarah Johal: Yes. At a minimum, I fully believe there should be a minimum federal requirement. It is a human basic right and a basic health right that we are denying our own citizens and our own parents going through that experience here. Not just parents, but caregivers who need that paid family leave time in the moments that matter. Yes, I think back even to my own experience where a lot of my advocacy started because at that time in the startup company I was at, I was very much questioned, very much discriminated for taking the amount of paid leave that I felt I needed during my first pregnancy and that was still far below the World Health Organization benchmark of 24 weeks minimum. We are so far away from just even getting companies to be okay with 12 weeks of paid leave for that type of example. So yes, at a minimum, I think we should have a federal benchmark. I think businesses that are global it would behoove them to really make sure that their US policy is on par with their other countries’ policies if they want to remain competitive at that global level here in the States.

Queing (she/her/queen): Got down a note as you talked about some of the things that…, and I’m sorry, you had to go through that, Sarah what you went through in those early years of being a mom there. And I know that it would be nice to say, oh, but it’s a good thing it’s not like that anymore. But a lot of women are dealing with this, and I want to get into this stigma around leave. I recently heard Robbie Green, who is one of Talking Talents Executive Coaches. She talked about how there’s almost this thinking that leave is like a vacation or something. That when someone is giving birth, they’re going home and maybe they rest for a couple of days, and then they’re just, oh my baby and you’re dressing up and you’re taking pictures for Instagram and that’s what you do all day and then you go to brunch or something the next day with the baby in the stroller like it’s a vacation.

She says, it is a vacation, but for the baby, not for the parents, and that there’s physical, mental, and emotional healing that is taking place and all of these other things that folks need care then the mental part you’re now a professional and a parent. You now have this new identity as well, even if you’re adding. So, what needs to happen with managers and leaders within an organization to help them to see leave differently, and also to this, how can people themselves see leave differently? Because what I do understand about men and fathers, or let’s just say secondary caregivers, that’s anyone other than the birthing parent yeah, is there’s almost a stigma around taking the leave? When they do take it, it’s like, wait, he’s taking 16 weeks. I saw a LinkedIn post and the person who posted it was taking seven months and you should have seen the comments in there. People, their minds were blown. They weren’t being critical, but there was a tone of you really doing that. What happens after this? So yeah, just the stigma around it.

Sarah Johal: Yes. I really think we can trace that stigma all the way back to when the US made the huge mistake, intentional, but huge mistake right after World War II when women were adjusting being in the workforce at scale. Most of our peer countries adapted to that new world and quickly had to figure out how are we going to sustain keeping women in this workforce because of the benefits that are clearly there for both sides. The US went the opposite direction. It dug in its heels, and it actively tried to force women back out of the workforce and truly…

Queing (she/her/queen): So true. It was, oh, thank you for holding down the factory. You can go home now, we’re back.

Sarah Johal: That’s exactly it and truly from our culture of corporate America we haven’t changed anything since then. Our entire templates of what it means to be a successful leader are still based off of that notion and that moment in history. So, when we say that we have work to do to redesign what that template looks like because every culture at every company has their own template. What does it mean to look like and be like, and sound like a successful leader in this organization? Those templates need to be torn down and redesigned because they were never healthy, and they were never inclusive. They’re still built on these toxic practices, and this thought leadership that there isn’t room for women or people that don’t look like white cis male men leaders. We’re still back in that thought leadership track. We have to change that, and that’s what gives me so much optimism is seeing newer generations saying, of course, that’s a broken template. Of course, we have to change things and fix things and that’s why we’re seeing the rise of employee advocacy. We’re seeing the rise of ERGs and affinity groups, because again, that course corrective work is still there and we can’t keep expecting it to be on individual contributors to make all of that change, as well.

Queing (she/her/queen): As you were talking about what happened around World War II and how women were just sent back home. It made me think about the changes, even in our recent times with the pandemic, which is still happening people.

Sarah Johal: Yes.

Queing (she/her/queen): So, how has that impacted working parents and the caregiver experience as well? And the reason I want to put caregivers in this is because there was a lot of focus on school-age children being at home and the need for care and daycares and summer camps being shut down and all of that. But there are people who have responsibilities to others who are not school-age children as you know. So, how has that impacted the world of working parents and caregivers and what do you see happening let’s say a decade from now when we’re looking back on that era? What would you like to have been able to say happened as a result of this now working parents and caregivers are flourishing and really feel included and people are leading truly family first?

Sarah Johal: Yes. That future vision, I think about all the time, and it really does mean building your org at every level where intersectional care is centered as your core value. And we’re not there yet, but there are a few, and I can think of one or two, maybe on one hand of companies that are genuinely leaning towards that type of discipline. Patagonia automatically comes to mind.

Queing (she/her/queen): Okay.

