--- title: Seven Ways to Tackle the Elder-Care Crisis at Work description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. canonical: https://time.com/partner-content/charter/seven-ways-to-tackle-the-elder-care-crisis-at-work/ author: Brian Elliott article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-04-16T10:30:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-24T22:39:14.245Z article:section: Charter og:title: Seven Ways to Tackle the Elder-Care Crisis at Work og:description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. by [Brian Elliott](https://time.com/author/brian-elliott/) Executive-in-residence, Charter Brian Elliott is Charter's executive-in-residence and CEO of Work Forward. Apr 16, 2026 10:30 AM UTC  Illustration by Charter · Photo by jacoblund, Getty by [Brian Elliott](https://time.com/author/brian-elliott/) Executive-in-residence, Charter Brian Elliott is Charter's executive-in-residence and CEO of Work Forward. Apr 16, 2026 10:30 AM UTC _This is part two of a two-part series on addressing elder-care issues in the workplace. Read the first installment_ [here](https://www.charterworks.com/how-to-address-the-quietly-growing-elder-care-crisis-at-work/) _and learn more about_ [Charter Forum](https://www.charterworks.com/forum/)_._ Most organizations don't know how many of their employees are managing an aging parent right now. They know about child care: The number of dependents shows up in insurance data, and people tend to announce pregnancies. Elder care arrives differently. As KPMG economist [Matthew Nestler](https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewnestlerphd/) explained in a recent [Charter Forum](https://www.charterworks.com/forum/) session, "Oftentimes you're going about your day and there's an accident, and elder-care \[responsibility\] hits suddenly. Then you're thrown into this dizzying world of the healthcare system in this country." Unlike child care, which usually begins with some predictability, elder care often lands as a crisis. In the Forum conversation, Nestler dove into the hidden costs he wants employers to see more clearly. Between 10% and 20% of workers across every industry are providing unpaid elder care. Workers are “in some instances providing medical services without being trained as a medical professional, and in effect subsidizing the healthcare industry,” Nestler said. Consider [Theresa de la Osa](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tdelaosa/), an executive recruiter I spoke with after the Forum conversation about her experience. De la Osa moved back to Detroit to care for her mother in 2020 after her father passed away, and says she would constantly have to reschedule meetings and apologize for unavailability without feeling like she was able to explain why. When she finally brought in paid home-health aides, she discovered they needed as much direction as her mother did, and they rotated constantly. She recalls “managing the inflexibility of a working person's schedule against the flexibility of a retired person, whose primary focus is medical care.” She eventually used her recruiting skills to hire nursing students directly from local schools, which offered better medical training and lower rates—$20 an hour instead of the $33 an hour agencies would charge. (The aides from the agencies, meanwhile, were only paid $16). ### **What employers getting this right are doing** Every workplace includes people like de la Osa. The problem is most of them are solving it alone, without the time or support to solve it well. The range of support they get from employers runs from effectively free, [such as improved communication](https://www.charterworks.com/how-to-address-the-quietly-growing-elder-care-crisis-at-work/) about benefits or adding employee resource groups for elder care, to more substantial. Here’s what leading companies and elder-care experts suggest doing to help support employees: **Curate resources.** The most useful support age-tech entrepreneur [Dina Chaiffetz](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dinachaiffetz/) says she found when navigating a care-facility placement for her father wasn't a platform or an app. It was an elder-care advisor at a local community services nonprofit who walked her through the system. Employers—and workers—may not know such local resources exist. A one-pager of community-specific elder-care resources, maintained by HR and distributed proactively, is a low-cost, high-impact intervention. **Add elder-care concierge services.** For larger organizations, concierge services have proven especially valuable for employees navigating sudden, highly complex needs. Nestler explained what they do: "You're thrown into this dizzying world of the healthcare system in this country. Concierge services help you understand what you need to do—they can book appointments, tell you who to talk to, and help you interpret information." **Provide flexibility.** As Chaiffetz says, some employees moved closer to aging parents during the pandemic. Others built care routines around flexible schedules. Return-to-office mandates don't just lengthen commutes. They determine whether someone can get a parent to a doctor’s appointment or be home when a caregiver leaves. For frontline workers, predictable schedules are equally critical. **Consider caregiver stipends.** Elder-care demands show up erratically: a last-minute flight to be with a hospitalized parent, an emergency caregiver placement, a scramble to find a facility in two weeks. A modest stipend—even a few hundred dollars earmarked for elder-care emergencies—signals the company sees what's happening and is willing to help absorb some of the cost. "Stipends don't tend to be much, but I feel like people value them a lot," Chaiffetz says. **Create dedicated elder-care PTO.** Nestler flagged this as one of the more innovative benefits he's seen: paid time off specifically for elder care, separate from general PTO. "It gives you the flexibility to spend that time where you need it, without having to use your PTO." A separate leave bank shows the organization sees elder care as a distinct need, not a personal inconvenience. **Extend paid family leave.** [Tracy Layney](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracylayney/), former CHRO at Levi Strauss, helped expand the company's paid family leave program to cover any family member of benefits-eligible employees in any circumstance—not just parental leave—for eight weeks. The actual cost was a fraction of what they’d originally projected, and a uniform policy simplified a patchwork of local, state, and national variations. "I would rather have an employee take eight weeks away, deal with their family situation, and come back to work than have them quit because they don't know what else to do," Layney says. **Advocate collectively for systemic solutions.** Employers and industry consortiums can work together to influence government policies that impact caregiving. As Nestler said, “You have firms in all parts of the economy whose worker productivity is being shifted to subsidize healthcare because of the lack of structures in this country.” ### **Making the business case** Building a cost rationale for elder-care resources requires leaders to reframe their thinking. As Nestler noted in our Forum session, leaders tend to only look at the costs of new programs, not how much they’re already paying for them through lost productivity and turnover. Every frontline worker who quits [costs 40%](https://www.gallup.com/workplace/650174/employee-retention-depends-getting-recognition-right.aspx) of their salary to replace. For office workers, that jumps to 80%. Nestler’s response to those leaders is to ask them: “How are you going to chip away at that cost and potentially gain an edge over competitors?" The demographic pressure is not easing. The organizations that build even modest infrastructure around elder care now will retain people their competitors will lose, and they'll do it before the crisis forces the issue. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/seven-ways-to-tackle-the-elder-care-crisis-at-work/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/seven-ways-to-tackle-the-elder-care-crisis-at-work/"},"headline":"Seven Ways to Tackle the Elder-Care Crisis at Work","datePublished":"2026-04-16T10:30:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-24T22:39:14.245Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/seven-ways-to-tackle-the-elder-care-crisis-at-work/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt917fe66771cbc017/69ebf07183552040165b3ec8/charter-elder-caregiving-2.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Brian Elliott","jobTitle":"Executive-in-residence, Charter","url":"https://time.com/author/brian-elliott/"}],"articleSection":"Charter","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt917fe66771cbc017/69ebf07183552040165b3ec8/charter-elder-caregiving-2.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"charter-elder-caregiving-2.jpg","caption":"","creditText":"Illustration by Charter · Photo by jacoblund, Getty","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/seven-ways-to-tackle-the-elder-care-crisis-at-work/","name":"Seven Ways to Tackle the Elder-Care Crisis at Work"}}]}] ```