Dave Jacobs from HomeThrive | Supporting Working Caregivers To Strengthen Workforce Well-Being

Christine: [00:00:00] I’m Christine Muldoon, your host, and today we’re talking about the role and needs of caregivers in your workplace who are caregivers. They are employees balancing their jobs alongside unpaid responsibilities for loved ones. That could be children aging, parents sick or disabled family members, and so much more.

They’re bringing individuals to appointments, managing medical needs, acting as their advocate for various circumstances, and dealing with emergencies. These responsibilities are often impacting their work in terms of how they show up the need for time off or even change in hours. Caregiving responsibilities can also have a significant impact on the caregiver themselves impacting stress, productivity, presenteeism their own health, finances, and more.

Over 80% of caregiving employees have reported that the stress of their duties has negatively impacted their work. [00:01:00] As an HR leader, you may be trying to determine how to support employees with caregiving responsibilities and even assessing the impact it is having on your workforce. Today I’m speaking with Dave Jacobs, co-founder and CO CEO of Home Thrive.

Dave will break down why caregiving is a true business imperative, not just a benefit, and what organizations can do to better support employees who are caregivers. He’ll share why these benefits matter to both your people and your organization, and how supporting caregivers drive stronger engagement, retention and performance.

Dave, welcome to the HR Scoop.

Dave: Thank you, Christine. It’s great to be here. And, uh, you did a fantastic job kind of summarizing kind of the real challenges, the need and um, some of the things that employers are starting to think about. So.

Christine: Some might say, Dave, I have experience with this caregiving [00:02:00] topic. So to kick us off, I’d love for you to tell us a little bit about yourself and the path that brought you to start home thrive.

Dave: Well, like you, um, the path that started me kind of, um, down, uh, forming Home Thrive was really my own personal experience. Um, I was a healthcare executive. Um, I knew ran a business that was medical products around nursing homes, home health, hospice and whatnot. So I knew a fair amount about that. Um, lived in the Chicago area, but when my dad got really sick really quickly, he had cancer.

He wanted to be home with my mom in Connecticut where I grew up. My brother and I both live in Chicago. Frankly it became overwhelming and, you know, all the kind of challenges that we had had as caregivers that we beca we became a caregiver overnight. Um, a lot of the different issues outside of his specific medical care, a lot of the navigation related things, um, understanding insurance related things and then somebody to help us get things [00:03:00] done.

Um, those gaps were very evident and, um. It made me realize that while he had great medical care, there was nobody to help us as caregivers. And I was fortunate because I knew a lot about healthcare. We have a close family, we had the means to support my parents and it was still incredibly overwhelming and very difficult.

I, uh, gained 25 pounds and about six weeks ’cause I wasn’t taking care of myself. Um, my wife at one point even suggested a leave of absence and I wasn’t even fully sure what that was, but I know I was not. Nearly giving the best that I could to my career and frankly, probably wasn’t giving as much as I wanted to, to my parents and whatnot in my nuclear family, my wife and kids, and felt like there really had to be a better way to support well-intentioned people like myself, um, through this kind of process that is very important, um, and is not something you can put off.

Christine: You know, I think that your experience is probably very similar to many people who have gone through [00:04:00] or are going through the experience with aging parents and illness. I know we have done the same within our family and despite how you might think about it or, oh, I have this career, our background, we have strong family support, which sounds like you did as well.

And of course, having that healthcare knowledge. You still felt unprepared as a caregiver? I’ve felt the same way. So how did that experience reshape really your perspective? I think on what caregivers truly need most.

Dave: You know, it, what it, it certainly gave me an acute sensitivity for the need out there.

And, and as I kind of researched it further, realized that you and I are not kind of unique, um, in having that kind of challenge. Um, in fact, very recently, a gentleman who was. The CEO of PGA of America just left his post after a year to move to upstate New York to be able to care for his mother and mother-in-law.

So it’s happening at all levels. It doesn’t matter what education you have, what healthcare experience you [00:05:00] have. Um, and so it really kind of, that experience kind of made me realize that there was a need for something that would really uniquely address the needs of caregivers and provide the right kind of coaching.