Sarah Johal: They centered caregivers from the get-go. Not only do they have a longstanding kind of reputation for supporting caregivers, working parents, they built onsite childcare as part of their employee experience. They are now one of the first and few bold brands to be speaking out against the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. You see that in practice, inside their company, outside their company. But what the pandemic really did, I think on kind of the positive sides and negative sides. Again, it really woke up corporate America all the way to individual mom-and-pop business owners. This topic of what do working families really need. I think there’s just so much more awareness, education, and empathy that really has grown since the pandemic hit. Again, things like remote or hybrid or flexibility work are things that we’ve been asking for well beyond the pandemic.

Queing (she/her/queen): Yes.

Sarah Johal: Particularly for parents that have kids with special needs, for those that are taking care of their aging parents with dementia. These are the things that they have always needed. The silver lining has been now there’s really no excuse not to know what they need anymore. So, I think that’s been the world of good that has come out is that there’s a lot more language. There’s a lot more intent to really start investing in these structural challenges together. But I want to read you a survey data point that I just read this week and I’ve been losing sleep over it, so I want to read it to you. Catalyst just put out a recent survey a few months ago. They surveyed over 7,000 workers across 14 different nations, and this is what their stats said. Three out of five employees believe their org’s Coronavirus-related policies for the care and safety of their workers are not genuine. And meanwhile, in white majority countries, an astonishing three-quarters of employees reported that their org’s racial equity policies are not genuine.

So, that was starting from 2020. That’s how workers are still feeling in 2022. That’s a massive problem and what we’re seeing again is either when you are asking for employee feedback, are you listening or are you using that data to intentionally not take action for what working families need? Because again, it goes back to that point of, they don’t have to. They don’t have to report on this. They don’t have to move on this, but we all know it’s not just the right thing to do. Businesses that do take action in supporting working families are performing better in the market and on the street as well. So, there’s real data to show all the benefits. Again, it’s getting over that bias and that lack of inertia to truly take action, make it more beyond performative and into practice.

Queing (she/her/queen): You know, it’ll be really interesting to see, and I’m bringing up Roe v. Wade because you mentioned it a few minutes ago. There’s been a lot of projection around the fact that we’re going to see an increase in birth rates in this country and we’re going to see an increase of adoptions potentially. So, whereas I was talking to some colleagues in the UK, and they were telling me about some research there that suggested that the birth rate has decreased. It’s expected to increase over here and again, more adoption. So, I’m thinking there’s going to be even more pressure or I’m hoping that there would be even more pressure for organizations to accommodate and support as best they can employees who have families, because we can’t on one end say… And when I say we I’m talking about the government. We can’t say on one hand, oh gosh, I probably should not have started this sentence. This might go over well with some of you, but I’m just going to say it.

Sarah Johal: Yeah.

Queing (she/her/queen): Are we saying on one hand that we want to protect children, but then on the other hand, as children are being born and more being born, we do need to support their families to be able to take care of them. What are we going to do with that? And not just send people out because what’s happening is a lot of people who gave birth over these past couple of years, they’ve chosen not to even go back.

Sarah Johal: Yes.

Queing (she/her/queen): So, it wasn’t even an issue of the paid leave or the unpaid leave. They’ve had to make decisions because they weren’t getting the support that they needed.

Sarah Johal: Yeah.

Queing (she/her/queen):  A lot of folks have just decided not to come back. The Great Resignation shouldn’t be a 10-year span because of these different issues here. So, I’m hoping that that is something that will happen as well.

Sarah Johal: Yes, or else they are going to pay for it down the road to all those points. If they don’t address these intersectional issues that absolutely impact their bottom line, they are going to be less competitive, short term and long term. They are going to pay more for filling in those disruptive losses in talent because of those lack of policies like paid leave, because of the lack of pay for sick time, or even to the point of not having gender-neutral policies. You had mentioned a great example of that is when you have a paid leave policy that is defined by primary versus secondary caregiver. Right away that’s not a gender-neutral policy. You are making all of the assumptions again based on that post-World War II timeline that one- it’s a woman and two- that there is somebody at home full time taking on all that unpaid labor to make the world run.

We know that’s just not the fact today and so when I think about that language it was actually right around the time that I was at a different startup. I had already become a new mom. I was maybe about two, three years in as a parent and was thinking about my own paid leave experience, how that rocked myself, how that impacted my husband. My husband actually was the primary caregiver while I was working full-time. He had to shift out of the workforce to become a stay-at-home dad in our scenario, went back to the workforce, and even in COVID, he was laid off of his next role. He’s now back as being our stay-at-home primary parent.

At that time, it was maybe around 2016 I was at a different startup and there was at the time a legal lawsuit that was brought to JP Morgan by one of their own employers who was a new dad. He wanted and needed to take paid leave, but they told him, no, you’re not getting that amount of time because you’re the secondary caregiver. Well, he won his lawsuit. So, at that time I was looking at our own company’s policy and saying, wait a minute, we’re using the same non-gender-neutral language here. There’s already a legal risk factor of using that type of language, of what that example showed. But again, what are we really saying and communicating to our workers in policy writing.

