Australia functions due to carers who do an estimated $77 billion of informal work each year. If they were not doing this work, Australia’s economy would be in chaos.
The peak body for family and friend carers, Carers Australia, says people fall into a carer role for a variety of reasons. The person may have a child or family member or friend living with a disability, a mental health diagnosis, a chronic or terminal illness, or substance dependency.
Carers Australia CEO Annabel Reid says anyone can step into a carer role but a significant proportion – around 400,000 – are young people.
In one case, Reid heard from a 12-year-old girl who took notes to give to her mother’s psychiatrist to inform medication management for her mentally ill mother.
Another young woman was also looking after a single parent with mental illness while simultaneously helping to look after her grandmother, with tasks like negotiating NDIS and other aged care supports.
“Carers come in all sizes,” said Reid. “There is no part of society that is untouched by the need for care.”
Despite this, the invaluable work family and friend carers do often goes unnoticed with many left to navigate systemic challenges, work responsibilities and the psychological burden of what they do all alone.
To address this, Carers Australia hosted a roundtable with Hesta and Women’s Agenda to open up a frank and honest discussion about what people in this community face day to day in the workplace, common roadblocks and practical ideas for meaningful change.
The roundtable was attended by a mix of professionals who work in diversity and inclusion – some also balancing this with caring responsibilities.
Speaking at the roundtable, Women’s Agenda founding editor Angela Priestley emphasised the “integral” role family and friend carers play in Australia.
“They are the foundations of our aged care, our disability care, palliative and community care systems also,” she said.
“But at the end of the day, they’re also individuals.
“As well as being carers, the majority are also in paid employment [and] like all of us, as carers, we all have health and satisfaction needs as well that need to be addressed.”
How people become family or friend carers
Research shows that people often become carers by chance and the wide mix of experiences shared at the roundtable reflected this.
One participant noted that a person can never know when it may happen.
Due to the unpredictable nature of this, there is a certain weight that carers may carry as they navigate this responsibility with other areas of their life.
A number of workplace leaders participating in the discussion were keen to know how they, as employers, could play more of a supportive role than a burdensome one in the lives of employees with caring responsibilities.
Research shows that carers in Australia have a higher tendency to face financial challenges, lower wellbeing and poor mental health, which can come from prolonged stress and the emotional burden they carry.
“Caring is a constrained choice,” said Reid.
“It’s often something that happens [unexpectedly] like somebody’s husband has a stroke.”
Challenges with work, income and performance
At the roundtable, many of the participants shared how workplace conditions can be a blessing or a curse in their lives.
People with caring responsibilities had at times been misjudged by others.
This may have happened socially while out with the person they were supporting or in workplaces with limited awareness of what they do.
“There’s stigma and often isolation,” Reid said.
Roundtable participants noted how colleagues could draw conclusions about a carer because they only show up to the office on certain days, have flexible arrangements or may not be working in the same way as others appear to be on the team.
In some cases, the carer was under immense pressure to perform in the same way as teammates with no such responsibilities.
This spotlighted a critical need to have inclusive workplace policies that were not just written well, but had a system and team culture built in so they would work in a practical sense when needed.
One participant noted how uncomfortable it was as a woman in her 50s to have to explain to a male, 25-year-old boss that she was struggling with menopause while juggling caring responsibilities.
“The policy feels like it’s completely separate from the reality,” she said.
To address this, one DEI leader told us a “reasonable adjustments policy” could be helpful.
At her work, she said it was being designed to create an openness for staff to come forward at any stage of life with their varying caring needs.
“It comes specifically from the Disability Discrimination Act,” she said
“But we’re actually opening it up to be any reasonable adjustment through life stages, through [changing] circumstances and putting carers within that.”
To ensure the policy is effective and actually supports people on the team, she said there is a flowchart providing clear guidelines on how the manager can respond to an employee’s request and requiring them to consult the diversity team before denying anyone.
One participant also suggested that employers could also work with carer advocates to help the organisation get a better understanding of what they may be dealing with and to design more inclusive work conditions for people with such needs.
“ERGs [Employee Resource Groups] play an important role,” she said.
“We’ve not only influenced policy but we’ve also been able to change policy.”
She said this can help alleviate the burden on carers to advocate for themselves, when they are already feeling stretched.
Randstad equity, diversity and inclusion manager Madeline Hill said carers can often be reluctant to tell their leaders about what’s going on.
“People are always reluctant to pull that card and put it on the table because [they’re scared] of being perceived as being difficult,” she said.
“But also the perception then becomes set, and people are bypassed for promotion or opportunities to work elsewhere.”
“So you have this silent inhibitor of career progression.”
Carers can suffer a drop in income as the demands of unpaid work pull them away from paying jobs.
Not only can this affect income but it ultimately puts a dent in their super.
Participants noted how helpful it would be to have a payment structure in place that would enable family or friend carers to put away additional super hence allowing for downtimes in their careers.
HESTA policy and advocacy manager Charlotte Ahearne noted there was growing awareness about this.
“There is some work in progress to identify a carers’ credit model that the whole industry can get behind,” she said.
“And Women in Super are working with some academics on that at the moment – it’s very top of mind.”
How workplace leaders can make a difference
Workplace leaders who make an effort to understand the unique experiences of carers on their teams can help create change that shifts social attitudes and empowers people to perform well in the long-run.
“All of our minority groups together make up the majority, but unless they’re talking, they don’t know that and they don’t have that platform to self-advocate as a group,” said one leader.
“So to me, it’s about providing people a way to connect.”
She also noted that leaders could step up to make their workplaces more inclusive.
In one example, the leader had an employee who was unable to commit to her days in the office because her husband’s employer was refusing to move his mandatory office day to another time in the week.
This would allow the couple to better manage school drop-off and they could both then show up to work.
“It’s putting a lot of stress on that family, and all he wants is to change his anchor day,” she said.
As participants opened up about the impacts of workplace conditions, the importance of empathetic and inclusive leadership was made very clear.
Management, including men, who were willing to open up about their caring demands and role model flexible working could set a wonderful example, creating an openness and permission for others to balance their various personal and professional duties.
“When the leaders are sharing of themselves and their challenges, it absolutely changes the conversation throughout the organisation,” one participant said.
“Leadership should also develop a psychologically safe environment as well for their employees to step forward and to talk about these sorts of things.
“You do need that culture – and culture changes start at the top.”
Some employers are better at this than others and they usually recognise the value of people with caring responsibilities on their teams.
As one of the roundtable participants pointed out.
“If you want to find someone that knows innovation to their core, find a disabled person navigating the world,” she said.
“You want to find someone that knows how to juggle ambiguity, competing priorities, all of that, find someone that’s got caring responsibilities.”