Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Opinions expressed in this episode are personal. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this streaming platform.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: Good day, everyone, and welcome to another edition of let's Be Diverse. I am your host, Andrew Stout. This episode is dedicated to all my loved ones who've supported me through this journey. Our topic today is looking after parents or being a caregiver for our parents. I am so thrilled, I can't even tell you how excited I am to have on as my guest today Cynthia Uriel. Cynthia is somebody that I know from my past life. I worked at a fitness club and she was a member there. Actually, I think I even made her become a member of the fitness club. And she was always someone that I chatted with when she came, came in the gym. And as she left, she'd stop in my office, we'd talk, whatever, a little bit, talk about how things are going. And I am super thrilled to have her on today. Cynthia, thanks for coming on today. Welcome to the show. I can't, I can't even find the words to express how excited I am about this conversation today.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Thank you so much for having me. It was such a long time ago when we were together at that time at the, at the fitness center. I want to say 25 years ago or something.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: Something like that. Yeah, yeah, I was.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: A long time ago.
[00:01:16] Speaker B: Yeah, it was a really long time ago. I was telling Cynthia today that she looks forever young. She looks exactly the same as she does the last time I seen her. So I told her whatever she's doing, keep it up because she is doing fantastic job.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: Well, you're very, very kind. I really appreciate that. I'm doing my best to find the fountain of youth.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: No problem.
Cynthia, how are things going with you? Give us the tea, the deets, give us it all. What's happening in your life? What's going on?
[00:01:45] Speaker A: Well, right now, today we woke up to some snow here in Montreal which was a huge sock shocker. It's freezing cold and sleet and I'm very ready for this weather to be done.
I'm very ready for sp and for the beautiful, beautiful, you know, sunshine and all of that. Things in my life are great, are very, very busy. I started a business about four months ago. Now, three, three months ago. Going all in on a business that I, you know, we're going to be talking about in just a minute, I'm sure. But it's keeping me on my toes and I'm the mother to a very spirited, almost seven year old daughter. So, yeah, things are, things are great. Rocking and Rolling. And very grateful to be here, to be alive and to be having this con.
[00:02:31] Speaker B: That's awesome. So I will tell you a little bit about Cynthia. She'll tell her story later. But I've always known Cynthia to be one of the most hardest working women that I've met. She was always on the go, always had something moving. She was always moving up in whatever company she was with. She always had something to tell me. Oh, I'm. I got this, I got this promotion. I got that. So she was always somebody that was always moving and grooving and it was something that I truly admired about her. And I told her this several times that she's doing so, so great and, and I can see she's continuing to do great things. So congratulations on that.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. You're like the best cheerleader, Andrew, I have to say. You're just so good for the soul. I need a little Andrew doll and put you on my shelf and pull the string every time I'm feeling a little insecure or whatnot.
[00:03:20] Speaker B: No problem. I. It's not the first time I've heard that. So you can definitely have an Andrew doll. No problem. We could definitely have that. We could definitely arrange it. You have my pH.
You'd always send me a text. I'm. I'm always game to for a 10 minute pow wow to get you back on your feet. That's for sure.
[00:03:37] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: So I'm excited to get to this conversation. But before we begin, Cynthia, I always have a fun, thought provoking question to ask my guest to get things going. Are you ready for yours today?
[00:03:49] Speaker A: I've been ready for since I've listened to the last three episodes of yours. I'm nervous. I'm ready. I thought about some of the answers that you're, the questions you ask some other people. I'm like, oh gosh, how am I going to do? Let's do this.
[00:04:00] Speaker B: I have no worries that you're going to do great. There's never any right or wrong answer. But I am so curious to hear your answer on this one. So I did ask some of this to somebody a few weeks back and I thought this would be a great one to ask you as well. So my question to you is, if you could bestow a superpower on your child or loved one, what would it be and why?
[00:04:24] Speaker A: Wow, how powerful. Now when you say superpower, just so that I'm clear, is this something that we're talking DC Comics superpower or something that I think Is a superpower.
[00:04:35] Speaker B: You can give us what you think.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: Is a superpower, the ability to be okay with being different. That's what I think a superpower is.
And something that I wished my daughter will eventually have standing in your own difference and in your own power and in the thing that makes you uniquely different. And understanding that your difference is not a weakness, but a strength is something that I would only hope for my daughter so that she can have that confidence in herself as she navigates life.
[00:05:07] Speaker B: So when I started this question, I was so anxious to hear your answer and you surpassed the possibility that I thought you would answer. Such a great answer. The ability to be different. We talked a little bit about this before recording that sometimes we are afraid to be different. And I think we're afraid or people are afraid to be vulnerable and say what they feel and what's on their mind and what they think think about people or how they feel about somebody.
And that to me is such a great answer, Cynthia. And I too feel that people should not be afraid to be different and be themselves. And I think if the world was like that, I think it would be so much better.