It was only working for some not all. And so that was really a catalyst for myself to one- start a parent’s ERG at that company, because there were warning signs on our culture and practice. They were starting all-hand meetings at 5:30 in the evening. People needed to go back home and feed their kids, that was not sustainable, or people were welcome to bring their pets into the office, but not their babies or kids when they needed to. So, that was kind of the catalyst for starting at ERG there, but it was also a moment to campaign the business leaders to change that policy. So successfully got them to. We not only expanded it to be gender neutral, we then expanded the amount of paid family leave provided to be more competitive than what our competition was providing. And we also expanded bereavement time to be from three days to three weeks paid leave as well. So really thinking about those moments in…

Queing (she/her/queen): Awesome Sarah!

Sarah Johal: Absolutely, and then six months after that went into practice, the competition answered. They then raised their paid leave practice globally to be gender neutral. So, all of a sudden, we’re impacting hundreds and thousands of workers in the industry to match what should have been there from the get-go.

Queing (she/her/queen): Wow! I just want to say thank you for all the work that you’ve done in that space, and you’ve impacted so many and when you think about it, when you’re doing this type of work, you’re really impacting generations. You’re making a difference in the life of that child and all of the people that love that child. As we think about the secondary caregiver. Yeah. How does that make someone feel valued? Back in the nineties, I think it was the nineties there was this show about these dinosaurs. I can’t remember the name of it, but it was a family of dinosaurs, and the baby would call the mother mama…

Sarah Johal: Yes.

Queing (she/her/queen): …and the dad was not the mama.

Sarah Johal: Yes. I remember that. Not the mama.

Queing (she/her/queen): So, it’s like are we telling the secondary caregiver you’re not the mama. We’re only going to take care of this person and only do the bare minimum for them, but definitely, we’ll give you some crumbs or something. So, this work is so needed. As we start to wrap up, could you give some advice to someone who’s listening, and they aren’t an affinity group. They aren’t an ERG group, and they have these issues going on. What is some low-hanging fruit that they can do even before the end of this year? We’ve got five months in this year. A lot can happen in five months. What is something they can do to just get the ball rolling and get their voices heard for these changes that need to happen?

Sarah Johal: Oh, I love that question. My first advice would be to get crazy-level curious. What that means is don’t be afraid to start asking the questions that could unlock more thinking and more motivation, and then ideally more investment in making your business more family first in practice. So, what that could look like is to start being curious and look into a mini audit of what is your competition offering to new recruiters or existing talent to increase and retain the great talent they already have. Are they showing that they actually have ERGs on their career site? Are they compensating their ERGs as they should? But even in the way that your own brand or your own team shows up, your career page is going to be one of those first landing storytelling opportunities to say how do I see myself as a working parent.

Queing (she/her/queen): Right.

Sarah Johal: Right away in what you are trying to sell as a future talent opportunity. Then even if you have insight from an industry-level perspective, what does seem to be the norm of what’s provided in not just benefits and policies, but really that day-to-day working culture with business decision makers, Going on Glassdoor and doing a little bit of hunting to say, what are people really saying there and are there some things and comments that I can glean from working parents of what it’s like at that company? So, even just trying to start there by asking those questions, start absorbing and observing what’s already in your space is a great, great place to start.

Queing (she/her/queen): Thank you. That is great because people are making decisions based on culture now, based on how are you taking care of people? I even recently heard some suggestions around HR leaders looking at changing their titles and their structure to make it just be about people so that you’re constantly communicating that this is about people first.

Sarah Johal: Yes.

Queing (she/her/queen): Yeah. People over policy.

Sarah Johal: That’s absolutely it, a huge shift into people-centric titles, org’s, and teams, and even more so an increase in talent brand positions and teams. They have to be more intentional of really breaking through the competition right now of what it means to be a great place to work here. But that itself is not enough to just say. It’s where the proof points are for sure.

Queing (she/her/queen): Yes. Which gets back to your original point. You got to have the data…

Sarah Johal: That’s right.

Queing (she/her/queen): …to do that. Yes. Sarah, thank you so much. How can folks read more about your work, get in touch with what you’re doing with your organizations?

Sarah Johal: Absolutely. Thank you for asking. Our shared nonprofit community is called Parents in Tech Alliance. You can go to parentstechalliance.com or you can find us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Membership is free. We have a coalition across the nation of change-makers like yourself at every level, single parents that are just starting their journey into the tech space. We are industry agnostic. You don’t have to be in tech to join us, to learn and share what’s working and what’s not and we have free online resources and tools to help you get started there. So, you can find myself on LinkedIn as well.

Queing (she/her/queen): Thank you, Sarah.

Sarah Johal: Thank you

Queing (she/her/queen): Thank you all for joining us for Voices.

Sarah Johal: Much appreciated.