Navigation and concierge services, but doing it in such a way that could be, um, offered broadly through the, um, kind of employer and even insurance ecosystems so that more people could get the benefit of this. Um, occasionally. Individuals might go to a local in, uh, person who could specialize, but there are hundreds of dollars of an hour and really only handle acute situations.

And so it felt like there had to be a way to bring the kind of support and help that’s necessary to as many people of the 63 million unpaid family caregivers as possible.

Christine: And, you know, you just said that about, um, the person that left their job to go care for their parents. A lot of people, that’s not an option.

They, you know, they need to work and, but they’re still torn with, you [00:06:00] know, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. I don’t know who their doctors are. I know nothing about this condition. What am I supposed to do next? They have a lot of questions to ask. So there’s definitely, you know, from a need perspective.

It’s the spectrum of guidance, support, questions, the how to, um, who to reach out to. So, you know, and I, I see caregiving as an essential component to wellbeing because as you just said, you know, we don’t wanna harp on it, but you lost, you gained weight and like the stress, all of that, that impacts as a caregiving, as I said earlier in my introduction, the health and wellbeing of the caregivers as well.

So. With employees we know from a wellbeing perspective and just. People in general, right? They expect strong personalization, relevant information, you know, uh, immediate access to information, guidance that’s going to help them. So how does Home [00:07:00] Thrives? You have a digital first approach caregiving. How do you meet the needs and the expectations of caregivers in a digital first approach?

Dave: It’s a great question, Christine, just before I answer, I ex I want to amplify something you said, which is a lot of people can’t afford to leave their job, although it’s the number two reason people are leaving the workforce. They’re not leaving forever necessarily, but they take, you know, four could be 2, 3, 4, 6 months off to care and then they come back.

Um, but the other reality is what they do is they do it during the day, right? They’re, they’re, they haven’t left their job, but. A lot of things you even mentioned, whether it’s doctors or prescription things, those things have to be dealt with during the day. So they sit there at work and they’re doing these things which impacts their productivity.

Most people don’t wanna do that. And, um, to be able to kind of try to find a way to get those things done. And what we found was in the beginning, we started to support people with our kind of expert coaching navigation concierge services with people. And that’s typically the way it’s been done in the past [00:08:00] and other kind of segments of the caregiving world where you have very well intentioned, very skilled.

In our case, it’s social workers who are willing to help. And the problem is that really doesn’t meet the needs of people today and how they kind of wanna be able to get assistance, be able to wanna work. Um, and as a result, people only talked to us when it was a crisis, when they had to talk to somebody.

Um, and what we discovered was if we could find a way to make. Our expertise available to them, kind of anytime, anywhere, so people could get, could access it and benefit from it at night and be able to get help in that regard. They could do it kind of in between different kind of tasks and whatnot. Um, and also they could do it without kind of the barrier of having to invest in a 30 minute conversation.

Um, we could get a lot more utilization. And be able to help people much earlier in the process and more often. And so we took the expertise that we have with our care team, a whole team of social workers who are employees. And what we’ve continued to work on is to take the magic of [00:09:00] those social workers and put it in the palm of somebody’s hands.

Because the reality is that what we do personalize things very much and we customize them. And different people have different journeys and different family priorities. There still is a certain level of expertise. And methodology that is common across many situations. And so we can bring that to people in a digital format, whether they wanna use it on their phone or their computer, and really the process that a social worker would go through to really be, help them navigate different issues, understand insurance, get resources, you name it.

And then we still have people for the times when things get. Especially complex. They’re really challenging. They’re more emotional, whether it’s a mediation between family members or some sort of emotional support, or just the level of complexity requires a conversation. But by doing so, we’re able to get people in a lot earlier so that they’re aware of the service so that when things get more intense and they generally do, that’s the direction things go.

We can be there to help and we built up [00:10:00] knowledge about them and trust so that we can be most effective at that kind of more acute times of need, but also help with a lot of the other day-to-day and month-to-month things that people need support on, that they really wanna do on their own as much as possible.