[00:05:46] Speaker A: Absolutely. And look, the name of your podcast is let's be Diverse. Right. And I think if we can embrace those differences and understand that we, what we bring to the table, our uniqueness is actually valuable to somebody else. We are greater as a whole, has a man.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: You've given me a lot to think about with your answer, so I appreciate that. Thank you so much. Let's get into the meat and bones of this. Why don't we start with you telling us a little about yourself. I know you kind of did a little bit, but let's go a little bit more in depth.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. So my story begins as many as of ours does, which is, you know, growing up in a mid socioeconomic mid level upbringing and you know, my parents are both working parents. My mother owned her own business. My father worked in treasury for 30 some odd years in foreign exchange and always made sure that I knew I was going to be going to school and I was going to be building a career.
They you know, I can remember the click of my father's briefcase in the morning when he would be getting ready to go to work or coming home from work. I idolized seeing my mother who is at the time in the 80s and 90s, wearing power suits with shoulder pads and just, just working so hard. And so it was always a goal of mine to go to school, get a background that allowed me to have a Career from a educational perspective. I went to school to get a degree in marketing. I had a minor in sociology. I worked my way up through various positions in electronic companies, went back to school, I got a degree in journalism and I worked in some newsrooms for a bit and ultimately found a career and a passion after about 10 years of, of trying to figure out where my career was going to be in project and program management, which landed me in a professional services group at an IT company. And from there I graduated to an aerospace company. From there I graduated back into it, working for an an AI natural language understanding IT company that was ultimately bought out by Microsoft. And you know, now having just left that job in Microsoft, starting a business on my own, that is a business that has informed was informed by two significant life events that happened to me over the course of my career. And those two life events were at the age of 34 and then again at the age of 41, having to take a leave of absence from work to care for each parent who had a terminal illness. At 34 years old when I was working for in professional services in that first IT company, my mother had been diagnosed with stage two metastatic cancer. And she went into remission a few years later, at which point I was working in an aerospace company and we received the devastating news that her cancer had returned and she had been given 11 to 12 months to live. And in that moment everything kind of flipped on its, on its head. I cared for her for a year and went back to work and then again in 2022. Now I was 41, my father was only 67 and he called me to take him to a hospital on a Monday and by the end of four weeks he had passed away of a very rare disease called Christville Jakob disease. Both times in my life I had to leave to take care of each parent. And it was an extremely isolating, extremely life challenging role that I realized I could use and leverage my business skills to help me through it. But it was so challenging and I had two employers who were extremely supportive through that process that ultimately made me realize on the flip side of those two major losses that this needs to become the norm and not the exception. But I know that these employers supporting me were the exception. So I've started this company called Monarch Solutions which is to empower employers to optimize working their working caregiver employee demographic to get the most out of them and give them the most as well.
[00:09:43] Speaker B: I know we're going to get into this a little bit more in depth, but I love that these employers were good with you. And I think through my experience as well, just the fact these things happen. You go back to work after spending time with family or friends and saying goodbye to your loved ones, and then all of a sudden you go back to work and then it's like, oh, you're back. Here's your stuff. Noel, how you doing? And welcome back. And if you need anything, let us know. So and so will help you get gradually back. We'll meet next week and we'll talk and see how you are and we'll kind of gradually get you back into it. That's kind of the way that I kind of foresee it. And you were very lucky. It sounds like you have you two good employers who were doing that. But you're absolutely right. There's a lot of employers who don't and treat it like a cold. Like you just had a cold and there was sniffles. You took a few days off and now you're back. It's something that's never going to go away and it's something that's always going to be part of your life. And the memories and stuff is. Is. Is always going to come for sure.
[00:10:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, I think, you know, one of the things that I noticed that you highlighted and what you were just saying is that this kind of. This leave of absence or employers who are not necessarily responsive to people who are leaving, a lot of the times it's these absences happen in a vacuum or they happen separate from employers. And I really feel that one of the things that was, you know, not only that they were so supportive of me, but I also had the courage to be transparent with my employers about what I was going through. And I think there's this. A really. Something really important about the relationship between the employee and the employer at different levels, where you need to have a little bit of courage as the employee to talk to the employer about what it is that you're going through. And the employer needs to provide the opportunity and the space as well for that transparency to be received and not to be used against the employee themselves. But what I want to really emphasize is that, and I think it was in describing my experience, I never identified as a caregiver, I was a professional. I was somebody who was a career woman. And my goal was to get back to work. Work was a reprieve for me. Work was something I wanted to do. I did not want to leave work.
So, you know, the coming back was something that I really wanted to do because again, it aligned so much with who I was, and I wanted to be productive in that sense. So, yeah, I think, you know, I think there's an importance of being able to have an employer who recognizes what the employee just went through and vice versa. It's all on relationships.
