Workplaces are key agents in supporting (or hindering) their employees in achieving personal balance between work and caregiving. Despite the growing evidence that asserts the business case for workplace support of carer-employees (CEs), economic estimates are sparse. It was previously found that workplaces may expect to lose $8,674 per CE, if the CE is unsupported by the workplace.[i]

However, COVID-19 has changed the dynamics of both work and caregiving. In a soon to be published paper, we describe our study that assessed the cost-implications of a workplace intervention to generate carer friendly workplace culture change. This study was implemented in a large engineering company during COVID-19.

The intent of the study was to determine if the workplace intervention was cost-saving in the short-term by assessing the following questions:

• Does the intervention avert costs (absenteeism, presenteeism, turnover, and impact to coworkers) for the employer?
• Do these averted costs outweigh the implementation costs of the intervention?

The approach was to monetize workplace caregiving-specific absenteeism, presenteeism, turnover, and caregiving impact on colleagues, and examine changes in these costs over time.  A conservative approach of assuming the lower end of estimates was taken and not all costs/benefits, such as employee wellbeing and satisfaction, were monetized.

Costs were evaluated from the employer’s perspective, in the no intervention scenario (pre-test) versus the post-intervention scenario (post-test) over a 6-month period. Costs savings refer to the difference in cost between the two scenarios, with the assumption that this difference did not change during our observational window. Pre-test data is assumed as the baseline for comparison. Averted costs refer to the reduction in cost (immediately) after the intervention. Future averted costs were not measured due to the short timeframe (six months). A net cost analysis was done by subtracting the implementation costs of the intervention from the averted costs.

The intervention was not effective at averting costs and did not pay for itself within the six month intervention period. However, there were cost savings in both short-term and long-term absenteeism. These savings, however, are negated by increased expenses in other cost categories, such as presenteeism, turnover, and impact on colleagues.

Subsidiary findings of interest were that turnover intention was higher among CEs than non-CEs and, given alignment to the larger literature, may forecast a concerning trend for workplaces. The high presenteeism cost may have reflected that the workplace was operating under a work-from-home mandate due to COVID-19 and may have made up time during “off-hours”.

While the results are mixed, this research holds implications for studies with a longer observational period and greater number of participants.  It is important to note that cost-savings are not always the end goal; perhaps an investment in carer-employees is what’s needed to maintain a high performing workplace.

Once published, a link to the paper will be posted.