Christine: Yeah, that’s fantastic. I think a lot of times when you’re. Working on your caregiving aspects. You know, you’re calling doctors, you’re calling services. Sometimes it’s really hard to get on another, another call. So being able to navigate to, and, and recognize that there are, as you said, like those commonalities between certain, certain, um, next steps.

And journeys, but then really still having that human connection when you do need it, when you have those questions or things get a little heated and intense, which we know can happen as well.

Dave: Absolutely. Yeah. And they definitely do. And we can, and we can help them, so they can delegate a lot of those tasks to us without having to talk to somebody all the time and be able to get the information, support, information counsel that they need again, without having to talk to [00:11:00] somebody, um, every single time.

Christine: So I think that, you know, the role of caregiving, if. If we were to ask someone who, what’s a caregiver, uh, prior to the pandemic, that definition might be a little different than today. And I think that the pandemic truly gave caregiving the attention it needs. Of course, that really started during the pandemic with, you know, people not being able to go to work or, um, children on school.

And so that really put an emphasis on the. The parent caregiving aspect, but we know that caregiving and the examples that we have shared goes beyond children, and one of the, probably the most common scenarios is aging parents too, or a spouse or family member with a very chronic condition. You talked about your dad with cancer, so are there other aspects of caregiving outside of what I [00:12:00] just shared that you see also needing support?

Dave: Yeah, it’s a great point and, and you made two very important points. One is that it is coming outta the shadows and people aren’t suffering in silence as much as they used to. Uh, which is a very good thing because it’s, it’s gonna be very isolating and lonely. Um, but also recognizing that caregiving isn’t just.

Supporting parents as they get older, but that, while that is important, or just childcare, it includes things like neurodiversity, which is everything from a d, d, to autism. And so, you know, if somebody believes that they have a child who might have some uh, a DD or A DHD, understanding kind of how do you get that assessed?

Where do you go? What role does insurance play? And then how can you get accommodations? The school system is something that people are starting to recognize and it’s really important for the kind of health, wellbeing development of those children, but also to help the parents as they try to assist their, their kids kind of navigating the school system and it’s not a one and [00:13:00] done it.

You know, there may be an initial assessment, some initial accommodations, it changes, for example. When somebody goes to high school, it changes when they turn 18. It changes when they go to college and all these things to help people through that understand that is a big part of the caregiving kind of support journey that we go through.

You mentioned certainly supporting people with different diseases or disabilities kind of over time and being able to help them navigate the insurance system, which is very complex. It’s very opaque, unfortunately, and helping people navigate that and then certainly the elder care piece. Also the, the next step in that is kind of after.

Somebody passes away is to help with kind of the loss support, which can be everything from just before with estate and, and, um, trust kind of planning, but then helping people kind of sort through, navigate and get done. All the things that come into play. Once somebody does pass away, it can take over 400 hours of [00:14:00] stuff, everything from the DMB to a leased vehicle, to cleaning out a house.

All these things that are important. And many people don’t even know all the things to be done, the order they need to be done, and they would love to be able to offload some of those things to a trusted partner who can help them get those things done at the right time so they don’t, it’s hard enough to deal with the grief.

We help with that as well, but helping people to navigate all the other things has important financial implications. It certainly is a huge kind of stress. You talked about kind of the mental, uh, health aspects of this. Um, it’s not just losing a loved one, but all the work that can be required there, um, is something that we can help people navigate and really kind of offload so that they don’t have to be on the, on the on hold with the DMV trying to get something, or the Social Security Administration and things of that nature.

Christine: Oh yes. Nobody wants to do that, but, but you speak to, it’s really this full journey and the impact that caregiving [00:15:00] has on the caregiver is tremendous, and it’s not just being distracted at work and multitasking. It’s the stress of. You know, what am I supposed to do? Where am I supposed to go? Um, I was thinking about where you talked about a DD and a DHD neurodiversity.

