The Help Project

Companies investing in elder care benefits are seeing results.
6x as many companies are currently expanding elder care benefits as are cutting them.
78% of companies that offer elder care support report a positive impact on workplace performance.
Employees who know their company sees the whole person, the parent's appointment, the late-night call, the care decision they can't stop thinking about, they stay.
They perform. They don't quietly downshift.
The numbers tell the rest: caregiving costs employers $6,410 per employee per year in lost productivity. A 90-minute workshop runs less than a quarter of that.
I've spent over 25 years inside every corner of the aging system. Direct care, nursing home administration, a $48 million continuing care campus, and now state-level aging policy as CEO of Arizona LeadingAge. I understand what families navigate because I've sat in those rooms with them.
When I bring that into a corporate setting, I'm not delivering a pamphlet. I'm walking HR and leadership teams through exactly what their employees are managing and what the company already has, often in existing EAP and legal benefits, To support them.
The companies winning on retention right now are building this infrastructure before the crisis hits. They're not waiting for someone to raise their hand.
PS. I have worked with teams where a single 90-minute workshop changed how managers responded to caregiving employees (for good). If you want to know what that looks like, send me a message.

90% of your caregiving employees are burning out.
A brand new national survey dropped this week:

- 63 million Americans are now family caregivers.
- Nearly 1 in 4 adults.
- 90%t show burnout symptoms.
- 20% describe it as severe.
A meaningful share of them are sitting at desks in your company right now, managing all of it in silence.
The data also shows: 22% of employees have already left a job because of caregiving demands. Another 85% say they'd consider leaving for a company with better support.
The same week this survey was published, Congress finalized nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid CUTS slashing the home-based services these employees rely on to keep showing up to work.
Most HR teams aren't seeing this yet because nobody's connecting elder caregiving to workforce data. They're tracking unexplained pullback, declined promotions, reduced hours... and attributing it to disengagement or fit.
The answer is often simpler and more actionable than that.
HR leaders: what does your company currently offer employees who are navigating a parent's care? I'd genuinely like to know.
PS. If your team wants to understand where elder caregiving risk is concentrating in your workforce before it becomes turnover, I can help you build that picture. Let’s talk: Dm Me

My 12-year-old came home from the dentist yesterday with two things.

A clean bill of dental health.

And a IMDb credit.

Dr. Bienstock's office was shooting a toothbrush commercial, and Tabi got cast on the spot. She was beside herself. Fully committed to the bit. Convinced this was the beginning of something.

On the way to the car, she said:

"Mama. Dr. Bienstock is a real boss lady. That's exactly the kind of woman I want to be."

I asked what she meant.

She described a woman who walked into every corner of that office like she owned it, because she does, calm, confident, in charge of every moving piece.

Tabi saw it immediately. That kind of presence is hard to miss.

Dr. Bienstock may not be dealing with this right now.

But she is exactly who I'm talking about.

The women who have it most together.

The ones who own the room without trying.

The ones your organization counts on most.

They are not immune to what's coming.

At some point, a parent's health starts to shift.

And that same competence they bring to everything else gets quietly redirected. A parent whose memory is slipping.

A sibling who keeps calling with updates that don't add up to a plan. Appointments being rescheduled around someone else's appointments.

They handle it the same way they handle everything.

Quietly. Efficiently.

Without making it anyone else's problem.

Until it becomes too much to handle quietly.

The average working caregiver spends 27 hours a week managing an aging parent's care. One in three never tells HR because they don't want to be seen as a liability.

They just start getting smaller. Fewer risks. Shorter horizon. Until one day they're gone.

The organizations paying attention right now aren't waiting for those employees to raise a hand.

If you want to know what that looks like at your company, send me a message.

👉 P.S. After 25+ years inside the aging system, I can help your HR team understand what your caregiving employees are actually navigating.

Want to have that conversation?
DM let's chat.

My 16-year-old called me from a gas station last week.

New car. First time driving herself somewhere alone.

She could not figure out how to open the gas tank.

I walked her through it — the little button on the driver's side floor — and we laughed about it.

