Three hours a day. This is the average time that millions of people in this country spend caring for their relatives – alongside their job. According to a recently published study by the German Economic Institute IW, in 2022 (the year the data from the underlying socio-economic panel comes from) almost six million people supported their relatives with care activities.
In addition to care in the narrower sense, this also includes, for example, help in the household or the care of residents in nursing homes. The vast majority of people who provide such help are employed – three out of four of the 18 to under 50 year old carers have a job. On average, they work 35 hours per week.
The resulting double burden is large and has consequences – for the employees and ultimately also for their employers. According to the IW study, nurses are significantly less likely to have a full-time job than non-nurses. Many people are forced to reduce their working hours: around 625,000 employees reduced the amount of work they do when they started caring. Significantly fewer people – 440,000 people – extended their working hours despite caring responsibilities.
Care support business model
Helping people balance jobs and care is the business model of Hey Care (proper spelling heycare), which has just secured a capital injection of four million euros. The company, founded in 2022 as a specialized care provider, wants to develop further as a healthcare provider. It offers a digital platform that serves as an employee assistance program and family services, for example to arrange care for children, the elderly or even pets.
Companies can book these services as a benefit for their employees. The four million euros will be invested “in solutions for operational teams,” say the founders Anna Schneider and Julia Kahle. “This target group, who often work in shifts, has so far been ignored by traditional providers.” In addition, the fresh capital should be used “to improve technology. We are big enough for complex corporate wishes, but as a scale-up we are flexible enough to implement them in weeks instead of years,” said the founders. Investors are Scalehouse Capital and Swiss Post Ventures.
80 out of 1,000 employees care
The need for such services is enormous. The Ministry of Labor, Health and Social Affairs of North Rhine-Westphalia has calculated that eight percent of all employed people provide care or support work for relatives in their private environment in parallel to their professional activity. In an average company with 1,000 employees, this corresponds to around 80 employees with care responsibilities. The typical caring employee is around 51 years old and has been with the company for an average of 17 years. Caring is apparently still primarily a women’s issue and is often accompanied by a variety of family obligations: 62 percent of carers are women, 77 percent of them have children and 63 percent are married.
Support from the state
In view of the demographic development with more and more old people, the eight percent of employees with care obligations will not remain. Reason enough to take action in politics too. In North Rhine-Westphalia, for example, the state program “Compatibility of Work and Care” was launched in mid-2024.
It is intended to support companies, authorities and organizations in this change. This seems to be a success: 690 companies have already taken part so far. They all signed a charter that focuses on respect and appreciation and diverse support for employees with care responsibilities.
Specifically, the program provides information on the company’s care-friendly orientation and information material for the caring employees. It also provides support in the qualification of so-called company care guides as the first point of contact for care compatibility in the company.
Supporting employees who care for relatives is not a “nice-to-have”. According to the NRW program, the double burden is reflected in higher sickness periods among nurses and lower performance as well as a potentially higher tendency to fluctuation if there is no support from outside.
What can HR do?
There have long been companies that have recognized the problem and developed their own programs to support their employees. The Wuppertaler Stadtwerke, for example, has had social counseling since 1948, and in recent years the question has arisen more and more often about what needs to be taken into account when caring for a relative and how care work can be reconciled with one’s job.
For HR managers who are now increasingly dealing with the question, the advice from the NRW program is a good guideline: Flexible working hours – such as flexitime and working time accounts – are one of the most important measures to relieve the burden on carers. There is also the option of working from home. However, clear and reliable rules for working from home are needed.
In addition, the NRW program recommends the establishment and expansion of networks within the company: This includes, for example, internal groups for exchanging experiences and mentoring for care situations. The nurses also needed support from their superiors and colleagues. Last but not least, nurses always need an open ear and encouragement, including in the human resources departments.
Furthermore, a lot can be done as part of company health promotion: care-specific modules such as stress and resilience training or stress analyzes can help here.
External support as a benefit
In addition to such internal measures, a number of companies have been established in recent years that – like Hey Care – offer various types of support services for employees. They can be made available to employees as benefits. The spectrum ranges from concierge services for relatives’ care, which help with the search for care or care services or offer support with official matters and administrative tasks or household help, to the arranging of care services.
Christina Petrick-Löhr is responsible for the Talent & Learning magazine section as well as reporting on training and further education. She is also responsible for the editorial planning of various special human resources publications as well as the German Human Resources Prize.