Um, I know, um, some friends and family who are going through, um, with their family member dementia, Alzheimer’s. I mean, there’s so many situations where, um, it puts a big strain on the caregiver and of course. The responsibilities and the information that you’re providing. I would assume that Home Thrive has specific resources, specific tools and support recommendations based on those various journeys or caregiving responsibilities, what is sort of the basis for where, you know, where do you get that content, the resource, [00:16:00] and the information to support caregivers based on those specific topics?

Dave: Yeah, it’s a, it’s a great question. Um, and the basis for our kind of the support we provide is really from our care team, and they have probably 500 years of collective experience in areas including senior living. Like nursing homes in community-based services could be adult day programs and other such.

They have been discharged planners at hospitals, they’ve worked at hospice, so they really understand a wide variety. They’ve worked in schools. With, um, kind of, you know. Adolescents and teens with different kind of learning disabilities and, and other kind of neurodiverse challenges. So they bring a collective experience as well as their kind of master’s level training.

And that’s the kind of methodology that we use, not only in the process of the recommendations, but also the questions we’re asking because even you could have two families. Who have a family member who’s maybe even at the same stage of dementia, [00:17:00] but given their values, their priorities could be their financial wherewithal, the personal relationships, the way they wanna approach some of those things might be a little bit different.

So we take kind of our. Clinical experience in the social work realm and combine it with the ability to ask kinda the right kind of questions and understand to be able to personalize those experiences for each family, to give them the recommendations and the options that make the most sense for them so they can make the right decisions for themselves.

We’re not here to tell them what to do. We’ll give them a very narrow range of things, but we try to tailor them based on kind of their preferences. Um, and their priorities kind of, so they can really be empowered to make the thing decision that makes the most sense for them. And it may not always be exactly what the adult children want.

You know, our head of care management says older adults have the right to make a bad decision if they know what they’re doing. My, uh, own case. My wife’s grandmother was lived into her nineties and started to fall more often. And, um, she was a very vital, um, kind of [00:18:00] person and, um, did not wanna use a walker.

She knew the problem, she knew the risks she made. She said it made her feel old when she was 95. But, um, that was her choice and my wife and her mother and stuff had to accept that as something that was, you know, her, my wife’s grandmother was making a very informed choice. And so helping people feel comfortable that.

That that is okay. And it’s part of the process as long as kind of the right information is being shared and kind of people are aware of so that they’re doing the best they can in the situation. Um, and some things we could do in the home to make things safer, but still her grandmother’s choice to be able to do what she wanted.

Christine: I think what you said, I think it’s important to really call attention to this, which is that your team and the solution that you offer is backed by experience, you know, and people that have been trained, because a lot of times, I mean, we all do this, right? Let me just Google. You know how to or talk to a friend.

Yeah. And, and the, the information’s all over the board. [00:19:00] Yeah. And, and, um, you go to multiple sources and it’s not one cohesive, uh, program that really helps someone through this process. So, um, that’s important.

Dave: There are things that aren’t even, that an average person wouldn’t even know to think about or find.

We had somebody recently, um, whose, whose father lives in the Denver area and he needed transportation. Um, he really couldn’t drive anymore and she was stymied as to what to do. Well, it turns out her father’s a veteran, and in that county there’s a program for veterans that provides free transportation and it also provides snow removal services and lawn care.

There’s no way that, um, somebody without the experience of our team would be able to even think to look for something like that. But we’re able to kind of uncover some of those areas because it’s not always things that are provided by insurance. It could be a community-based program, it could be a faith-based program.

A lot of different options that are available that we can kind of surface for people to kind of give them more choice, and in many cases, a much [00:20:00] more economical choice.

Christine: That’s important. ’cause it really takes it to that next level of personalization. And I know if you think about also recognizing where that person is located, the state requirements may be very different.

The town requirements or the, you know, to your point, the resources. So I think that that’s, that’s definitely. A factor that people need to consider. So I’m just gonna switch gears here a little bit because, um, as we look at the current market and the challenges that organizations, employers are facing, right, their healthcare costs are rising and um, HR teams obviously have budget constraints.

