Leaders: Your Sandwich Generation employees need help. Here’s what to do
Like most Millennials, I didn’t expect to join the realm of caring for aging parents for at least another decade. That all changed on Christmas Eve 2019, when my mom suddenly became disabled from the neck down.
I rushed her to the hospital, where it took three weeks of intense testing, pain, and fear to get a diagnosis: neuromyelitis optica, a rare autoimmune condition that can cause paralysis, blindness, and death. My mom, who developed Lupus in her early-30s, has always been proactive with her care, but this diagnosis changed the game entirely, as my mom could no longer live independently. And so, with two kids under age 6, I became a member of the Sandwich Generation at age 36.
As my mom endured rehab, and then acute rehab, I became her POA and raced to create a care plan. She worked so hard on regaining her strength while keeping her spirit, hope, and light. Meanwhile, I navigated her work leave, submitted insurance claims, found an elder care attorney to navigate Medicaid, coordinated care with five different specialist doctors, packed up and sold her condo, and hired a consultant to find a permanent location for her to live and receive care. Just figuring out my mom’s care plan quickly became a full-time job. My employer and team generously gave me the gracious gift of time, guilt-free from work, in early 2020 so I could get her situated.
Only eight weeks after her diagnosis, COVID-19 struck hard, and everything shut down. I started working remotely, my kids stopped going to school, and my family hunkered down at home in Oak Park, Illinois—terrified for ourselves and my mom, who was living at the rehab center and severely immunocompromised. I needed help on a level that nearly every person in my life couldn’t comprehend, because they still had independent parents and hadn’t yet lived through a life-altering event like this alone, let alone during a pandemic.
I searched far and wide to find support with little resources. As a last resort, I went to Facebook, and found a private, local group with “Sandwich Generation” right in the title. I requested to join as soon as possible. As I read their posts about navigating Medicare, finding a safe and supportive environment for their loved ones, and honestly just voicing their exhaustion and frustration, I knew I had found real resources in an unconventional place. Together, they responded as I posted about these topics, and they helped me learn about what being part of the caregiving generation would look like for me. I felt seen and understood for the first time since my mom became sick.
The coming crisis
“The Sandwich Generation” was first coined in the 1980s to describe middle-aged adults caring simultaneously for young kids and aging adults. Ada Calhoun, writing in a viral piece for The Atlantic, put it this way: “I find myself drawn to a less friendly analogy: not that of fresh Wonder Bread slices gently squishing us, but that of panini grills pressing us flat.”
And she wrote that before the pandemic.
It’s understandable why 1.8 million women have left the American workforce since the first wave of COVID. It is impossible to simultaneously care for young children, care for aging parents, and hold down a full-time job in the United States.
“When the pandemic hit, our deeply ingrained expectations that women would naturally shoulder these responsibilities were dramatically exposed and rightfully questioned,” wrote Ai-Jen Poo and Palak Shah in Fast Company. “And we began to see and understand the true value of generations of caregiving labor, both paid and unpaid.”
The caregiving crisis will dramatically accelerate in the decade ahead as the oldest Baby Boomers turn 80. Yet, we already have a shortage of professional caregivers: NPR recently reported that seniors often wait months for home healthcare. For Americans on Medicaid, the wait time is more than three years for home care assistance. But, we don’t have months or years to wait for care; it’s needed now.
While public policy is the best way to address this crisis, it doesn’t look like that will happen soon. In October, paid family and medical leave were removed from President Biden’s massive spending bill—even though it earned the support of nearly three-fourths of Americans.
But there is a fast-follow solution: business innovation. Will it solve everything? No, but it’s a start.
The ideal innovation opportunity
I’ve worked in innovation consulting for almost 15 years. It’s my job to advise leaders at Fortune 100 companies on design thinking and business strategy. I’ve supported many organizations, including FedEx, Samsung, HP, and Apple.