[00:12:15] Speaker B: Well, what I know of you, since they. You're a hard worker. So usually hard workers, that totally makes sense, because a hard worker, well, if you're having to take off work and leave early, often the back of your mind, you're thinking, oh, my God, my team. I'm leaving my team with all this extra work to do. I got to get back and I got to help them because they're doing all this work and it's not fair.
That's the, that is the typical mindset of someone who is hard working and is driven in their career and wants to do well in their career. They're thinking like that. Unfortunately, not everybody thinks like that, but there are many that think like that. And so when you think like that, that's in the back of your mind. Like you said, I gotta do what I can to get back here, but I gotta be with my, with my parents at this point here. But as soon as I get the opportunity, I'm back at it because I just have to be. I have to be supportive to them as well.
[00:13:10] Speaker A: It's so, it's so true. And you know what, Andrew? Like, when I, when I was caring for my mom, it was in 2015, it was at a time when the majority of us were butts in the seats. No, I didn't have a laptop. I had a desktop at the time. And, you know, there wasn't this flexibility that we have with technology nowadays. Like, I did that like I had with my father when my father got sick. So even this leave of absence that I would, I had taken at first, it didn't start with me going up to my employer and asking for the leave of absence, especially with my dad. It was about me taking my laptop, sitting in the hospital room while he was waiting for the test to be done, working and taking calls while the doctors were coming in and out, while I, you know, I was coordinating with family members. And so, you know, the way that the employer supported me when I was caring for my dad was a little bit different with my mom until the very end that I had to take, you know, much less time off because I was able to have that flexibility that was offered to me because of technology and because of the policy.
But the other thing that you highlight as well is that, yes, you're right, not everybody. You know, if you look at the workforce, kind of identify them. I was speaking with my boss, actually, who was my boss at the time when my mom got sick, and he was saying, you know, you kind of look at your teams kind of like A team, B team, C team, the A team. These are your high performers. These are, these are the ones who are like the star players. They're about 10% of your team. Right. And then you have your B team. And your B team is the majority of this of, you know, the employees, about 6, 70% of your team who they show up, they get their job done every day.
They help keep kind of the machine going. And then you have your C team. And these are people who, maybe it's not necessarily because they're not productive, but if they were lost in the team, you wouldn't necessarily miss them for various reasons. And. And that's just the reality of the team. But people who are most often caregivers are the ones who step up in business and in life. The caregivers and families are the doers. They're the ones who are like, okay, I'll go take my parent to this appointment, or I will call on behalf of, or I will coordinate on. But. And these are the people who are showing up at work as well. And so it's imperative, I find that employers have some kind of. And I'm not saying that there's a one size fit all fits all, but have some kind of cognizance of how many people are on their teams who are going to be juggling this, who are currently and who will be and what could be done to help mitigate some of that stress before people will eventually need to take any time off.
[00:15:42] Speaker B: So I know for myself, I mentioned earlier in this conversation that, you know, losing my parents, it's changed me. What I want to know from you, Cynthia, how did it, like, did it change or shape you or shape your life and your career differently?
[00:16:00] Speaker A: 100%. So the first time, losing my mom, the thing that I. The question I had as a human being after my mom passed away was, what's going to happen to all of the memories that she and I share? And I say that because a lot of my identity was wrapped up in the dynamics between my mother and I. And so that was the heavy thing that, that I felt from a professional perspective. I went back to work and I didn't feel like I had taken a time off. I didn't feel like I was on a break or I was away from work. I had just been busting my butt leveraging all of my business skills like stakeholder management, communication management, risk management, putting all of the, you know, I'm a project and program manager. So I had Excel templates, spreadsheets, I had documents I had, you know, communicating with the doctors was very different than communicating with the, communicating with family members. So I was actively working. So when I went back to the workforce, I was like, let's go, I want to get right back into it. And I did. It was very exciting. After losing my dad, it was a very different experience because now my second parent died. And the big question that came up for me was, who am I? What are my values that are not tied to who my parents were? This really big, massive existential question of who am I? Came to the forefront. You know, I always used to think that there were kind of two kinds of people in this world from a professional perspective. There were either the salaried workers and then there are. There were the commission workers, commission only workers. And I always used to think that I was the salaried worker. So give me the guarantee of a job and I will show up every day and give you 150% and I will be my best. And, you know, just so I have that security. And, you know, after realizing that I have no longer a safety net, I have, I'm very fortunate. I had an extremely close relationship with both of my parents. But knowing that I no longer had the safety net, I in life have to rely on myself, right? And I have to understand and establish what my own personal values are. And so after, you know, the year after my father passed away and you know, I've done a lot of therapy and worked through this, I'm like, no, you know what? The way this has changed me is I'm going to go hunt for my own food and I am going to bet on myself because I believe so strongly in, A, my skills that I've developed professionally and B, this thing that I'm extremely passionate and purpose driven for, which is to support other people who have been in my situation. And I threw myself into caregiver advocacy, threw myself into really the two main factions who are talking about caregiving right now, which are the government and healthcare. And I, you know, went to go learn as much as I could about what supports are out there for working caregivers. What does, what does being a caregiver mean? How are different organizations talking about caregivers? And the thing that really came out for me is that I felt so isolated and so alone through my experience.
