Expert Opinion: How can we become more compassionate?

With the nearing festive season often a time for reflection, Cornerstone Resources’ Rob Birley draws on his own experiences over the past year to discuss how businesses can be compassionate and support colleagues who are carers or have been bereaved.

Those of you who follow me on LinkedIn will know that I’ve recently lost my mum after a long protracted illness. As my dad and brother have already passed away, I increasingly took responsibility for mum’s affairs as she grew less capable. It started with cooking her evening meal, then arranging for carers to come in the house, managing frequent falls, arranging her care home and then managing her finances. At every stage, what I would have needed from my employer changed. Thankfully in my case, I am my own employer so I have been able to give myself a great deal of flexibility but how would this have worked if I had been in my old corporate life?

In this article, I want to focus on how we support those who are caring for family members and those who have been bereaved.

Caring for the carers

According to the Office of National Statistics, approximately 1.4 million people are sandwich carers. This means that about 3.7% of the workforce are looking after elderly parents and their own kids. Whilst the circumstances and scale of that care may differ widely, around 1/4 of this figure provide more than 20 hours care per week.

Aside from the fatigue, guilt, stress and worry that goes with caring, there is also the often short notice need to take those we care for to medical appointments. So the predictability of when you are available for work can also suffer. However, there is also the need to balance with this with the need to perform your core duties. How can we strike an effective balance? Is there a limit to the flexibility that employers can offer?

What is the carer employed to do?

If the carer is employed to perform a role that requires them to be in a certain place between certain times and there are few options for covering that role, then the flexibility you can offer is reduced.

In my experience, most appointments for routine care are booked weeks or even months in advance. With that amount of notice, you can prepare for planned absence. However if they are regular and frequent, it may not be possible to accommodate them all. This takes us back to the contract of employment.

The employer sets the parameters of the hours of work and location. The employee can submit a flexible working request to vary those terms but if the request isn’t possible to accommodate, there has to be a point where that flexibility ends. The nature of the role will determine what you can offer. Clearly a role that requires a physical presence such as a shop floor role, hospitality or a receptionist will have less flexibility in terms of the location that the work takes place in. So what happens when it doesn’t work out?

In many cases, the employee may realise that they can’t meet the needs of the role and will resign but this leaves those awkward to manage cases where the employee expects that their needs will be constantly met by the employer. Clearly I can’t give generic advice for every scenario but this could lead to a termination of some description if the contract cannot be fulfilled. A final caveat to this is to of course take advice if there is any possible discrimination element to the case.

Bereavement leave

Moving onto bereavement leave, most policies give a certain number of days leave depending on the nature of the relationship the employee has with their dependant. Many policies will give 3-5 days after the death for close family members such as parents, siblings and children and 1-3 days for others. Is this enough? I certainly ended up spending 3 days working from my mums care home before she passed away and then had several days afterwards partly in and partly out of work whilst I managed all the legal arrangements. People cope in different ways and we should be mindful of that. After all, it’s better giving a bit of additional temporary flexibility than getting a fit note sent to you isn’t it?

In today’s blended families, some relationships that we may think of as more distant can take on more importance. For instance is someone is brought up by their grandparents or an aunt, then they should be given the same bereavement leave as if it were a parent that had passed. It may not always be clear how close the relationship is so best not to assume.

What are the takeaways?

Nothing is as straightforward as it seems! Flexibility is good and if you treat people well at times like this, then they will remember it for life. So where you can, adapt and help someone in their hour of need.

However, there are limits to that flexibility. Ongoing and unended flexibility is not reasonable and as employers you shouldn’t feel that you have to rip up the role description to accommodate every need.

Share your thoughts with Rob on LinkedIn here.