I know an excellent innovation opportunity when I see it, and solving for the caregiving crisis in America is huge. It’s outright been ignored by politicians, is desperately needed by most Americans, and is sure to worsen quickly and dramatically. But how do you tackle a topic as broad and daunting as “caregiving in America?” Focus on the people who need and are desperately seeking solutions: members of the Sandwich Generation, like me.
To be sure, I am coming from an extreme place of privilege. I can pay a lawyer, spend time away from work, depend on my husband, and look to my friends for support. Many people do not have these kinds of resources. At the same time, my husband and I cannot shoulder a financial commitment to support both ends of the caregiving spectrum, and a majority of us in the Sandwich Generation face the same crisis.
Whenever I visit my mom at her facility, I cry out of guilt that I can’t do more long term. It shouldn’t be this way in America, and businesses need to lead the change. Again, systemic change will not happen without foundational issues addressed around healthcare and long-term care. However, leaders can and should be determining how we can help our loved ones age with dignity and respect while supporting the caregivers that desperately need help.
For example, company leaders could:
- Use technology to integrate our healthcare records, benefits information, and bills. Right now, everything is in separate silos. Insurance companies use separate systems, specialists don’t talk to each other, and medical records are in different places. This gets even messier when you add Medicaid or Medicare to the mix. This goes beyond electronic medical records and across the whole system of issues to navigate a loved one’s care. Healthcare leaders say it can’t be done, but the technology to do this absolutely exists.
- Create a seamless solution for coordinating caregiving needs. When my mom first got sick, I created a shared Google calendar with my husband, brother, and sister-in-law to track her appointments and due dates for her bills and taxes. A big tech company like Google or Apple can break down its silos to centralize this information and create automations that make caregivers’ lives easier. Wouldn’t it be great if, every time my mom had a doctor’s appointment on her schedule, an Uber was scheduled automatically? Or, if she needed support in getting active, Apple would ping me to bring it up on my daily-check call with her? Absolutely.
- A business coalition that supports each step of the caregiving journey. Most caregivers don’t have time, or frankly the financial means, to track down lawyers, agencies, or home healthcare providers in a crisis. Why haven’t the largest companies that create products and services for our elderly populations create a solution that knits those needs together into a support framework? Why can’t there be a coalition that provides every service you’ll need as soon as your loved one needs more care? Creating efficiencies could also reduce costs for the primary caregivers.
These kinds of innovations don’t just get good press: They earn customer loyalty and can make money—a lot of it. In 2021, family caregivers spent an average of $7,200 on out-of-pocket costs for caregiving. If they were also juggling jobs, those caregivers spent an average of $10,525.
What’s more, businesses can make it possible for unpaid caregivers to return to work by innovating in this space. In the first year of the pandemic alone, women globally lost $800 billion in income, which is equivalent to more than the combined GDP of 98 countries, Oxfam reports. The world needs these women not only to engage in the economics of today—but to innovate the solutions they and their families need.
Where we’re headed unless things change
Without significant innovation or a public policy overhaul, the growing caregiving crisis in America will make 2020 look like the good ol’ days. Or, at least the days when we thought things couldn’t get worse.
As the economy heats up, business leaders have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform American society, only it won’t impact just one generation. It will impact all of our generations, because caregiving supports all of us: kids, adult children, and our aging parents.
By addressing the caregiving crisis, we can create the space for our loved ones who are sick or injured to focus on their health without worrying about losing everything. This can dramatically speed up their recovery and also reduce the stress on their familial caregivers. When my mom first got sick, she needed to focus on her health, and I needed to spend time loving her, not worrying about the mountains of things I didn’t know. In the hardest moments of their lives, we want to give the people we care about our love—not every penny of our being because society doesn’t care enough to show up for us.
If we genuinely want to make our world healthier and more equitable, this is the kind of innovation we can make happen, together.
Katie Schlott is a business innovation and design thinking leader; advisor to Fortune 100 CEOs across technology, logistics, and product; and passionate advocate for gender equity.
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