But the reality is that right now, one in four Canadians is a caregiver.
60% of Canadians are working caregivers. And the projection is that by 2032, one in two Canadians is going to be a caregiver. This is mind blowing. There was a study that was done by the Canadian Centre for Caregiving Excellence that said that 62% of employers didn't know how many of their employees were also juggling caregiving responsibilities. And caregiving responsibilities include caring for parents who are aging, caring for people, family members or neighbors, close friends with some kind of an illness or a disability. It doesn't necessarily have to be the way we think about what caregivers are, which is, you know, only once you're older you can take care of an older person. There's what it means to be a caregiver and who caregivers are are. You know, it's so wide and so vast and there is this kind of. It's like society's dirty little secret that we're all caring for one another, but we're not talking about it enough. And so, you know, for me, I really want to bring this conversation to the forefront because the more we talk about what it is that we're each going through as human beings, the more we can be there for each other. The more we can understand and see each other, the less burnout we have, the more basically we are able to rely on one another and be successful in all of our own lives.
[00:20:40] Speaker B: I love your approach on this, Cynthia. I'm so astounded by everything that you're saying there, because here you are going through what you're going through. I speak to a lot of people who are looking or trying to figure out what they want to do in their career, and a lot of them are in a situation where they are doing a particular job and they're looking to do something else, but they don't feel that they have the qualifications to do that. And I tell them that you do have certain things that you learned from your current job that you can take with you.
So here you are as my example here. Here you are going through what you went through with your parents. You had the wherewithal to say, hey, I am learning stuff throughout this process, am grieving, my parents are dying, but I have the wherewithal to figure out, hey, I'm learning things that I can take with me to help me through my career, Cynthia. And that is, I'm so astounded here. Like, I don't even have words to say more than that, like, that is truly amazing.
[00:21:38] Speaker A: I appreciate that. I want to say that I think the greatest thing that I acquired throughout my caregiving journeys is my ability for empathy and my emotional intelligence.
[00:21:50] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:21:51] Speaker A: And I truly believe, you know, when I came back, after I had gone through what I went through with my mom, when I went through what I went through with my dad, I was extremely transparent with everybody. I talked about it with everyone.
And. And the moment I came back to work after having cared for my dad and I talked to people again. As a program manager, I have team members. Right. I have people who I need to understand they're a resource in my whole plan. I have to understand what they're going through. But the fact that I was able to be a little bit transparent, I had like five or six people open up to me within the first five days of me being back at work. About this one's husband was sick, this one had a child with a severe disability, and they were traveling interstate to go get some help. I was working with people in Europe, I'm working with people in North America, in the States, I mean, and all over. And people are opening up to me about this. And the simple fact of me just asking the question of not even trying to fix them, but just showing a little bit of interest and the fact that I was able to be a little bit vulnerable and share my story allowed us to create such a strong team cohesion, and it just made for us to be a much stronger team in general. So I think that was the greatest skill that I learned. And if you do any research on, you know, this, on the future of work, on leadership, on, you know, how we're going to be in the future, emotional quotient, emotional intelligence, empathy. This is what is going to set us apart.
[00:23:18] Speaker B: Yeah, certainly from our.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: From in the talent pool. And I think caregivers have this, and this is something that needs to be fostered, needs to be encouraged, and the potential untapped.
[00:23:29] Speaker B: I love the vulnerability aspect there because it's super important that we're. We're vulnerable. What I want to know is, what do you think some of the challenges are for employers as they face employees who need to take time away from work for caregiving?
[00:23:46] Speaker A: Listen, this is a very real challenge for employers, and I think that the challenges present themselves. I like to think of it kind of on four levels. There's the challenge to, you know, the working level, to colleagues, there's the challenge to managers. There's the challenge to The HR professionals. And there's ultimately the channel, the challenge, challenges to the bottom line. And so from a working level perspective, you now have the perceived increased workload because you have one less person. You have the teammates who are, you know, working on this team who maybe feel some resentment.
