The manager's guide to an employee caring for a sick or aging parent

A Forbes piece on workforce caregiving opens with a scene most managers will recognize without realizing it: an employee is on a performance improvement plan. Her manager sees distraction, missed deadlines, slow responses. What no one has asked is whether she spent last night coordinating her mother's home health aide and hasn't slept through the night in months.¹ Before you manage the performance, it's worth reading the situation correctly — because the most common cause of a sudden change in a steady employee, at mid-to-senior career, is an aging parent's care.

First, read the situation correctly

An employee caring for a parent is rarely dealing with a single event. They're absorbing a steady, unpredictable rhythm of appointments, business-hours phone calls, discharges that land on a Thursday, and a constant low hum of decisions. 63 million Americans are now family caregivers, up nearly 50% since 2015, and the heaviest-hit group is mid-career professionals — frequently your most experienced people.² This is not a performance problem to be managed away. It's a capacity problem to be relieved.

It also tends to stay hidden. Only about half of caregivers tell their manager, because disclosure feels like turning a family situation into a career liability.¹ So the first job is making it safe to surface.

The data on the administrative half of caregiving →

And the fix usually isn't "just hire a home-health agency." A well-paid employee often can — and does — pay for the hands-on help. 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 this part — money buys services, not the person who coordinates them.⁶ 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 day, on top of a two-income household and often kids of their own.

What to say

• Acknowledge, don't interrogate. "I know you've got a lot going on with your family right now. You don't need to give me details. Let's figure out what makes this workable." You're offering safety, not requesting a medical history.
• Make it normal. Name caregiving as a routine life stage, not a liability. That alone is most of the work.
• Avoid the reflexive "take whatever time you need." Well-meant, but for a deadline-driven role it can read as "your absence is now your problem to budget." Pair any time offer with structural help.

What to offer (in order of leverage)

1. Flexibility on the shape of work. Output-based expectations, movable hours, the ability to step out for a 2 p.m. call without guilt. Cheapest, fastest, genuinely valued.
2. Clarity on existing benefits. Most employees don't know whether FMLA applies, whether the EAP covers eldercare, or whether an LSA can fund care coordination. A short, plain-language walk-through removes friction they're too depleted to navigate. (Note: FMLA can provide unpaid, job-protected leave for a parent's serious health condition within eligibility limits, but much adult caregiving is chronic rather than a single qualifying event, so it's often a partial fit.)
3. Support that removes the administrative work. This is the lever the others miss. A Care Continuity Partner — a real person, remote, at the family's direction — handles the non-clinical logistics: organizing and requesting records, scheduling and confirming appointments, following up on stuck items, and keeping the family aligned with written updates. It's the part actually colliding with the workday.

The distinction that matters: most "caregiver-friendly" responses give the employee a better container for the work — more time, more grace. Removing the work is different in kind: it takes the records-and-logistics layer off the person entirely.

Reading the specific signals

Caregiving rarely announces itself. It shows up as a set of recognizable management moments — each of which is easy to misread.

A key employee keeps taking unplanned days. Treat scattered, last-minute absences from a normally-dependable person as information, not a reliability problem. Much of caregiving is unschedulable — discharges, callbacks, openings that appear on short notice — and has to happen during business hours, which is structurally incompatible with plan-ahead PTO. Don't lead with attendance policy; it pushes the behavior underground and accelerates the exit.

A high performer turns down the promotion. When a clear successor declines the step up with a vague reason, consider the capacity explanation before concluding they've lost ambition. A bigger role asks for marginal hours a caregiver in a tight stretch doesn't have. Many caregivers turn down advancement or reduce hours specifically because of caregiving.⁵ The fix is freeing capacity, not re-pitching the role.

A top performer asks to go part-time. This is often a last resort to make room for a caregiving load, not a lifestyle preference. Before formalizing reduced hours — and the slow drift away from senior work that usually follows — find out whether the constraint is the work or the time. If it's a parent's logistics, removing that work may keep the person full-time.

An employee is in a personal crisis. The reflex is to hand over the EAP number. That's worth doing — an EAP is strong for acute distress — but it's rarely sufficient for a caregiving crisis, where the need is operational. An EAP can refer your employee to a care manager; it can't make the calls, organize the records, or chase the authorization. Pair the referral with flexibility and a benefit that does the coordination.

In every one of these, the move is the same: open a low-pressure conversation, offer flexibility, and add the layer that removes the work.

A simple plan

1. Have the conversation above — once, early, without prying.
2. Map the support that already exists (FMLA eligibility, EAP, LSA, flexibility) and tell them plainly.
3. Add the missing layer — a coordination benefit that removes the administrative load — if your stack doesn't have it. Use the gap checklist to see whether it does, and the cost calculator to size the stakes.

Related reading

• Keeping your best people when life gets complicated — the retention side of the same load.
• Hospital discharge coordination — what your employee is actually managing after a parent's discharge.
• Medical appointment coordination — the appointment cascade, mapped.
• Why Averyn — how the coordination benefit works for employers.

Sources

1. Geri Stengel, Caregiving Doesn't Show Up On A Claim Line. That's Costing Companies And Employees, Forbes (Apr 28, 2026). forbes.com.
2. AARP & National Alliance for Caregiving, Caregiving in the U.S. 2025. aarp.org.
3. U.S. Department of Labor, FMLA overview. dol.gov.
4. SHRM, 2026 Top Five Workplace Issues. shrm.org.
5. SHRM, working-caregivers research. shrm.org.
6. 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.

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