Elder-Care Needs of Orange County Workers Studied

For nearly 2 years, Gayle Thompson spent part of her workday at National Education Corp. in Irvine worrying not about business, but about a family member who needed constant attention.

Thompson was trying to take care of her frail, elderly mother at home and hold on to a full-time job at the same time.

Sometimes she called her house as many as five times a day. “And if my mother didn’t come to the phone, I panicked and would drive home to make sure she hadn’t fallen or become unconscious,” said Thompson, 49, an NEC benefits administrator. Several months ago, Thompson had to put her 79-year old mother in a Lake Forest nursing home.

Thompson is one of the millions of working Americans searching for ways to balance the demands of the workplace and the responsibilities of caring for the elderly. On Friday she joined about 150 Orange County health-care professionals, social workers and corporate representatives at a conference to discuss potential solutions.

Participants agreed that care for the elderly is a growing problem that employers eventually must address. But so far, few companies in Orange County have been willing to even consider the issue.

Recent studies indicate that employee concerns about elderly relatives have increased absenteeism and turnover and lowered productivity at big and small businesses alike.

“The cost to companies is astronomical,” said Roy Azarnoff, director of Eldercare Management Group, a Dana Point consulting firm. “Only recently have some of them begun to realize it.”

The Travelers Insurance Cos. has found through surveys that one of every five employees older than 30 are trying to care for an elderly relative.

The surveys show that those workers on average spend 10.2 hours a week to care for those relatives, with 8% spending 35 hours or more. Often, this goes on for years.

“This is an issue that must be addressed,” state Sen. Marian Bergeson told participants at Friday’s conference. “It’s not just going to go away.”

The most common types of assistance being provided by younger family members include transportation, shopping and companionship. Sometimes those needs must be addressed during working hours.

“Obviously, employees can’t fully concentrate on their work under those conditions,” said Mike Shore, an IBM spokesman in Armonk Village, N.Y.

On Tuesday, IBM will celebrate the 1-year anniversary of its elder-care program, the first of its kind in the country.

The computer giant put together a national network of 175 community-based organizations to assist IBM’s 223,000 employees in finding care for their elderly relatives.

For instance, IBM could put an Orange County employee in touch with the appropriate agency to help him find a home nurse for his mother in Chicago. The referral service is free.

IBM won’t say what the program has cost, but it claims productivity is up among the 8,000 employees who have used it. “There is a bottom-line benefit for us in doing this,” Shore said.

So far, however, none of Orange County’s larger corporations has adopted a similar program. And at least one survey says they probably won’t anytime soon.

Personnel Journal, a Costa Mesa publication, reported in June that nine out of 10 personnel directors in a national survey said their companies had no plans to develop an elder-care program, even though seven out of 10 said it affected worker output and morale.

About 8% of those surveyed said care for the elderly as a potential corporate benefit should be “ignored because it’s not a real issue.”

Those who believe that corporations should adopt elder-care programs say the situation is only going to worsen as the number of senior citizens increases and as more women enter the work force.

Conference participants are calling for companies to survey their work forces and set up focus groups to work on the problems they find. Some say businesses should set up adult day-care centers or offer employees flexible working hours.

“Some people prefer to work 10 hours a day, 4 days a week so they have an extra day to take care of mom,” Azarnoff said.

Several organizations provide counseling to people with elderly relatives. They include the Orange Regional Resource Center in Fullerton, which sponsored Friday’s conference, and the Senior Citizens Information and Referral in Santa Ana.