Um, they’re probably also. Maxed out in terms of support for identifying new services and, um, they’re not really sure what the next direction is, but of course, leadership always wants, you know, what’s, [00:21:00] what’s, uh, the ROI, the justification. So how do you, or, or do you help organizations really help justify that investment in this type of caregiving support and services?

Dave: Yeah, we certainly work with people and said you’re, you summarized the challenges that I think a lot of our listeners feel each and every day. Uh, I think it does. Our, if you look at the people that we work with, we work with about 150 national companies. Many of them share kind of. I know the belief that you have and your listeners have in terms of the importance of wellbeing in general and that that being a core strategy in general for the business.

That if employees are engaged and they are generally, um, healthy, both from a physical and mental standpoint that makes them, it’s gonna increase longevity, productivity, and it’s also the right thing to do. So it starts at that basis, but then, you know, in this environment it kind of needs to meet some other criteria.

And I think. We find there’s a few different things. One is to align it with the [00:22:00] other organizational priorities that the company has is very important. So sometimes they are returned to the office. Um, sometimes they are trying to be able to grow the business significantly with the same headcount. And when you do that, you’re putting more strain on the people that are there.

You need them to be even more present. And productive. Um, then they might have to be otherwise. And so doing things to support them and make them feel supported in that environment is really important. And because the range of caregiving that we’re talking about affects 73% of all employees, you really can.

Can hit a large percentage of the organization by providing kind of caregiver support, um, like we provide in that, in that regard. So that is certainly part of it. So aligning with the bigger priorities of the organization, it could even be trying to be able to reduce costs in certain disease states. You know, one of the things you kind of alluded to, which is the, the impact of caregiving not only is on productivity and, um, retention and things, but it’s also on [00:23:00] kind of the health and wellbeing.

Because when people are. In the midst of this caregiving journey, they’re trying to be there for their career, trying to be there for their, the person for whom they are supporting and, and probably their nuclear family. And what ends up suffering is like for me, is I wasn’t gonna, the doctor, I wasn’t working out, you know, other things that I would do to take care of myself so that I’m healthy.

I was neglecting. And so that’s another way we can help people even adhere more closely to their, uh, disease manager. It could be a cancer kind of program or some sort of cardiac issue so that they’re taking care of themselves and have permission to do that. So that’s another big piece. The other aspect, the other two aspects, I would say in a more practical sense that one of the benefits of the digital first approaches, it allows us to be able to be, offer a really robust and effective solution at a much lower cost.

Technology allows instead of having to have people do all the work, we’ve been able to take the expertise of those people, put it in the palm of somebody’s hands, and so our ability to kind of give people a very effective solution at a much lower cost, probably. [00:24:00] It could be 25%, or let’s say 75% lower than it would be if it’s all people.

And still do it in a way that, um, there’s enough in it for home thrush that we can support it and innovate and be a good partner, um, is much greater than it was. And so for that, you know, you, you asked about ROI, the I becomes much lower.

Christine: Mm-hmm.

Dave: And so that is something that makes it much easier for an organization to adopt even in these challenging times.

And then the other piece that we’re really doing very aggressively is. One of the challenges that we find that, um, our clients and prospects have is, you know, point solution fatigue. A lot of different solutions, a lot of different folks is we are, by virtue of being digital first, we’re embedding our solution with other services that they’re already buying.

And, you know, you’ve got everything around mental health. You’ve got, um, kind of in the whole childcare realm is kind of another area, some of the things around EAP. So that for them it doesn’t feel like just one more solution. We can really embed it so it’s much more efficient for them. It’s cost effective, efficient, um, [00:25:00] and you get a lot more utilization because we drive a lot of utilization of other services.

55% of all of our members use a service that their employee, pro employer provided that they weren’t using before. Um, and that’s what we wanna do. We wanna avail them not only of the insurance services and things that are available, but. The services that their employer is really investing in to help them as well.

And so we do a lot of that. So that’s the way we think about helping people kind of justify, um, the investment and by partly by making it a lower investment model.

