Employers across the country are feeling overwhelmed and burnt out from analyzing and balancing the costs, utilization and effectiveness across their benefits ecosystem for their employees.
Even with robust well-being benefits, almost half of employees are still feeling stressed on a regular basis. It’s important for employers to base support around the whole of their employee’s well-being because the most effective benefits are ones that employees can personalize to their needs.
During the pandemic, HR departments worked hard to find solutions to the sudden problems their workforce was experiencing. How do you support employees who are no longer in an office? How do you help when the world is changing and there’s uncertainty in all aspects of well-being?
HR teams did their best during times of crisis—providing employees with benefits that had the opportunity to make their workforce’s lives easier. But HR teams are now left with a tangled employee experience that is made up of programs employees don’t understand how or when to use.
With HR professionals and employees alike still feeling overwhelmed in the benefits space, the solution to it all is to provide a benefit that takes a holistic approach to total well-being.
“It can seem counterintuitive to add yet another benefit when your employees are struggling to use the benefits that are currently available to them,” said Lisa Leighton, Cariloop’s VP of Development. “But employees need one-on-one support to get the help they need whether they’re caring for themselves or a loved one.”
With almost 60 million employees identifying or qualifying as a caregiver in the U.S. and Canada, it’s more important than ever to consider an inclusive, holistic benefit that provides resources to a large portion of your employee base. They may have access to pieces of care—like backup care or maternity support—but an inclusive, all-encompassing benefits solution provides employees with all forms of caregiver support in one place. With one-on-one guidance through all kinds of life events, employees can learn to use their existing benefits ecosystem to solve their needs.
In most cases, caregivers need to utilize other benefits their employer provides in order to work on a caregiving need. If an employer provides Cariloop access to the company’s workplace benefits, a Care Coach can work with employees to point them to valuable resources an employee already has in their toolbox. Existing benefits available to the employee are always a Care Coach’s first line of support—like health insurance, EAPs and wellness apps.
Care Coaches also cut through difficult legal and healthcare jargon employees will likely encounter on their journey, acting as translators to help them better understand a new diagnosis, a medical bill, a Power of Attorney or the next steps in treatment.
“Caregiving support benefits are designed to support the entire employee population, not just specific segments,” Leighton said. “Cariloop’s Care Coaches provide dedicated support to all employees, whether it’s a working mom, an LGBTQ+ colleague navigating gender affirmation for their partner or a recent graduate supporting aging parents while paying off their college loans.”
At Cariloop, we often say that there are two kinds of people: those who are caregivers and those who will be caregivers in the future. Providing dedicated caregiver support benefits not only makes employers’ time and money invested go much further, but it also allows employees to better understand and utilize their benefits package, providing solutions for your employees struggling to balance work and home responsibilities.
If you would like to determine if an employer-sponsored benefit is right for your caregiving employees, contact us.