But I could not stop thinking about it after.

Because I have watched the exact same thing happen inside corporations for 20 years.

Not with gas tanks. With the aging system.

HR hires someone brilliant. 15 or 20 years with the company. Deeply trusted.

And then their mom gets a dementia diagnosis.

Or their dad falls and suddenly nothing can be managed from a hospital three states away.

And that employee disappears.

Not dramatically.

Quietly.

Reduced hours. Declined projects.

A resignation letter that blindsides everyone.

When HR tries to understand what happened, they are standing at that gas tank with no idea the button even exists.

🔍 Here is what most employees are navigating alone:

There are 18 distinct levels of care between living independently at home and skilled nursing.

Most families don't know that.

There are funding gaps that don't reveal themselves until someone is already in crisis.

There are legal documents that need to exist before they are needed, and decisions that get made in 48 hours that should have taken months.

Most employees have no map for any of it.

They don't know what questions to ask.

They don't know who to call.

And most don't know that the benefits their company is already paying for could help right now.

✅ EAP programs, legal funds, the infrastructure often already exists.

It's just not set up to reach caregiving employees who need it.

The button exists.

Someone just needs to show your team where it is.

Most HR teams don't catch the eldercare burnout until it's already a $150k recruitment problem.

PS. Most HR teams have no idea what elder caregiving is actually costing them in turnover, lost productivity, and declined promotions. I built a calculator that runs the numbers for your workforce in about two minutes.

See what it looks like at your company: https://www.help-project.com/calculator-e2102230-4386-4017-b1b1-1a93a71ec6e5

Mother’s Day is a beautiful day for some. It is a complicated one for me. 🌸

My relationship with my own mother isn't a simple one.

For years, this weekend didn't feel like the soft, sentimental "thank you" the commercials sell.

Being a mom to my two daughters has rewritten what this weekend means to me.

Both things are true at once.

That is the part nobody talks about.

Here is why this matters at work:
Holidays like this one walk into your office Monday morning whether your employees want them to or not.

A comment in a meeting or a reminder email from a florist lands, and suddenly, a team member is sitting at their desk holding a lot more than their inbox.

For employees caring for an aging parent, these complicated relationships don’t stay in the past.

They show up in:
1️⃣ The doctor’s appointment that has to be scheduled.
2️⃣ The legal forms that need a signature.
3️⃣ The gut-wrenching conversation about giving up the car keys.

These employees are excellent at the logistics.
They get the task done.

What doesn’t get "done" is the emotional weight underneath.

The resentment of showing up for someone who wasn't there for you.

The grief for a relationship that never was.

The anger at being the "only one" left to do it.

That weight walks into your meetings.

Pro tip for HR leaders:
You likely already pay for an EAP with mental health services. Most employees don't realize it applies to "caregiving stress."

Don't send a generic wellness email this week.

Send a specific one.
Instead of "Reach out if you're stressed," try:
"Mother's Day can be joyful, but it can also be a reminder of loss or a complicated family history. If you are navigating the emotional strain of caring for a parent, our EAP provides 5 free counseling sessions to help you manage that weight."

When you name the hard stuff out loud, you build a culture where that employee stays through the hard year because they finally felt seen.

You trade "quiet quitting" for deep, institutional loyalty. 🤝

The employees who need that reminder won't raise their hand. They will quietly screenshot your email and use it later.

HR leaders: Have you noticed a "holiday hangover" in your team's energy this week, or are these caregiving struggles still largely invisible in your workplace?

Happy Mother’s Day to the moms with easy stories and the moms with hard ones. Both of you are doing the work.

PS. Caregiving strain is one of the leading drivers of mid-career turnover that nobody tracks.

If you want to see what this is actually costing your organization, get my Turnover Cost Tool for caregiving employees. 📊: https://lnkd.in/geuhdadB

Let me tell you who is quietly pulling back at your company right now.