Christine: That was all helpful information. I feel like there’s pieces I wanna unpack there a little bit, but you did, the last thing you said was about EAP services and I was just curious to know.

The difference between what Home Thrive offers and then you know, some of the more probably standard EAP services that an organization might offer.

Dave: It’s a great question and it’s a question everybody asks us. It’s a very good question. All of our clients have an EAP, as you’d expect, and generally the EAP, either they’re very, they don’t have the ability to go very deep, so they might [00:26:00] have one or two sessions and they’ll give you some links to some things to consider, but really there’s not a lot of coaching, um, and direction given and all the work is still on the employee.

And so it’s better than nothing, I guess, but not much better. So we go a lot deeper and it’s more longitudinal. The other piece though is even if they are more, they can provide some more sessions and coaching, it’s still always people. And you still run into the same challenge that we had when we started the business, which is it utilization is very low.

You know, it’s kind of one 2%. We’re getting utilization over 10% by virtue of the digital component. And so, um, and we can be able to do that for a much lower cost. So the. What we’re actually seeing is we’re working with EAPs who may have their own, um, essentially the equivalent of our care team, but they don’t have a digital solution to really supplement that, to reach many more people and to be able to kind of do it very cost effectively.

Christine: Well, actually that makes me think of this because there may not be, I don’t know what the, [00:27:00] the average is, but if you look at a. You know, 10,000 employee organization, the percentage of their population that are caregivers. It, it, it’s not everyone, so Right. It, you know, if they’re trying to look at an ROI from that perspective or engagement.

That’s like, it’s not gonna be the reality of it, but is there, like, on average what you see and then I, I’m thinking that because you have this digital first strategy, many employers may not realize, but some people are like, almost, Hey, I’m gonna do a check it out because it’s easy. I can, and then they’ve, you know, find that, oh, this can help me because I am identified as a caregiver in this realm of the solution.

Dave: Yeah, it’s very, so surprisingly, if you include childcare, it’s about three quarters of all employees are somewhere in that spectrum. And you can imagine that over a three year, four year period, almost everybody will, they may evolve. Not every will evolve [00:28:00] into that in. Um, become a caregiver in some point.

Now they may not call themselves a caregiver, but they’ll be in that, in that spectrum there to some degree. Um, so it does affect, it may not affect everybody, but it does affect a meaningful amount of kind of employees population. And the, what we discovered, I wish I could tell you this was all part of the plan and we knew it worked out this way, but when we.

Provide the digital solution. It was much easier for people to engage in, like you said, in a much kind of, um, more discreet way that didn’t feel as urgent. So it could be something as simple as, you know, my mom is coming to visit us and she gets along fine, but when we go out she gets a little tired. And so what are the options?

Right? I don’t really need to talk to somebody for 45 minutes. I just need something I can take her when I take her to the mall or we take her to my. Daughters game. You know, what can I, and we can provide those things and they can do it digitally. They give us the information. We learn more about ’em, we’ll give ’em the information where to get it.

They never talk to anybody. And it’s really easy to be able to do that, um, quickly. And so things [00:29:00] like that, we’ve gotten people much earlier, but eventually in this case, somebody’s mom is going to age and things are gonna decline. That’s the normal kind of way of the world. And then we’ll build up that relationship and we learn more about them.

Much more digitally than we could if it was in person or we had to have phone calls. We learn more about the mom, their situation, and we can make much more proactive recommendations about other things to consider and what comes next. We could never do that when we were just kind of doing things over the phone,

Christine: you know?

And even if you’re not in that immediate, like, we need help situation. If you know a family member has. It was just diagnosed or you’re anticipating maybe, you know, one of your parents have passed away, but your, you know, your dad’s pretty independent right now. It’s kind of doing the early research to prepare as well.

And I understand what might be available to you. And I think just the scenarios you gave, it’s like, I didn’t even know that, you know, that would be [00:30:00] something to consider. So kind of also preparing, um, before. It gets to that really breaking point for you as a caregiver.

