How big is the caregiving issue in a typical workforce?
About 1 in 5 workers is now a family caregiver, up from roughly 1 in 7 in 2020, and 29% of caregivers care for both children and aging parents at once (AARP & National Alliance for Caregiving, Caregiving in the U.S. 2025).1 Nearly three-quarters of employees carry some caregiving responsibility over time, and it's concentrated in your mid-to-senior ranks.2 SHRM named caregiving a top-five workplace issue for 2026.3
Isn't caregiving mostly hands-on care? Why would it affect my workforce?
Because the part that collides with work isn't the hands-on care — it's the administrative coordination. Bathing, meals, and rides mostly happen at home, on evenings and weekends. But scheduling across providers, chasing referrals and authorizations, decoding insurance, and managing portals can only happen during business hours, so that's the slice that lands on your payroll. It's also the largest single category of caregiver time: 70% of caregivers coordinate care across providers,1 and nearly 70% of working caregivers report trouble balancing the two — driven by overhead that can't be contained to off-hours.
The data on the administrative half of caregiving → · put a cost on it →
Can't a well-paid employee just hire a home-health agency and be done?
Usually not — and assuming so is the most common mistake. A highly-paid employee often can pay for the hands-on help, and frequently does. What money doesn't buy is the person who runs it: vetting and managing the aides, covering the no-show, rebooking the visit that got moved, and fielding the mid-afternoon call when the plan changes. Even people who can afford paid help still lean on family for that part — money buys services, not the person who coordinates them.7 Helping a parent stay at home tends to multiply that coordination, not remove it, and unlike a senior leader with an assistant, your employee has no one to back them up on it — so they stay switched on through the workday, on top of a two-income household and often kids of their own. Why the gap is execution, not advice →
How can employers support working caregivers?
The highest-leverage moves, in order: offer real flexibility on how and when work gets done; make caregiving safe to disclose; make existing benefits (FMLA, EAP, LSA) clear and usable; and add the layer most stacks miss — a non-clinical care-coordination benefit that removes administrative work like records, scheduling, provider calls, and follow-ups. The first moves help employees manage the load; the last reduces it. The HR playbook →
What is the difference between an EAP and a caregiver benefit?
An EAP provides confidential counseling and referrals to the employee — it helps them cope and points them to options. A caregiver-coordination benefit executes the administrative logistics — organizing records, requesting what's missing, scheduling, following up. The EAP helps the person; the coordination benefit reduces the underlying work. They're complementary, not redundant. Why almost no one uses your EAP →
How much does employee caregiving cost employers?
It surfaces as absenteeism, presenteeism, turnover, reduced hours, and declined promotions — concentrated among experienced staff. University of Pennsylvania researchers estimate a single mid-career caregiver absorbs $80,000–$100,000/year in lost earnings and advancement,4 and Forbes framed the corporate version: caregiving "doesn't show up on a claim line" but shows up in the PIP, the leave, and the resignation.2 For your own number, run the employer caregiving cost calculator.
Does supporting caregivers actually improve retention?
Yes, and the fear data shows why: in a 2026 Nationwide survey, 84% of adults feared facing long-term care without an advocate — more than the 71% worried about affording it.5 Employees value support that addresses the coordination they're most afraid of facing alone. The effect is sharpest for senior employees in the sandwich-generation window — the hardest to replace. Keeping your best people →
How do I keep an employee whose parent is sick?
Acknowledge it without prying, offer genuine flexibility, make existing benefits clear, and — most importantly — connect them to support that removes the administrative work rather than only granting time off. A pep talk, a raise, or a PTO day doesn't reduce the coordination load; taking the logistics off the person does. The manager's guide →
Do return-to-office mandates make caregiver retention worse?
Yes. RTO mandates drive disproportionate turnover among senior, female, and high-skilled employees — a 14% rise in departures in one S&P 500 study, with women's turnover roughly 20% vs about 7% for men6 — and those groups overlap heavily with caregivers, who relied on remote days to handle business-hours coordination. RTO, retention, and the caregivers you're about to lose →
What is "care logistics," and why does it land on employees during work hours?
Care logistics is the administrative work around someone's care: requesting and organizing records, scheduling and confirming appointments, chasing authorizations and referrals, coordinating home services, and keeping family informed. It lands during work hours because the institutions involved — clinics, records departments, insurers, agencies — operate during business hours. That's why it collides with the workday specifically. The operational two weeks after a discharge →
What is a Care Continuity Partner?
A Care Continuity Partner is a real person who handles the administrative side of a family's care — remotely and at the family's direction. They coordinate, organize, request records, schedule, confirm, follow up, and keep the family aligned with written updates. It is non-clinical: they do not diagnose, treat, prescribe, monitor, or make care decisions.
Can an employer offer caregiving support without touching medical information?
Yes. A non-clinical coordination benefit deals only with administrative logistics, directed by the employee and their family. The employer funds or makes the benefit available; it never accesses medical decisions or health information the employer shouldn't see. Reporting to the employer is aggregate utilization only.
What's an affordable way to offer a caregiving benefit?
Offer a benefit people actually use (one that removes work) using a low-cost funding model: a preferred rate at no employer cost, a co-funded launch, or an existing LSA. Affordability comes from the funding model, not from buying a thin, low-utilization resource. The affordable caregiving benefit →
Do we have to pay for it?
No. A coordination benefit can be funded, co-funded, or made available at a preferred rate at no employer cost, or routed through an existing LSA. With Averyn Keystone you set the level on a contribution dial; the no-cost preferred-rate option is often the sharpest math for retaining senior and highly-compensated employees. How the funding flexes →
Sources
- AARP & National Alliance for Caregiving, Caregiving in the U.S. 2025. aarp.org.
- Geri Stengel, Caregiving Doesn't Show Up On A Claim Line, Forbes (Apr 28, 2026). forbes.com.
- SHRM, 2026 Top Five Workplace Issues. shrm.org.
- Penn LDI (University of Pennsylvania), America's Caregiver Crisis is Burning Out Millions of Families (May 28, 2026). ldi.upenn.edu.
- Nationwide Retirement Institute, 2026 Long-Term Care Survey (Harris Poll). nationwide.com.
- Ding, Ma, Xing, Yang & Jin, Return to Office Mandates, Brain Drain and Gender Difference (2024), SSRN. ssrn.com.
- Stephanie H. Murray, Americans Are in Denial About Elder Care, The Atlantic (Jun 23, 2026). theatlantic.com.
Non-clinical note: AverynCare provides family-directed administrative coordination. We do not provide medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, or emergency monitoring.