There is a perception that new legislation, such as the carer’s leave act coming in on 6 April 2024, is all that’s needed to fix a problem. It would be easy to assume that carers in your workforce will be coming forward in droves to take their newly-available week of unpaid carer’s leave per year, but there are many reasons why this may not happen.
Most fundamentally, many people don’t realise they are carers and therefore won’t realise that they are entitled to carer’s leave. In fact, according to Carers UK it takes people an average of two years to realise they are a carer and not simply a wife or a son or a parent simply doing a bit extra.
As well as the issue of carer identification, there is a reluctance among employees to admit to caring responsibilities. The narrative around working carers tends to be negative, with a focus on productivity and absence challenges. According to Harvard Business School, 28 percent of carer employees feel their caring responsibilities affect their career, including less interesting/challenging work, salary and bonus, promotion, and a lack of career coaching/mentoring. More than half (52 percent) of all employees felt that the culture of their organisations was not as supportive as it could be towards caregivers.
Another barrier to people taking up carer’s leave is the stigma around taking time off or working flexibly.
In the academic publication Social Indicators Research author Heejung Chung wrote that more than 39 percent of workers say that they have ‘suffered’ due to colleagues working flexibly and 18 percent of flexible workers have experienced harm to their careers because of it.
Workload can be a further barrier as juggling work and care is extremely challenging. Taking carer’s leave may create a situation where employees have less time to do the same amount of work.
And of course, if carer’s leave is being offered as unpaid, many won’t take it due to financial challenges. Currently a quarter of carers are cutting down on essentials like food and heating due to the cost of providing care.
It is clear there are many barriers to the act making the impact that is needed. But employers can help address this.
Bring the role of carers to the attention of your whole workforce
Leverage opportunities like carers week to share information via your most-used channels. Repost information from leading charities like Carers UK and Carer’s Trust or take insights from Yurtle’s LinkedIn page.
Promote the work you are doing to support carers, and include the definition of an unpaid carer to help people understand. Consider creating a carer’s policy that clearly explains benefits, definitions and support available.
Invite people to join a carer’s group to show employees they are not alone. HR departments can offer to arrange and promote online or in-person meetings of carers to support each other and share stories. Peer support is incredibly powerful and it may be appropriate for the meetings to be carers-only for the most part to allow for this.
Ensure all managers and supervisors are carer-aware
Consider including some bite-size training in your management development and diversity, equality and inclusion programme to ensure carer colleagues are being considered.
Employers can equip all line managers with the tools to recognise the tell tale signs of caring. Signs can include colleagues sharing that they are looking after someone, for example. So consider ageing parents or a partner or child diagnosed with a long-term illness as scenarios that might trigger caring responsibilities.
Other indicators could be changes in routines, including more irregular start and finish-times, receiving urgent calls and messages at work, general increase in stress levels and tiredness, and challenges with concentration, missed deadlines and a change in quality of work.
Further signs could come in the form of changes in finances leading to requests for salary reviews or advances, requests for changes to work patterns, location or more remote working, short-notice leave requests and using up leave allowances part way through the year, as well as other colleagues sharing concerns with you
Ensure that managers and supervisors know to ask questions sensitively and with a solutions-focus, and reassure colleagues that you are a carer-friendly employer with policies in place to provide support. Also, aim for a balance between enabling carers to be seen and have their needs met without that being their defining characteristic.
Leverage tools at your disposal to identify carers centrally
If you use time recording or absence management systems, they can be used to detect changes that might be due to caring. Look for changes, more ad-hoc single and half day annual leave bookings, lateness etc.
Initiate contact with a supportive message about help being available if there is a challenge affecting attendance, and signposts to policy and any benefits that are in place.
Always remind supervisors to ask sensitively if there are any caregiving or health reasons for changes, especially before considering any disciplinary or performance management processes.
By creating the right conditions for caregivers to feel able to take leave and ask for support when they need it, employers can ensure the carer’s leave act effects meaningful change in the workplace.
More on the carer’s leave act
From 6 April 2024, employees will be entitled to unpaid leave to give or arrange care for a ‘dependant’ who has:
- a physical or mental illness or injury that means they’re expected to need care for more than 3 months
- a disability (as defined in the Equality Act 2010)
- care needs because of their old age
The dependant does not have to be a family member. It can be anyone who relies on them for care.
Employees are entitled to carer’s leave from their first day of work for their employer. Their employment rights (like holidays and returning to their job) are protected during carer’s leave.
