Elder Care Pays Off For Everyone
Companies Are Finding That Helping Employees Care For Aging Parents Can Also Boost Their Bottom Line
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Play CBS Video Video Employers And Elder Care Companies lose billions of dollars a year when employees miss work to take care of their loved ones. Some employers are acting to ease the burden - and boost their bottom line. Kelly Wallace reports.
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Video Notebook: Elder Care Only On The Web: More than half of Americans say they worry about taking care of their aging parents. Katie Couric says both parties should sit down and have a talk about the future.
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Video Sibling Disputes Over Care Many families have disputes between siblings about how to care for an elderly parent. Mediation can smooth communication between siblings. Thalia Assuras continues the series "The Caregivers."
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Linda Blossom says monthly support meetings held by her employer, Freddie Mac, have made a big difference in helping her care for her mother, who's battling breast cancer. (CBS)
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Interactive HealthWatch Explore health issues including AIDS, cancer and antibiotics.
"She acted a little stressed for a while and then all of a sudden, I didn't see the stress anymore," says her mother, Gladys Tulloch.
What changed? Blossom started attending monthly support group meetings at her office, where, on company time, she and other workers can vent and share tips about caring for mom and dad.
Blossom says it's made a "huge, huge" difference. "I've told people, it's all about people helping people," she says.
Mary Ann O'Connor, director of benefits for Freddie Mac, says it also protects the company's bottom line.
"By offering something like this, it definitely helps Freddie Mac because they're coming to work and they're being productive and they can focus on the job at hand," O'Connor says.
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That's important, because companies lose a staggering $33 billion a year when employees miss work or quit to care for their loved ones. As the workforce ages and people live longer, those numbers are only going to go up.
Johnny Taylor, who tracks workplace trends, says corporations that once were pressured to provide better child care are now going to have to provide better elder care.
"Employees will begin to demand it because it will be such a strain on them personally and financially to provide for their elder parents and their grandparents and the like and they'll call for it," Taylor says. "It'll become a part of the new benefits package."
Corporate America has a long way to go. According to a survey conducted by Taylor's group, Society for Human Resources Management, for CBS News, only about one in four companies offers any elder care benefits.
McGraw-Hill allows workers to add mom or dad to their health plan. Prudential Financial offers legal help to prepare living wills for elderly parents. Blossom's company, Freddie Mac, provides emergency elder home care for which employees pay just $15 a day.
What businesses get in return, according to Blossom, is not only greater productivity, but loyalty.
"If they didn't understand it here, I wouldn't be here," she says.
For this mother and daughter, that understanding means everything.
"It's been a real blessing," Tulloch says. "I'm really very blessed."
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Our company and the people who work here do alot for organizations that reachout to those less fortunate. Perhaps we can reachout to some of these people that work so hard here at our plant and are caregivers also.
I was once someone who had to take care of a loved one with alzhemiers while working and I know I would have appreciated someone to talk with from time to time. I'll keep you posted as to my progress in my newly found endeavor to create an avenue for caregivers.
Not all of us can take care of older parents. We don't have "resources", money or physical ability.