LORI Hendrickson remembers the moment when she discovered what she calls "the other mommy track". The 42 year old manager of a Boston insurance company was called from a meeting with news of a family emergency.
"I immediately thought of my son, but it was in fact my mother," Hendrickson, an only child and divorced mother of a teenager, recalls six years later. Her 79 year old mother in Harrisburg. Pennsylvania, had broken her pelvis in a fall later found to have been caused by a mini stroke. Her 84 year old father was frightened and confused.
"At first I thought two weeks of emergency leave would take care of it," says Hendrickson. "That was before they discovered the stroke damage." Her initially sympathetic employer became impatient. Working from Harrisburg via a home computer during her son's school holidays did not work.
"I spent a year on night flights and most of my salary, on airline tickets and extra, childcare. I was a wreck. The eventual move back was inevitable."
Taking a Harrisburg job meant a drop in pay but the only alternative, a private nursing home, was beyond the family's means. "This was a bigger crisis than my divorce harder even than adjusting to being a single, working mother, because I just wasn't prepared." Hendrickson concludes.
Gradually, "the sandwich generation" as it is known middle aged parents squeezed between work and children is learning that the sandwich is now a triple decker, the newest layer being aged relatives. The biggest challenge in the American workplace has caught most employees and companies unprepared, but the profit potential of elder care, benefits is quickly becoming apparent, particularly to larger corporations.
"Elder care is where child care was 15 or 20 years ago, says Diane Piktialis, vice president of Work/Family Directions, a leading consulting firm providing elder and child care resources to employers. "In terms of so called family friendly benefits, it's definitely the wave of the future." That future is shaped by the fact that there are more old people in the US than ever before, they are living longer with often disabling illnesses, and the number of women in the workforce continues to grow.
Some 12 per cent of the American population is over 65, and 80 per cent of the elderly needing assistance get it from family members. Eight million Americans, more than half of them in the workforce, care for an older relative. Nearly two thirds of those employees are women, 38 per cent of whom also have children. The average American working woman will spend six years looking after a parent or older relative. "But most people have no idea what they would do if faced with the problem," says Diane Piktialis. "They just hope they won't be."
The business world cannot afford such misguided optimism. Corporate America loses $17 billion a year to elder care problems, chiefly through employee absence and the cost of replacing workers who are forced to quit or relocate. A 1992 study by the New York based Families and Work Institute revealed that of 305 workers caring for elderly relatives, a quarter had changed jobs, 39 per cent reported being distracted at work 2 per cent had considered resigning and 14 per cent had dropped out of the workforce altogether.
Where the extended family once shared the responsibility of elder care, today's shrinking American family places greater strain on one or two adult children. The transient nature of a society where workers follow jobs intensifies that strain. "In about half the instances we studied, the older relative live's 100 miles or more away" explains Diane Piktialis. "That really adds to the sense of helplessness."
Employees like Patricia Dowell, a New York telecommunications worker caring for a father who has Alzheimer's disease, say that flexibility is the most valuable benefit an employer can provide. "At this stage of the illness, I need to work shorter weekdays and make the time LIP at weekends," she explains, admitting that a year from now that may not be enough. Flexibility is also a cost effective benefit.
"Rather than saying, You have to stay at your desk from 8 to 5, and your personal problems are your own, we get the maximum from the employee when he or she is here," says Fred Leberge, a spokesman for Aetna Insurance in Hartford, Connecticut. "There is stronger employee loyalty and increased trust between employees and supervisors." A 1989 national survey of 92 employers supports Leberge's claim 64 per cent reported a reduction in employee turnover after three years.
Flexible hours satisfy Patricia Dowell, however, because her father lives just two city blocks away and she has easy access to various local and state services. Employees of large corporations usually tackle family demands at a distance.
"We hire people straight off the college campus and then move them around a lot," says Ted Childs, IBM's director of workforce diversity, "so the information they need in order to get a relative through a crisis is information located maybe 600 miles away."
IBM introduced its elder care programme, the first of its kind in US, in 1988 and it includes a resource and referral service provided by Work/Family Directions. "By using an 800 (free phone) number, employees can get in touch with services in the area where the older person lives," Childs explains. "They don't have to travel or, if they make the emergency visit, they don't have to search the Yellow Pages for help." The cost ranges from $6 to $12 per employee per year and Diane Piktialis claims that her service saves $2 for every $3 spent on it and an average of 17 working hours every time it is used.
Not all workers who juggle family and work responsibilities are persuaded by the statistics. "Awareness is growing slowly," concedes Piktialis. "And that's because employees are not as vocal about elder care as they would be about child care. They see it as much more personal, a real family matter that should be tackled privately." Skip Schlenk, AT&T's manager of family care development agrees. "It's acceptable to say you need help finding care for your two year old, but we've been, brought up to think we should be able to take care of our, parents by ourselves," hem recently remarked.
Nevertheless, IBM's top performers recently ranked the company's work life programmes, including elder care, second only to salary as a reason for remaining at IBM. And those top performers frequently become corporation heads.
"That's a major factor in the transformation of the work place," says Dana Friedman, co president of the Families and Work Institute. "Most CEOs will have elder care responsibilities while they are running their companies. So unlike the demand for child care, which started as a family movement, the demand for elder care programmes is more likely to be company driven. That personal experience is more persuasive than any productivity or economic argument I can give."
Friedman stresses that these programmes have grown not despite but because of the harsh economic climate. "As companies downsize, they are emphasising the care of the remaining employees and increasing services like resource and referral," she explains. "Don't forget that employees facing elder care problems are prime workers, usually managers in their late 30s and 40s."
A growing number of companies are going beyond flexible scheduling and referral services to direct support of community services and elder day care centres. Even this may not be enough.
"The tidal wave is going to hit us before we even wake up to it "warns Dana Friedman.
