How to Support Employees Who Are Family Caregivers: A Leader's Playbook

To support employees who are caregivers, make it safe to say so, then make work flexible enough to hold it. That means managers who ask, policies that cover the care people actually give, and leaders who talk about it openly. With 63 million Americans now caring for a family member, the caregiver is already on your team.

How many employees are family caregivers?

More than most leaders assume. The AARP and National Alliance for Caregiving report Caregiving in the US 2025 counts 63 million American family caregivers, about one in four adults and a 45 percent increase over the past decade.

The same research describes 70 percent of working-age caregivers as being in the workforce. Earlier employer research points the same way: in Harvard Business School's The Caring Company, based on surveys from 2016 and 2017, 73 percent of employees reported some type of current caregiving responsibility.

Dementia sharpens the picture. The Alzheimer's Association's 2026 Facts and Figures reports that nearly 13 million Americans provide unpaid care for someone living with Alzheimer's or another dementia. In 2025 those caregivers gave more than 19 billion hours of care, valued at more than $446 billion. A great deal of that care happens before work, after work, and in a parking lot between meetings.## How does caregiving affect work and careers?

Caregiving rarely causes a single dramatic exit. It wears careers down gradually, through reduced hours, missed opportunities and quiet decisions not to go for the next role.

SHRM's April 2025 research, which surveyed more than 3,000 working caregivers, found that caregiving affects career growth for 42 percent of them. In the past year, 28 percent had reduced their hours and 14 percent had changed jobs to get more flexibility. AARP's 2025 report adds that 23 percent of caregivers are in debt because of their caregiving.

Over the long run, the cost to employers is significant. The Caring Company found that 32 percent of all employees had voluntarily left a job at some point in their career because of caregiving. Those departures rarely get labeled as caregiving in exit data. They show up as "personal reasons," or as a strong performer who suddenly seems less ambitious.

In senior housing, I've seen how often the family member arranging care is also holding down a demanding job, and how rarely their employer has any idea.

Why don't employees tell their managers they're caregivers?

Because they fear it will cost them, and often their workplace has given them no reason to think otherwise. Silence is a rational response to an unclear culture.

Caregivers worry about being seen as less committed, about being passed over, and about sharing a parent's or partner's private health situation. Many also don't think of themselves as "caregivers" at all. They are simply a daughter, a husband, a parent doing what families do.

The gap between what employees experience and what leaders see is wide. In The Caring Company, only 24 percent of employers recognized that caregiving had a direct impact on their workers' performance. SHRM's 2025 survey of HR professionals found only 35 percent believe their organizations adequately address caregivers' long-term needs. When leaders don't see the issue, employees learn not to raise it, and the silence becomes self-reinforcing.

What does someone on your team see or hear that tells them it's safe to say "I'm caring for my mother"?

What benefits and policies actually help working caregivers?

The policies that help most are the ones that give people control over time. Flexibility comes first, followed by paid leave and practical help finding care.

The Milken Institute's January 2025 report, Supporting Family Caregiving: How Employers Can Lead, recommends flexible schedules, paid caregiving leave, and cultures where employees feel comfortable identifying as family caregivers. That third recommendation is the one most organizations skip, and without it the first two go unused.

Flexibility — What good looks like: Predictable flexibility that doesn't require a fresh negotiation every week · Common gap: Flexibility that exists on paper but depends on the manager

Paid caregiving leave — What good looks like: Covers the people employees actually care for, including in-laws and chosen family · Common gap: Leave limited to narrow definitions of family

Navigation support — What good looks like: Help finding care, understanding options and handling paperwork · Common gap: A benefit buried in a portal nobody remembers

Manager capability — What good looks like: Managers trained to ask, listen and adapt work · Common gap: Managers left to improvise

Visible leadership — What good looks like: Senior leaders speaking about their own caregiving · Common gap: Caregiving treated as a private matter

In the United States, the federal Family and Medical Leave Act offers eligible employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave to care for a spouse, child or parent with a serious health condition. It is a floor, not a strategy. Many caregivers can't afford unpaid leave, and many care for relatives the law doesn't cover.

What can a manager say and do this week?

A manager can open the door, listen without solving, and agree one practical adjustment. That sequence fits in a regular one-to-one.

1. Ask a broad, open question. Try: "Is anything outside work making this season harder? You don't have to share details." It invites without demanding.
2. Listen before fixing. Resist the urge to jump to policy. The first need is often simply to be believed.
3. Agree one concrete change. A protected block for appointments, a shifted start time or a temporary redistribution of one responsibility is often enough to begin.
4. Protect confidentiality. Ask what the person wants shared with the team, and honor it.
5. Point to the real resources. Know what your organization offers before the conversation, so you're not promising what doesn't exist.
6. Check in again. Care needs change, especially with progressive conditions like dementia. A two-week follow-up shows the first conversation was meant.

For employees who are also parents trying to explain a grandparent's dementia to their children, I wrote Rosemary Rabbit for exactly that moment, and the Rosemary Rabbit site has gentle guidance for families. For leaders thinking more broadly about aging and care, Kairahn is where I share that work.

If you had to guess how many people on your own team are caregivers, what number would you say, and how would you know?