There's a disruption in workflow, right? That happens. So that's the impact when somebody has to take a leave. From a manager perspective now you're managing resource gaps and you still have the same budgets and performance needs and performance pressures. So as managers now with somebody who leaves a team, you might feel less engaged or you may feel very frustrated if you have an employer that doesn't have any policies in place to support you, to support your people, right? So that's the impact on the manager level. And you also have managers who maybe want to move up in the organization, but now they can't because their metrics are tied to the performance of their team and now their team is suffering, right? Then you've got the stresses and the pressures on hr. Again for an organization who's not necessarily prepared to handle this kind of a request and you have compliance complexity, you know, the increased level of paperwork. If a, if an employer is not prepared, if there's not this transparency, a lot of the times someone's coming to HR and saying, I can't come back to work, I need to take a leave of lessons. Right now my parent is dying, my. And whether that leave is actually going down to part time work, whether it's taking a lower job, all of this stuff happens kind of really quickly if there's not a culture in place to support conversations around caregiving. And so this is a pressure on the HR professionals. And then lastly on the bottom line, listen, you have productivity issues right now. There are people who are coming to work every single day who are leaving the job and doing upwards of 20 hours worth of caregiving work at home, you know what I mean? And they're, they're doing this, this on a regular basis. And so you have productivity issues. If somebody needs to leave, you have impact to retention rates and turnover. If somebody needs to leave altogether, it costs one and a half times that person's salary to train somebody new. So these are the challenges when somebody leaves. And this is where I truly believe I've seen this and this is the work in the place is that there is so much that an employer can do and all of to prevent the leave from happening or happening for the amount of time that it needs to happen, happen. I'm not saying it's not going to happen at all. Because the reality is, is that right now, and this is the crazy thing, when I started to do my research, I was floored, is that 75% of hands on health care happens by informal family caregivers. Think about that for a second. For every one hour that a human spends in a hospital, that's three hours of somebody at home taking care of them. This is mind blowing. The healthcare system is what it is. It's having the challenges it's having, you know, if you're in Canada, you know, and it's, it's a provincial jurisdiction, but nonetheless, you know that there are long wait times. There are just challenges all around in terms of different healthcare organisms speaking and communicating with one another. And caregivers are ultimately informal family caregivers are ultimately the glue in between that keeps that whole system together. So you know, the, the, this is, this is becoming more and more prevalent. There's more and more pressure and there are things that we need to be doing and employers need to be doing to help mitigate all of those stresses and those pressures that are created by the healthcare system. And there's one thing I do also want to really also emphasize is that caregivers don't identify as caregivers. They don't. Only 35% of people in a recent surve who were taking care of someone actually identified with that term. So what this means is that I'm sure that I know that there is a much bigger problem here of people who are showing up to work every day just burning themselves out, feeling like they have no resources, feeling that they're not being seen or acknowledged and they don't even know that what they are doing is caregiving work.
[00:28:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I, I agree with you 100, with everything you said there.
I, I've always preached and I've always said whatever the situation is. If a leader would just come to somebody and say how are things going? And if they say oh I, I'm struggling or whatever or this or that, if they just were to say, how can I support you? Just those three, those simple words. And I think that would go like miles and miles to somebody. I know I've had leaders that have said that to me and that meant the world to me and I would go to battle for them because of that, because of just their way of treating me. They saw me, they heard me, they valued me and they supported me. So that is agree with you 100% that if we did that, it would be so much better.
[00:29:12] Speaker A: Andrew, there's a, There's a company in the States called Archangel Me. They're a tech company that has a solution that helps and aims to identify and measure and quantify working caregiver burnout. And they did a study and their study said that the simple question of asking an employee how they're doing, the simple question of asking, you know, how acknowledging that they are actively caregiving reduced their employees or reduced working caregivers risk of burnout by 19%. Can you imagine? I mean, it's just being human.
[00:29:53] Speaker B: It is.
[00:29:53] Speaker A: I worked in tech, Andrew. I worked in tech for quite a number of years and I worked in AI for quite a number of years and I truly, truly believe with my heart of hearts that AI is an opportunity to support us in our humanity.
[00:30:07] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:30:07] Speaker A: And AI is going to give us an opportunity to be able to tap into the things that make us most human to the things that only humans can do and have wisdom and have connection and have the ability to really impact one another on a, on a, on a cellular level. I want to say, because that's the other thing, when you talk to caregivers who do have support and you ask them about their caregiving journeys, whether it's daughters or spouses or husbands or neighbors, that caring for another human being is an extremely life affirming experience. And that is I truly, you know, again, it's always a lot of therapy. I'm not saying it wasn't hard, but that's how I feel about having cared for my parents. And yes, there's the injustice of the fact that my mom died when I was 35, my dad died when I was 41 and you know, I have to raise my child without any parents and I, I feel this, I feel this. You know, I'm upset about this for sure.
[00:31:06] Speaker B: Well, for sure.
[00:31:07] Speaker A: But the privilege to be able to accompany someone through the end of their life, through this journey, none of us are going to make it out alive. You know what I mean? So to be given the space to not have to worry about my job while doing that made me want to come back to work as a better human being for the people that I did work with.
[00:31:28] Speaker B: Absolutely. So what's something that you wish businesses knew about caregiving?
