The theme for this year’s Carers Week (5 – 11 June) is ‘Recognising and Supporting Carers in the Community’. Unpaid Carers who are also in paid work are known as working Carers. Recognition and support in the workplace empowers staff to successfully balance work and an unpaid caring role.
An awareness week is a great opportunity for employers to start or embed conversations about unpaid caring so that it becomes part of your wider workplace wellbeing and inclusion conversation.
While unpaid Carers aren’t one of the protected characteristics recognised within equality legislation, with an average of 1.9 million workers across England and Wales becoming a Carer each year, it couldn’t be more important to recognise and support the unpaid Carers amongst your workforce.
This blog and the linked Carer Friendly workplace resource are designed to support you to achieve this.
You might be surprised that simply recognising Carers can be quite challenging.
Did you know?
- It takes most Carers over a year to identify that they are in a caring role, and for a third of Carers it takes three years. That’s 1 – 3 years without access to any support inside or outside the workplace.
- Many Carers don’t use (and some don’t like) the word Carer. So, simply asking someone if they are a Carer won’t reveal the staff in your employment who also have caring responsibilities.
- Many people who do identify as a Carer may still choose not to share this information with their employer due to feeling concerned that this might impact their career. Others may feel worried that the person they speak to won’t understand who a Carer is and the impact of working and caring.
Fortunately, recognising Carers and providing impactful, low-cost support for working Carers can be simple and easily tailored to each workplace. A Carer Friendly Workplace is one that has positive awareness of the caring role and provides relevant support to their workforce.
Are you a Carer Aware workplace?
The short quiz below is designed for anyone in a role that supports staff – Line Managers, HR staff, EDI teams, Senior Management – to baseline how Carer Aware / Carer Friendly your organisation is. Score one point for each statement you answer yes to.
How Well Did You Do?
If you answered:
8 – 10 – Congratulations! You are an example of best practice in Carer support. Find out more about the Carer Friendly Employer Commitment Mark, a Carer-verified certification for your business. (link to Commitment Mark – Forward Carers)
6 – 8 – You are on a journey towards becoming a Carer Friendly Employer, you recognise, value and support the working Carers in your organisation. With a few more steps, you could become a leader in Carer Friendly Employment practice. Find out how the Carer Friendly Employer Commitment Mark (link to Commitment Mark – Forward Carers) and workplace training (Workplace Training – Forward Carers) could support you to become a Carer Friendly Workplace.
2 – 5 – You have some support in place but it’s likely that this isn’t sufficient to empower Carers to successfully balance work and care. Contact us at carerfriendly@forwardcarers.org.uk to find out how you could take your first steps to becoming Carer Friendly.
0 – 1 – Uh oh! I think we need to talk! Get in touch asap!
Free Carer Friendly Resource:
3 in 5 of us will become an unpaid Carer in our lifetime, so it’s no surprise employers have begun to realise that supporting their staff who balance work and a caring role makes good business sense. Very recently, legislation passed into law that gives working Carers the right to five days’ unpaid leave each year and future legislation will give all staff the right to request flexible working from day one. Now is the time for all businesses to develop workplace support and practices that will empower working Carers and businesses to thrive.
Regardless of how you scored in the quiz, why not use Carers Week as a great opportunity to talk to your staff about unpaid caring and to reflect on how you can make small changes that will make a big difference to unpaid Carers. One of the most impactful changes you can make is to raise positive awareness of the caring role, so staff who are also carrying out caring responsibilities feel empowered to share their experiences.
Watch this short clip to see how a Carer Friendly workplace helped these Carers and businesses
