24
Winter 2022
CAREGIVING
5 Ways in Which Your Caregiving Responsibilities at Home Make You a More Valuable Employee For many people, the pandemic brought additional responsibilities in caregiving. Working from home, people found they needed to keep an eye on the children and elderly family members, and even needed to offer emergency help to friends or neighbors. These responsibilities, for some, have exacted costs—they have been unable to engage fully with their jobs and reach for career growth. According to the American Association of Retired Persons, about 30 million people who offer care to their family members have jobs outside of the home. More than half of these people are women, and the average giver of child care spends about 60 hours a week on the activity; caregivers to the elderly spend 28 hours a week on the service, according to a study by the Fidelity insurance company. Across the population, such unpaid care would, if it were paid, be worth a half-billion dollars a year. According to the study, 1 in 3 caregivers are aware their caregiving causes them to lose out on career advancement. Parents taking care of their children also are aware that helping their children learn and go to their activities makes it harder for them to compete with colleagues at work who do not have these responsibilities. Being responsible for caregiving doesn't always harm your career, however. There are ways in which it can help you develop important skills, too— ones you can transfer to your job. Understanding how, and learning how to articulate this insight to your employers, can help you make caregiving a career growth experience.
The ability of caregiving experience to enrich your resume A study by In-Credible, an organization that helps people understand how to demonstrate that their caregiving experience translates into skills that help them at work, shows that caregiving boosts your resume in the following ways.
balance it alongside other responsibilities. Taking care of temperamental adults or children can be stressful in its own way, too. Nevertheless, it is stress that needs to be contained while care is given with gentle patience. This is experience that can help greatly in any stressful, work-related scenario.
Leadership skills: The study finds that caring for the elderly and navigating their health care needs requires leadership skills. The ability to persuade a loved one on the merits of a caregiving plan, and engaging them in the actual care is often not straightforward work. It requires an ability to motivate the receiver of care, and help them understand how it's a good idea for them to cooperate. These abilities can directly translate to useful skills in the workplace.
Communication skills: Children and the elderly in need of care, can resist attempts by caregivers to help them in the ways they need. It can take considerable conflict management skills to smooth over problematic resistance and deliver the care needed. Conflict management experience tends to be an in-demand skill in many parts of work.
Empathy: Successful caregiving isn't just about doing the work necessary; instead, it is about doing it all with empathy. Empathy is an important ingredient of success in any business. Leaders who feel and demonstrate empathy tend to help their businesses along the road of innovation and employee retention. It's possible to quote such studies at work to make the case that your caregiving experience gives you an empathetic edge that can help you be more effective at your job. Tolerance to stress: Caregiving may appear to be quiet, simple work, but it can be stressful. You need to
Communicating to employers how your caregiving makes you a more valuable worker Caregiving gives you a great set of skills relevant to any job. You do need to make it easy for your employer to understand how this is true, however. It can help to try the following approaches: • Since you may have worked reduced hours at the office in order to accommodate your caregiving responsibilities, you need to be open with your employer about how exactly you spent your time. It's important to be confident about how your caregiving priorities have potentially made you a more valuable employee.
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