[00:31:32] Speaker A: Yeah, listen. I mean, I truly believe that leadership is careful and I believe that leadership or care requires leadership. When you take a moment and I did this exercise actually recently to compare what the roles and responsibilities are for a caregiver, for a project manager, for an entrepreneur and for a leader. I can't tell you how many of them are cross functional or happen on a regular basis. You have to do financial management, you have to do facilities management. When you're a caregiver, like I was saying earlier, you know, you're managing an uncertainty. You're trying to devise the ability to ask questions in a certain way from medical professionals so that you can understand how you're going to take care of your loved one. The other thing that is, I think, really important to understand is that caregiving is also not just health care. Caregiving is also, you know, managing the family, managing different people with different objectives and different.
So you know, what's really important, I feel that employers acknowledge is that caregiving is a job that has transferable skills that really makes someone stronger and not weaker. And that when an employer can be a leader in this conversation, they are able to reap the financial bottom line benefits like loyalty and retention that they will get when they support their caregivers.
[00:33:02] Speaker B: I love everything that you just said there and I can definitely see how it could be a benefit to the person who is the caregiver from their leader, like how they're being treated from their leader. Because you have so much stuff going on that like you just said, you got your parents to work, worry about, you got all the paperwork and everything they worry about and you have the family that you have to update and let them know how everything is going and what's the new and what's happening and what's going forward and what's going to happen going forward. And then you got to explain that to your superiors as well. And if you can be a leader who can help alleviate that worry and that concern, for that person to just say, okay, thanks for updating me, keep me updated. I'm here to support you. Let me know if you need anything. People are asking, oh, how's work with everything that you're, what you're dealing with. And if you could say, I have such great employers, my boss is amazing, so understanding. That's it. You don't have to say anything more.
[00:34:03] Speaker A: That's it, that's it. You know what, I have a girlfriend of mine, we were talking, she's in middle management. So I'm, you know, I'll say it. And you gave me the beautiful compliment at the top of the podcast that I look good, but I'm in my 40s, I'm getting there, I'm here. And so I'm at a stage where a lot of my friends that, you know, I've had for many years were in management positions. Right. We are there now. And I had one of my girlfriends, we're sitting around having coffee the other day, and she was saying, you know, Cynthia, when I was going through the problems with my son when he was really, really sick and we didn't know what was wrong with him, and I had asked my boss to if I could take some extra time off and I would make it up or whatever, and my boss said no. She said it made me really sick to my stomach.
[00:34:42] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:34:43] Speaker A: Now that I'm a boss, she said, now that I have teammates, you know, I understand the value that that would have given me if my boss simply said, no problem, let me know how it goes. And she says, and now I can give that to my employees. But she's not giving it to her employees at the old job that she was at the old company. No, she left because that was the culture that was not very supportive. And so, you know, you promote from within, costs companies less also to promote from within. Right. So imagine just that simple, offering that little bit of flexibility before you even getting to hr and people having to take extended leaves of absen a little flexibility to just say, yes, no problem. Keeping those tabs on each other goes so much farther than we can see in the minute, in the moment.
[00:35:27] Speaker B: You. You totally remember how you felt. If you're a situation where it's happened to you, the next thing you're thinking is, well, if I'm ever in that situation, I would never let that happen or I would never be that person that it would happen to. So it's. It's terrible that what she went through, but it's amazing that she's in a situation now where she can say, I can be better in this situation.
[00:35:52] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:35:53] Speaker B: So why should employers prioritize supporting caregivers within the workforce with what you've went through, why is it so important and vital for us as leaders to look at that and be supportive?
[00:36:09] Speaker A: We are on the cusp of. Of an economic crisis of epic proportions caused by a healthcare system that can't support the demand. And it's coming. The tsunami is coming. I can remember sitting in my college economics class where they were talking to me about the inverted pyramid of population where you have the baby boomers who are going to eventually get older, and thinking to myself, what is society going to look like then? Well, we're here now. And so this freight train is coming. And the reality is, is that there is no, from what I can see, light at the end of the tunnel for our healthcare system. Whether you're in the States, you're in Canada.
So employers need to start preparing and planning for this. And maybe this is the project and program manager in me. You know, I have that. I, I'm, I'm certified in this. And so this is what I, what I have. But ultimately it's a matter of putting things in place that allow the business, because businesses are in business to make money.
