Year-end deadlines. A spike in orders. Budget planning for next year. The end-of-the-year work wrap-up is enough to stress out any employee. Add in the holiday rush, travel, and shifting family schedules, and it’s no wonder nine in ten employees report being under significant stress during the holiday season.
Enter Care Specialists: highly trained experts who specialize in helping employees find calm and care amid the holiday chaos – and all year round. From solving logistical issues to tracking down vetted care resources to addressing complex, emotional caregiving challenges, Care Specialists are a helpful resource every employee can use.
What’s a Care Specialist?
Care Specialists are professional problem-solvers with deep experience in life’s care-related challenges. They provide hands-on support to help alleviate the administrative burdens of caregiving, saving employees’ time and reducing stress.
Overall, our Care Specialists have an average of 6.5 years of experience and specialized expertise gained as social workers, senior care providers, teachers, nannies, and disability caregivers. They put their experience and expertise to work helping employees navigate caregiving challenges across a wide range of needs, including:
- Parenting and child care
- Senior care
- Pet care
- House and home
- Education
- Career
The Care Specialist talks with the employee to assess their care needs and preferences. Following the assessment, the Care Specialist creates a customized action plan for the employee and kicks off research to identify and vet the appropriate care resources.
From there, the Care Specialist presents the employee with caregiving options that match their specific needs and outlines the next steps. The Care Specialist stays in touch to ensure the employee gets the care they need, adapting the support as needed.
Care Specialists in action: holiday edition
73% of the workforce have caregiving responsibilities. Employee caregivers face stressors that include day-to-day logistics, financial pressures, physical and emotional burnout, and social isolation. Caregiving responsibilities impact work/life balance, employee engagement, productivity, and performance.
Employees distracted by stressors lose over five work hours each week.
The American Institute of Stress
The holiday season often acts as an amplifier, ramping up care needs and stress levels. Providing employees with a Care Membership that includes access to Care Specialists can be a difference maker, helping them significantly reduce the stress and time investment that comes with searching for qualified care.
Take a look at Care Specialists in action across a range of real-life scenarios that arise during the holiday season.
An unexpected winter break scramble
When Kim’s regular child care provider announced they would be closed for an extra week just before the planned holiday break, the gap created a potential crisis. Kim needed to finalize a crucial year-end work project, so taking time off wasn’t an option. But she didn’t panic. She contacted her Care Specialist, available as part of the Care Membership provided through her employer, for help.
The Care Specialist connected Kim with qualified local child care providers. In the end, Kim selected an in-home caregiver who kept her kids entertained with fun enrichment activities and even helped with school projects during the extended child care break. Kim could focus on wrapping up her work project without worrying about her kids’ care and even submitted the finished product ahead of the deadline.
Stand-in senior care
Marcus and his family booked a trip abroad to visit his in-laws for the first time in years. But he worried about his elderly mom’s care during his two-week absence. Even though friends and neighbors promised to check in on her, Marcus wanted to make sure she kept up with her medications and didn’t feel too lonely. A coworker suggested Marcus contact a Care Specialist for help.
After consulting with Marcus about his mom’s care needs, the Care Specialist helped him put together a care plan that covered his time away and connected him with senior respite care services. The Care Specialist also recommended a service to provide meals and transportation for his mother’s medical appointments. After meeting with the caregivers and introducing them to his mom, Marcus felt confident knowing she would have the support she needed while he was away.
The holiday pet care pivot
Lisa’s holiday stress peaked when her regular dog boarding facility unexpectedly closed to repair damage caused by a burst pipe. Even worse, it happened days before she was set to fly cross-country for a long-anticipated family reunion. Her 12-year-old golden retriever, Max, struggles with anxiety in unfamiliar situations, making typical boarding options a poor fit.
Lisa sees Max as her fur baby and caring for him as he ages was a factor in her choosing her work-from-home job a few years back. With friends unavailable to dog-sit and limited off-work hours to explore alternative options, she thought she would have to cancel her trip. Then, she remembered the Care Membership provided by her employer and contacted a Care Specialist.
The Care Specialist listened to Lisa’s concerns and asked questions to understand Max’s needs. She worked quickly to research solutions that would keep Max comfortable in his own environment – and make Lisa feel confident he would be well cared for while she was away. The Care Specialist interviewed pet sitters with experience caring for anxious, senior dogs. She provided Lisa with vetted options and set up times for Lisa and Max to meet with them. In the end, Lisa found a dog sitter she trusted – and Max found a new friend.
The gift of reduced school stress
Heading into winter break, Maya expected her daughter Kylie to be excited. Instead, she seemed downcast and tense. Kylie finally confessed that she was struggling with her honors chemistry class and her stress had culminated with a poor performance on an exam. She was afraid of failing the class and putting her dream career in medicine at risk.
Maya reassured her that they would find a way to get Kylie back on track. She emailed one of her coworkers, who had talked about how much a tutor had helped his son. Her coworker explained that a Care Specialist, available through the Care Membership provided by their company, had done the legwork to find a tutor to match his son’s needs.
Using the convenient mobile app, Maya contacted a Care Specialist. After a consultation, the Care Specialist provided Maya and Kylie with an action plan. They lined up online tutoring sessions for Kylie that started over winter break and continued through the next semester. After the first session, Maya immediately noticed a positive change in Kylie’s mood. Maya felt good, too, and appreciative of the family care benefits through her employer, which enabled her to address the issue quickly and alleviate her daughter’s stress.
Care during the holidays and beyond
Caregiving needs don’t take a holiday. Every day, employees are navigating their care challenges, from daily distractions to significant life events. Providing support and resources makes good business sense. Companies that offer benefits for caregivers see a positive impact on recruiting, retention, productivity, and morale. A Harvard Business School study found that employers offering benefits that help connect caregivers to planning, administrative, and support services reduce absenteeism by up to 50% and achieve an overall return on investment (ROI) of up to 72%.
Find out how Care Specialists can support your employees when they need it most – and boost well-being, productivity, and loyalty at the same time. Request a meeting with the Care for Business team today.
