Women typically handle more workload than men when it comes to supporting a family.
According to the recent American Caregivers Study by Fidelity released last July, an average of 36.2 hours each week are spent on doing support tasks by women who are both caregivers and employed, full-time or part-time. This is 35 percent more hours than men who are caregivers and employed.
Moreover, some women are caring not only for their children but also for their aging parents and are working simultaneously. These women who are part of the "sandwich generation" find it more difficult to balance parenthood, career, and caring for their parents.
What the sandwich generation is looking for
The vice president of global recognition at the Great Place to Work Institute, Sarah Lewis-Kulin, expressed that employees from the sandwich generation are "frequently navigating through crises."
Thus, finding support from their workplace is a "critical pillar" for these women. How their employers and managers show up for them is very much vital to their success and their decision to stay in the company or not.
About 17 percent of sandwich generation employees have decided to quit their job, and 27 percent have turned down promotions or opportunities for professional development because they could not find the support they need, according to Home Instead's recent survey.
The sandwich generation workers are looking for supportive workplace culture and good benefits that can provide solutions and flexibility in their challenging circumstances.
What do the best workplaces offer?
According to Great Place to Work survey data, about 61 percent of women caring for children and their aging parents have no plan to leave their current employers and desire to stay for a "long time," as they are given the right programs and support. This results in 91 percent of women from the sandwich generation working at one of the 2022 Best Large Workplaces for Women.
Stereotypes that parents and caregivers are "less invested" in their jobs exist, yet this is not how it looks for women of the sandwich generation at the best workplaces. These women in these workplaces are committed because they feel and see the support, and 9 out of 10 of these women admitted that their work is not merely a job but has a special meaning to them.
"The best workplaces have a few things in common. They all offer meaningful employee assistance programs (EAPs) with a lot of solutions that can help workers arrange care, or even subsidized backup care-not only for children, but also for elders, both in-home and at a center," Lewis-Kulin explained to Fortune.
Further, programs that become topnotch offer services for their employees that go the extra mile, like providing well-being checkups for aging parents in the comfort of their homes to lessen the worries and concerns of employees away from the family members they are caring for.
But more than anything, she emphasized that at the best companies, what they saw, especially through the pandemic, is that they listen "deeply" to their employees. When a company does that, it becomes "more flexible." A company has to do more than empower its leaders but charge their leaders to have a heart for their people, take care of them, and do the right thing for them.
The needs of these women and employees in the sandwich generation are essential things that companies must carefully consider. The number of Americans under this generation is expected to increase in the years to come as the baby boomers become 70 and 80 years old and millennials settle down and have their own families.