This is bottom line. Employers, it's so important to start acknowledging that this is right now represents 35% of the workforce. And that number is just going to get bigger and bigger. And the things that can be done are truly offering flexibility, having policies and resources that are supportive of people, let's say having either paid or unpaid time off, offering resources like connections to assisted living facilities, offering mental health resources, offering communication strategies that start normalizing and talking about this. You know, I do want to just say the first time that I was a caregiver and I didn't identify as a caregiver. I didn't ask my ear for the leave of absence. I was telling them, okay, I need to go take some time off for my mom, you know, here to take her to this appointment, that appointment. And after about three months, and then my mother was hospitalized with something very severe that had happened. It was my employer who had said and had been with me through this journey for three months. You know, we have an unpaid leave program where you can now take advantage of the Canadian caregiver government support, but you can also take this leave and then you'll come back and you'll have your job. It was my employer who was the leader in this who offered that to me, which I had no idea. So if employers are normalizing this conversation and talking about this, it's also informing the person who maybe doesn't identify as a caregiver that they should be asking for help or that they could be looking for certain resources and that they create this kind of relationship. Again, there's that word I was saying earlier, the relationship between employee and employer to support them in this time of their life, which is not going to be forever. The other thing that people need, that caregivers need, that employers can offer because they're already offering them, is awareness on benefits that are offered within employee assistance programs. So imagine employers just sending their, in their quarterly communication bulletin if they have one. Yeah, just a reminder, if you're caring for someone with dementia, we have this. If you're caring for somebody with autism, you can check here. Putting the caregiver name out there until it becomes something sexy. And people want to call themselves caregivers, which again, not a lot of people do. It's on the employer to say, hey, we are here and we have these things, but using a language that allows people to recognize their particular situation in it. And then lastly, there's a lot of employers who are doing this right now are starting to become more and more prevalent, is offering employee resource groups and these are membership or non membership groups that allow people to convene on a monthly or quarterly basis to talk about something specific. And we as human beings have a basic need to be seen, heard and acknowledged. And as caregivers, we are not, we are not acknowledged by the healthcare professionals and the healthcare systems. There's a lot of work being, trying to, trying to be done right now to get that up to speed. But doctors won't turn to the caregiver in the doctor's office and say, you know, and how are you doing? That's not happening very often. So caregivers are not acknowledged there. They're not acknowledged. If they are the go getter child in a family who's taking care of the parent and they're all, you know, they always kind of the one who takes care of things, their siblings aren't going to acknowledge them because, oh, that's just what so and so does. But you know, what takes its toll, you know, it becomes a job at a certain point and if they're not being acknowledged by the employer, then they're really becoming invisible. And this is where you have caregiver burnout. This is where you have, you know, people who are not able to show up in their everyday lives feeling empowered, feeling resilient and feeling, you know, for lack of a better term, emancipated, you know.
[00:40:49] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
[00:40:50] Speaker A: So, you know, I think that this is, this is, these are all things that employers can do right now to offer their working caregiver employees that is very separate than just offering them a leave of absence. It's being a part of the conversation.
And that is really what I'm trying to do with the company that I have with Monarch Solutions is empowering, empowering employers to train their managers who are the, the first line of defense from their working level, especially on how to have these conversations, how to recognize these people, how to assess and identify whether something is a crisis, whether there's a flight risk, let's say flight risk is not really an ideal term, but you know, and how to mitigate those challenges that a working caregiver will have before it becomes a serious problem. And then, you know, things can continue to move the way they need to.
[00:41:41] Speaker B: And I think it's a need to know when to say something. So I'm, I'm wasn't in the room with you. I don't know what your conversations are, but if I was going to fathom a guess, I would probably say that you were telling your employer how things were going and giving them updates. And it sounds to me that you had good employers. They were probably just listening to what was happening and what was going on and letting you know we're here to support. And then you just said before they told you about a program, I'm guessing that they told you to program as, as time's gone on, they didn't tell you that right away. They let things go time on. So as a leader, that's a good leader and they are good leaders because there's a time to sit back and listen and let that person vent or what have you or say what's going on. And then there's a time where we intervene or we need to intervene and, and say, or give something and say. Just want to let you know that I know you're going through some stuff. I just want to let you know maybe you're not thinking about it or you weren't aware. This is available to you if need be. Let me know if you need that and I will be there to support you and help you out and get you all the information on it. Boom. That's it.
[00:42:56] Speaker A: That's. That's all that needs to be said. Andrew, you hit the nail on the head and that is the key. And you know, you're right. I had one on ones regularly. The kind of, of job that I had at the time. The jobs that I have held have been ones where I'd have regular one on ones. You know, I was managing these very large programs and projects. But it's having the opportunity. You know, business is built on people, period. Yes, we need, we need tools and machines and all of that, but businesses is built on people. And so being good people is about being better in business and vice versa. And there are a lot of managers who maybe don't even know about, about things that are offered by their company. And that's also something else that I offer is working with informing the managers of what the tools they have to work with from within their own company that they don't even know. I don't even know the statistic. And maybe you being an hr, you might have that. Sorry, my Cat is going crazy in the background. I'm not sure if you can hear.
[00:43:48] Speaker B: Me, but wants to join the conversation. That's okay.
[00:43:51] Speaker A: But you know, I think that there's a really low statistic of people taking advantage of employee assistance programs or things that are offered in those.
And I think it's on the employer and especially on management to offer that, you know, to their people when it is appropriate. To your point?
