This week we’re raising awareness of National Carer’s Week by focussing on how to support carers in the workplace. This year’s theme is ‘putting carers on the map’. The aim is to come together to recognise the huge contribution unpaid carer’s make to society and the role employers, businesses, politicians, health and social services, and members of the public (to name just a few) all have in making sure they feel supported.

HR and employers have a unique role to play in how to support carers in the workplace and helping to ensure they have access to any information they need.

It is estimated that 5 million people juggle work and care in the UK, and this figure is increasing with many employees giving up work to manage their caring responsibilities.

One of the steps that has recently been taken to try and assist carers manage their caring responsibility and their employment, is the legislative introduction of Carer’s Leave on 6 April 2024 which created a new statutory unpaid leave entitlement for employees who are caring for a dependant with a long-term care need. This affords carers up to one week of flexible unpaid leave a year (taken in whole or half days), and will hopefully enable carers to better balance their caring and work responsibilities, supporting them to remain in employment. The new entitlement is available to employees regardless of how long they have been working for a company.

There is no obligation for employers to pay those who are on carer’s leave – the statutory entitlement is unpaid for eligible employees, but organisations have the option of offering contractual pay or providing for more leave than the statutory minimum.

Whilst this new legislation is very similar to what is already available for time off for dependants, carer’s leave is a new entitlement and managers should be made aware of the difference and how the leave entitlements should be used.  You should now also be thinking about:

• providing additional training to your managers and HR teams.
• updating policies and procedures and communicating changes with the workforce.
• You could consider offering your employees, who are carers, the opportunity to take similar leave to that available in your parental leave provisions. We’ve put together a free template policy to help you see how that might work in practice. You can download a free copy here.
• thinking about those within the business who have caring needs and considering how requests for leave or flexibility may best be accommodated.
• how to make candidates aware of your flexible working arrangements, EAP, and Dependent Care Leave provisions without them feeling uncomfortable by having to ask

If you don’t have EAP arrangements, you could consider some of the very cost-effective services available such as the one provided by The Mindful Employer Scheme https://www.mindfulemployer.dpt.nhs.uk/employee-assistance-programme or others attached to medical cashplans.  If even those are beyond your budget, do you know how to signpost employees to support that they can access outside of the workplace?

Ensuring candidates and employees can easily access information, training managers, and enabling employees to get support are three simple things you can do to look after the carers in your workforce.  If you want to do more to publicise Carer’s Week in your organisation take a look at www.carersweek.org