Dave: It’s a great point because one of the biggest challenges is people wait and to have these really hard family conversations.

It might be with one’s aging parent or even a, a sibling when it’s a crisis is much more difficult. But how to bring up the conversation. ’cause these are tough conversations that can’t be, or before that is kind of. Challenging, but we can help people do that. It’s true on the, with children though, like when, you know, when somebody’s recognizing there might be something, maybe it’s worth having them evaluated for kind of some, somewhere on the autism spectrum or a DD.

How do you have that conversation with your child so that they don’t think something’s wrong with them, or there’s a problem or you’re, or you’re upset because children have a way of, you know. Conceiving of ideas differently than adults and tell so that you can explore that. Or even how do I have a conversation with a professional before bringing in my child to assess is there something here [00:31:00] worth pursuing further?

Right? That’s where we can help them or getting things, people’s affairs in order we. We do, uh, work with a lot of different organizations including law firms, and you’d be surprised how many attorneys say, no, we have a will. We’re all set when we’re trying to talk about powers of attorney. And they say, well, they say, well, we have a power of attorney.

And they’re like, well, they don’t recognize there’s a healthcare power of attorney. There’s a financial power of attorney, and they play different roles and might have different individuals in the family who should have one or the other, and helping people think about that. Have a conversation with their family members, or it could be an older adult that why they should have this in place, um, is all very important to get ahead of things so that when the inevitable comes, people are much reported.

They’ve at least had a chance to think through some of these, um, these situations and ideas about what decisions and what preferences they have.

Christine: There’s also the college student by the way, that now, you know, owns their health information and they don’t need mom. But if something does happen, you know, there’s paperwork for that too.

So don’t wait until it’s in Russia [00:32:00] situation.

Dave: That’s one where, you know, I was, I was listening more for professional reasons to a webinar and they were talking about that, and I realized. Oldest was gonna go off to school. We didn’t have a power. If he, something happened, he’s in the hospital, they can’t talk to us.

That he’s able, able, like, and he was more than willing to give us access. But we, and so getting the right documentation, it’s easy, um, and how to do this and you know, with our daughter the same thing. It’s very helpful. Um, that. I’m embarrassed to say I would not have thought of that otherwise

Christine: until it’s like a bad situation.

Dave: Right.

Christine: So I mean, I think just even in our conversation, caregiving is not one thing. We’ve really covered all different scenarios, and I would say the way that caregiving in the workplace has evolved and continues to evolve in terms of. More transparency, recognizing the impact and support. So I want to even like look even further forward, um, having you break out your crystal ball, Dave, [00:33:00] and you know, what do you predict will happen with caregiving as we look, you know, one to two if not more years down the road in terms of these standalone programs.

Will they become integrated? Will they add on more interventions? What are your thoughts?

Dave: You know, I, I think that caregiver support is a distinct expertise and a certain skillset and a certain level, but at the same time, it, it’s always kind of part and parcel of something else. And what we find is whether it’s other disease states, whether it’s other conditions, you know, as we’ve sit, we’ve sat here talking about, you know, you mentioned dementia, you’ve talked about a DD, you talked about like autism, all, all these kinds of things, cancer.

And so I think what will happen over time is it will be much more integrated into the way in which people who are. Managing through these different conditions, um, uh, the kind of service and support that they get as part of that holistic [00:34:00] package. Um, and as opposed to something that kind of lives on its own.

And I think it’ll make it easier for employers because instead of, you know, having to kind of. Look at solutions that are independent and try to get utilization of them. Hopefully like the solutions come where caregiving is part of other disease management kind of programs or other just general wellbeing programs because you know, somebody, even somebody’s parent might not have a specific disease, but as they start to age, and it could be part of the mental health program that somebody has, this is one of those things that is a component of it.

Before they might need more clinical therapy or mental health and that will make it, I think. It’ll make more sense for the individuals. I think it will make it easier for people to use it, and they will use both more, which is what everybody wants. Um, I think it’ll also be easier for. Employers and even kind of insurance plans, quote unquote, to buy it because they don’t have to go, they don’t have to force the integration.