[00:44:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that unfortunately you're absolutely right. I don't have the statistics, but I do know that there are situations where things are not offered because people have taken advantage of the programs or what have you sort of like, okay, well we're going to squash this because we've had X amount of people taking advantage. So that's it. Where it's no longer available and it, it screws the ones that, that need it down the road. Or there's always someone that's going to need that that's going to say, well, oh my God, like who's the one that messed that up? Because now I need it and I don't have it. So. But it's so important to just have that understanding of what's needed. And, and if you need to have something that's not working and if there's people who are taking advantage of it, well, then maybe there's a meeting that needs to be held to say, hey, hey, this is what's happening. Maybe we just need to refine it or we need to adapt it or change it or make some adjustments to the procedures or the policy. That way nobody's going to take advantage of it. And, and maybe it's on a case to case basis that we look at it and, and see what's going on and then we can. It's kind of like when you're going to customs, I, I don't be political, whatever, but it's kind of going to customs and you know, they're looking for particular types of people when you go to customs. Right. So they're not looking for the everyday people like you and I, Cynthia, are going to the States to go shopping and get groceries because it's maybe cheaper in some cases they're going.
No, I know, but I mean I remember the days where we used to, where my parents, we used to, we used to head over to the Plattsburgh, New York.
[00:45:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:38] Speaker B: We'd go to do, we'd spend a day, we'd go get parents to get the groceries. They get like tons and tons of groceries and we go have supper and usually it Was. It's probably. It's not open anymore, but we go to Ponderosa, I'm gonna date myself here, we'll go to Ponderosa, and we drive back, and that was it. So, you know, and then what did you do? What did you. What'd you come for? Or how long were you here? Did you purchase anything? Well, if you're gonna go and you're gonna say you spend a day and go there, and you're gonna say, oh, I didn't buy anything. Well, chances are you're gonna.
They're gonna take you. They're gonna want to check to make sure. Right. So it's just a matter of having the. The wherewithal and the vulnerability and making sure that your policies and procedures are set and the standards are set so that if somebody does want to take advantage of it, well, then they'll take advantage of it, but they'll get caught. And then the next person comes, you're gonna see that it's. They're real and. And vulnerable and. And need it.
[00:46:32] Speaker A: So, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's with, like, with anything, it's oftentimes the few that ruin it for the many. But I would say that if. If nothing is offered by an employer, there's, you know, the many is going to be basically the offer.
You know, one. One in two of us is going to be a family caregiver. And on the flip side, you know, we all may need a family caregiver at some point, so wouldn't we want to fight for rights and policies from employers so that we can get the care that we want and need? You know, if I. If I need my sister to take time off of work so she can take care of me, I would want her employer to have that flexibility. So hopefully, hopefully that the few don't ruin it for the many, for sure.
[00:47:12] Speaker B: Cynthia, in closing, what is one takeaway? I know we've talked about so much stuff here. What is one takeaway you want the audience to get from this episode?
[00:47:20] Speaker A: The one takeaway that I would love for the audience to get from this episode is that creating policies and strategies to support the working caregiver demographic in their workplace is actually an investment in the bottom line, and it is profitable for the employee.
Yes. A lot of the times we talk about caregiving from a diversity perspective, the reality is, is that just as many men as women are caregivers, the tasks might be different. And so working this into an HR policy and HR strategy is imperative to making sure that a business runs and operates as smoothly as possible in the future of work.
[00:48:03] Speaker B: Cynthia, I want to take the time to thank you for coming on today. I've been, we've been, I've been looking forward to this conversation. I may or may not have told you this before, but you were someone that I have admired since it's the day that you sat in front of me in the office years ago and filled up paperwork together to get you set up with a membership.
I have so much admiration for you. You are such a hard working individual. And I think that when someone says the word hard working in the dictionary like you're that you are it. You, you epitomize hard work, innovation, creativity. You, you epitomize all those things. And I am so thrilled that we got a chance to have this conversation today and I'm so thrilled that I got to have it with you. So, so thank you.
[00:48:52] Speaker A: Thank you so much, Andrew. It means a lot. I think what you're doing here is amazing. Allowing, you know, HR professionals, leaders to have conversations that are necessary focusing on the future of work.
[00:49:03] Speaker B: Work.
[00:49:03] Speaker A: I think we're living in such uncertain times right now. There's so much that is changing and I think that, you know, one thing that is not going away is the fact that we will continue to forever need each other as human beings. And so opening up this conversation, in this dialogue, the way you allow it is so beneficial not just for people in business, but also people in life. So thank you.
[00:49:24] Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely. You are so welcome. On behalf of myself and my guest Cynthia, I'd like to thank you all for listening today day and until next time, be safe. And remember everybody, that if we all work together, we can accomplish anything.
[00:49:39] Speaker A: You have been listening to. Let's be Diverse with Andrew Stout to stay up to date with future content, hit subscribe.
