Caregiving and Eldercare Benefits Evaluation Checklist

Caregiving is one of the largest invisible costs on a mid-sized employer's books. It shows up as absences, presenteeism, and the quiet departure of experienced employees, never as a benefits line item. Use this checklist to evaluate how well your current package supports working caregivers, identify the gaps, and decide where to invest first.

Work through each section honestly. A "no" or "not sure" is not a failing grade. It is a place where you may be paying the cost of unsupported caregiving without getting anything back for it.

Section 1: Understand Your Exposure

Before evaluating benefits, confirm how much caregiving your workforce is actually carrying.

• We have asked employees, through a confidential survey or other means, whether they currently have caregiving responsibilities for children, aging parents, or both.
• We have a rough estimate of what share of our workforce falls into the sandwich generation (caring for kids and aging relatives at once).
• We can identify which roles or teams would be hardest to cover if a key caregiver reduced hours or left.
• We track absenteeism and unplanned time off in a way that would let us spot caregiving-related patterns.
• Managers understand that caregiving strain is a retention risk, not a performance problem to be disciplined.

Section 2: Childcare Support

Childcare is the more familiar half of caregiving, but support often stops after parental leave.

• We offer paid parental leave that is gender-neutral and covers adoption and nontraditional families, not only birth mothers.
• We provide some form of childcare support beyond leave, such as a dependent care FSA, a stipend, or backup care.
• Employees have access to flexible or remote scheduling to manage school hours, sick days, and appointments.
• Our benefits communications make clear what childcare-related support exists, so employees actually use it.

Section 3: Eldercare Support (The Common Blind Spot)

Only about 13% of employers offer eldercare referral services, even though four in ten employees are part of the sandwich generation. This is usually the largest gap.

• We offer an eldercare referral or care concierge service that helps employees find vetted in-home aides and navigate assisted living.
• Employees have a clear resource for Medicare and long-term care questions, rather than figuring it out alone on work time.
• Our caregiving benefits explicitly include care for adult family members, not just children.
• Backup care, if offered, can be used for an aging parent or spouse and not only for a child.
• Employees know this support exists. (Eldercare benefits are often present but invisible because no one talks about them.)

Section 4: Flexibility and Financial Support

Flexibility is frequently worth more to a caregiver than money, and it often costs the employer nothing.

• Employees can adjust their hours or work location around caregiving needs without a formal, slow approval process.
• We manage caregivers by output and results rather than by hours of visible presence.
• We offer a caregiving stipend or lifestyle spending account that employees can direct toward their own situation.
• If we offer a caregiving stipend, it is structured as a broad family-care account rather than a narrow standalone benefit. (Flexible accounts see far higher utilization, roughly nine in ten employees versus under half for rigid stipends.)
• Our stipend funding is benchmarked against the market range of roughly $1,000 to $12,000 per employee per year, with a median near $2,500.

Section 5: Culture and Manager Capability

Benefits fail when the culture punishes the people who need them.

• Employees feel safe disclosing caregiving responsibilities without fear it will cost them assignments or advancement.
• Managers are trained to respond to caregiving needs with flexibility rather than suspicion.
• Leadership models healthy boundaries, so using caregiving benefits does not feel like a career risk.
• We revisit caregiving support periodically as our workforce ages, rather than setting it once and forgetting it.

Scoring Your Results

Count your checked boxes.

20 to 24 checked: Your caregiving support is strong and likely a real retention advantage. Focus on communication so employees know what they have, and keep revisiting as your workforce ages.

12 to 19 checked: You have a solid foundation, usually on the childcare side, with clear gaps on eldercare or flexibility. Pick the one or two unchecked items with the highest impact and address them before your next renewal.

Fewer than 12 checked: You are likely absorbing significant caregiving costs invisibly. Start with two low-risk, high-impact moves: a confidential caregiving survey to size the problem, and a care concierge or backup care service to address the most acute needs. These are inexpensive relative to the turnover they prevent.

How to Use This Checklist

Bring it to your next benefits planning meeting and complete Section 1 first. The survey results will tell you whether caregiving is a minor consideration or a major hidden cost in your specific workforce. Use that to decide how aggressively to close the gaps in Sections 2 through 4. Treat caregiving support as retention math, not charity, and it will hold its place in the budget when the year gets tight.

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Benefits Collective helps employers design caregiving and family benefits that match how their people actually live. If this checklist surfaced gaps you want to close, schedule a consultation to build a plan that fits your budget and workforce.