It’ll just come kind of integrated together. Um, but I [00:35:00] do think it’s a specific expertise, just like we don’t have, um, you know, therapists and physicians on staff. Other organizations don’t have, they can provide some, you know. Some meditations and some articles, but they don’t really have the expertise to help at the right level like we do around kind of all the things about the coaching navigation and even some of the concierge services that are necessary for caregivers.

Christine: You know, I like to say that um, life is not one dimensional and therefore wellbeing can’t be either. And because we know there are multiple dimensions of wellbeing when one is impacted, it has a ripple effect on the others and caregiving. Fits as part of that, and the stress that’s caused by caregiving impacts someone’s health, their, you know, their presenteeism, all of the things.

So I think we certainly need to think about caregiving as an integrated component to wellbeing for sure. So Dave, I wanna thank you for [00:36:00] being my guest on the HR scoop and sharing all of your caregiving insights with us today. But I’m not letting you go yet because. I do have one more question, and this is a question that we ask all of our guests.

I’m actually mixing it up this season. So you’re the first actually test out my new question. Are you ready for it?

Dave: Uh, I think so.

Christine: Okay. What’s one small shift and it can be personally or professionally that has made the biggest difference in your personal wellbeing?

Dave: Can I give you a couple? ’cause I, you

certainly

Christine: can.

Dave: I, I don’t think I’m quick. Uh, one is, um, not, I, probably about five years ago I started to meditate and, you know, it’s a, and for me that was helpful and in my own caregiving at, in our house, you know, my son and I at times where we’re very close, our personalities would clash and it would lead to, um, somewhat animated, I’ll say, kind of conversations and interactions.

And one of the [00:37:00] things that the meditation, he even noticed. Is my ability to kind of not get sucked into those kind of more highly charged kind of conversations to, to kind of hit the pause button back off. And then for us to be able, not that long later to be able to resolve them in a much more productive, calm way was significantly positively impacted by my own meditation, which is nothing unique there.

So that was one, uh, second thing, which is the source of great amusement for my family. But, um, you know, sleep very important, especially is one ages. And, um, I’ve become a big fan of mouth tape, which, um, kind forces you to, um, to be, to breathe through your nose. And then I’ll use the eye shades. I will tell you, um, if one is looking to expand their family, it’s probably not the best kind of, uh, look for that sort of thing, but, um, it generally helps me quite a bit.

I feel like I’ve been able to be. More healthy, more often, get a little better sleep, um, especially with kind of a hectic schedule. So

Christine: I have heard about that mouth tape and I had never [00:38:00] heard of someone using it and the success of it. So thank you Dave. I might have to buy that for my husband.

Dave: It’s not the most romantic thing, but it does.

You work. It does work. I don’t have a problem snoring, but it does help me sleep. I think it helps me sleep better.

Christine: Sleep is so important and that’s what we all need. Okay. Well thank you for sharing that. I am, I am thankful that this question was value. We learned a little bit more about Dave Jacobs. Um, so thank you for being a guest today.

I just wanna reiterate one of the things that Dave said because it was quite surprising to me, which is that caregiving is the number two reason people leave the workforce. So if that is not justification alone, that caregiving is an important benefit for you and your workforce. I don’t know what is.

It’s important to make sure that caregiving, um, people in your organization have the ability to balance work and life, but also recognize that caregiving does have an impact on their [00:39:00] wellbeing too. Thank you, Dave. And thank you for listening to this episode of the HR Scoop.

Dave: Thank you, Christina. I enjoyed this very much.

With more employees quietly juggling work alongside unpaid caregiving responsibilities, organizations that provide meaningful support can strengthen retention, resilience and performance across their workforce.

“Caregiving isn’t something employees leave at home when they come to work.”

This conversation covers: 

• • Why caregiving has become a major workforce and business challenge
  • The hidden stress and productivity impacts caregivers experience at work
  • How navigation and support services help families manage complex care needs
  • Why employer-supported caregiving benefits can improve retention, engagement and overall well-being