Report highlights needs of unpaid carers – Employers are you doing enough?

A report issued by Carers Week highlights the personal cost to unpaid carers in terms of the impact on their own health and well-being.

Carers Week, is an annual event run on behalf of a partnership of 8 of the UK’s leading charities. Carers Week surveyed 3400 unpaid carers and found that caring for others often means they neglect their own health and well-being through lack of support.

Carers Week which aims to draw public attention to the plight of volunteer carers is the perfect opportunity for employers to review what they can do to support members of their own work force who also act as unpaid carers for relatives and friends.

In an earlier blog, “5 Reasons Employers Should Support Employees Who Are Carers” I pointed to the support that employers can give to their staff who are struggling to juggle the demands of work and caring for a loved one.

Employers are sometimes fearful of employing people who also have caring commitments and many people give up paid employment because they find it too difficult to manage both roles. But if employers could recognise how well carers respond to even just a little support in the workplace employers could avoid losing valuable employees and boost the confidence of the rest of their workers by demonstrating that as an employer they are sympathetic and responsive.

Encouraging staff to set up carers’ networks in the workplace and offering training and information to employees about their rights as carers and the support that is available to them both inside and outside the workplace can be enormously effective and have the longer term benefit of fewer lost days and staff who are carers more likely to stay in post.

More information about our training services for employees and managers including our training on employers’ responsibilities to employees who are unpaid carers can be found  here.