She's 48, maybe 52. She's been with you long enough to know where every body is buried and how every system actually works.
She trains the new people without being asked.
She covers when someone's out.
She doesn't complain.
She just handles it.
She's also managing her mother's medication schedule, coordinating with a sibling who isn't doing their fair share, and trying to figure out if her dad's house needs to be sold before or after he qualifies for Medicaid.
She hasn't mentioned any of it to HR. She never will.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Gen X women ages 45–64 are carrying the heaviest eldercare burden in the country. 7.6 million of them are simultaneously raising children under 18.

The U.S. Department of Labor's Women's Bureau found that women lose approximately 15% of their lifetime earnings to unpaid caregiving — and that's not just lost income in the moment. That's reduced Social Security contributions, smaller retirement savings, and a compounding financial gap that follows them for decades into a retirement they were already behind on.

AARP research puts 69% of Gen X workers in that category — already feeling behind before the caregiving math hit.

She is subsidizing the American care system with her career. And she's doing it invisibly.

Here's what HR leaders need to understand:
this is not a diversity issue.
It's not a compassion issue.
It is a business continuity issue.
The women most likely to leave your organization — or quietly downshift until they're a fraction of who they were — are the ones carrying institutional knowledge that took a decade to build.
They are your operational backbone. The ones who remember why the policy exists, who know which client needs which kind of handling, who keep things from falling apart when leadership is looking the other way.

When they leave, you don't just lose a headcount. You lose the architecture.
And they are leaving, or pulling back, or turning down the promotion they've earned — not because they don't want it, but because they have done the math and there is no version of "more" that fits right now.
Replacing them will cost you 50–200% of their annual salary according to SHRM. The knowledge they take with them can't be priced.
So here's the question I'd ask any HR leader reading this: what is your company actually doing to retain mid-career women who are managing care responsibilities they've never mentioned to you?

Not what's in your benefits guide. What are you actually doing?
Because if your answer relies on employees raising their hand first — you've already missed most of them.
👉 Find out what caregiver-driven turnover is already costing your organization: DM for the link

What happens when employees decide silence is safer than honesty.
SHRM found that 42% of working caregivers report significant career challenges from their caregiving responsibilities. That's nearly half of your caregiving workforce experiencing real, measurable career damage from something they're carrying outside the building.
Separately, the 2026 NAMI-Ipsos workplace mental health poll found that 41% of employees who don't discuss personal challenges at work say stigma is the reason. 33% don't want to seem weak. 23% fear retaliation.
Put those 2 data points next to each other and the picture gets uncomfortable fast.
Nearly half of your caregiving employees are experiencing career fallout. And nearly half of all employees struggling with something personal have already decided that silence is the smarter choice. Not because the door isn't technically open. Because they've done the math on what happens when they walk through it.
That's not a communication problem. It's a trust problem. And trust problems don't show up in exit interviews. They show up as disengagement metrics no one can explain, performance reviews that miss the point entirely, and eventually, a resignation letter from someone you didn't see coming.
When I run a workshop inside a company, one of the most consistent things I watch happen is this: employees realize they're not alone. Not in a group-therapy way. In a "wait, this is everyone" way. And managers realize that what they've been reading as low effort or checked out is actually someone carrying a crisis they didn't feel safe naming. 1 manager told me after a 90-minute session that she immediately thought of 3 people on her team she needed to follow up with differently. Not because the workshop gave her a script. Because it gave her a frame.
The workshop doesn't fix caregiving. Nothing fixes caregiving. But it does something that turns out to be the prerequisite for everything else: it makes the problem visible.
Visible is where solutions start.
If your employees don't feel safe telling you what they're carrying, you're not managing people. You're managing the performance of people trying very hard not to let you see what's actually happening. That's expensive, and it's fixable. But only if you're willing to create the conditions where honesty feels like less of a risk than silence.
That's what process transparency actually looks like in practice. Not a hotline. Not a benefits PDF. A room where people realize they're allowed to be human at work, and leaders realize they've been responding to symptoms instead of causes.

P.S. A 90-minute workshop changed how an entire management team responded to their people. If you want to know what that looked like inside 1 company, I'm happy to share it. Grab your Turnover Calculator Here: https://www.help-project.com/calculator-e2102230-4386-4017-b1b1-1a93a71ec6e5