Overload: How Employers Can Help Maxed-Out Caregivers

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JOAN WOODWARD: Hello, everyone. Welcome. I'm Joan Woodward, President of the Travelers Institute. Before we get started with our very important conversation today about caregiving, I'd like to share some exciting news at the Travelers Institute. 

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Today, we're launching a multiyear effort exploring how shifting environmental, economic and societal patterns are impacting the availability and the affordability of insurance across the insurance marketplace.

The Risk. Regulation. Resilience. and Responsibility. initiative will focus on how policymakers, insurance agents and brokers, carriers and consumers can address these challenges. Through a series of educational events in person and virtual, we're going to be crisscrossing the country in the next two years, folks. We're going to outline actionable insights for how policymakers, regulators, insurance agents and brokers, carriers and consumers can all work together to help navigate today's risks and build more resilient communities around America, ensuring what's most important is a well-functioning insurance marketplace.

As with all of the Travelers Institute initiatives, education is at the heart of Risk. Regulation. Resilience. Responsibility. By leveraging community insights and providing agents, brokers and customers with relevant tools and information, we aim to help people better understand and better navigate today's risk factors.

So this initiative's really going to feature organizations that are committed to solving these challenges, such as Travelers. And that includes folks like the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, and others as well.

We're going to kick off with an in-person event next week in St. Paul on September the 16th. And then later this fall, we're going to be in Tulsa, Atlanta and Dallas. We've got a link to more information about the initiative in the chat right now.

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So, as they say, we really appreciate your engagement on this new initiative. Also, follow me on LinkedIn. We're going to be posting a lot about this new initiative at the Institute.

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SLIDE: Text: Wednesdays with Woodward (registered trademark) Webinar Series. Overload: How Employers Can Help Maxed-Out Caregivers. Logos: Travelers Institute (registered trademark), Travelers. Working Parents/Caregivers & Allies Diversity Network. Master’s in Financial Technology (FinTech) Program at the University of Connecticut School of Business. MetroHartford Alliance. American Property Casualty Insurance Association (APCIA).  BIG I (Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America). National African American Insurance Association (NAAIA).

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OK, folks. So back to our regularly scheduled programming, an important conversation we're going to have right now about caregiving. An estimated 53 million American workers are also unpaid caregivers. From working parents to those of you who are caregivers to aging parents or to loved ones, juggling work, life and caregiving responsibilities is a huge and very stressful challenge. I myself have four children and cared for some older parents later in their life, so it is a challenge that I'm personally very much aware of.

It's impacting the workplace as well, with working caregivers opting to reduce hours or retire early, take a different career path, turn down those assignments or leave jobs entirely. Organizations, of course-- For organizations, this results in lost productivity and talent loss, not to mention the well-being of their workers.

So what can really be done? Specifically, how can employers help? And what is the business case for employers to step up on this topic?

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Our discussion today is part of our educational platform Forces at Work, helping today's leaders navigate the shifting dynamics of the modern workplace, and really to prioritize employees and their well-being.

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SLIDE: About Travelers Institute (registered trademark) Webinars. The Wednesdays with Woodward (registered trademark) educational webinar series is presented by the Travelers Institute, the public policy division of Travelers. This program is offered for informational and educational purposes only. You should consult with your financial, legal, insurance or other advisors about any practices suggested by this program. Please note that this session is being recorded and may be used as Travelers deems appropriate. Logos: Travelers Institute (registered trademark), Travelers.

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So there's much to get to. But before we begin, let me share a brief disclaimer about today's program. And then also, a special thank you goes out to our esteemed webinar partners. We always love having these great partnerships. First, the National African American Insurance Association, the Master's in FinTech program at UConn, the MetroHartford Alliance, the American Property and Casualty Insurance Association, and the Big I.

And a very special thank you and a shoutout to our own Travelers Working Parents and Caregivers Allies Diversity Network, which has partnered with us on today's webinar. This wonderful Travelers internal group provides a forum to support our colleagues who are parents and caregivers, giving them access to resources and a network of help.

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SLIDE: Text: Speakers. A photo appears of each speaker. Text: Joan Woodward: Executive Vice President, Public Policy; President, Travelers Institute, Travelers. Lindsay Jurist-Rosner: Co-Founder and CEO, Wellthy. Greg Landmark: Senior Vice President, Total Rewards and People Analytics, Travelers.

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OK, so let's get started. I'm thrilled to introduce you to our speakers today. First, let's welcome Lindsay Jurist-Rosner. Lindsay is the Co-Founder and CEO of Wellthy, a company she started in 2015 to help families navigate complex health care and caregiving challenges. Wellthy's 300 employees meet the needs of 4 million families worldwide by partnering with employers such as us at Travelers, health care plans and insurance carriers to provide services that span child care, elder care, backup care, which is also critically important to understand how you get that backup care, and much more.

It has been named to Inc. magazine's Inc. 5000 list of the fastest growing private companies in America for the third year in a row, so congratulations for that. Clearly, they are filling a need and really doing it well. So we're going to hear from Lindsay about why and how she started this amazing company and how it works.

Then we're going to hear from my colleague and friend Greg Landmark. Greg is Senior Vice President of Total Rewards and People Analytics at Travelers. He's been with us for more than 25 years leading Total Rewards, including Compensation and Benefits, for over 20 years.

Before joining Travelers, Greg worked as an actuarial consultant with Hewitt and as an HR strategies consultant with Deloitte. OK, welcome to the program. We're really thrilled to have you both here today.

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A split screen shows Joan, Greg, and Lindsay, each speaking to us from their own offices.

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GREG LANDMARK: Thank you.

LINDSAY JURIST-ROSNER: Thank you, Joan.

GREG LANDMARK: Good to be here.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK, Lindsay, let's start with you. Tell us your story of how, and more importantly why, you started Wellthy. You were a caregiver for many years for your mom, I know. How did that experience give you the idea for creating this amazing company?

LINDSAY JURIST-ROSNER: Well, first of all, Joan, thank you so much for having me as part of this important discussion. And Greg, just such a pleasure to be with you. Yeah, the founding story of the business is a personal story. It sort of inspired what we've now built over the last 11 years.

And the story was my role in caring for my mom. My mom got diagnosed with primary progressive multiple sclerosis-- MS, if you know the condition-- when I was nine years old. And her version of MS was a slow decline of mobility over many years. And so throughout high school, I helped out around the house a little bit more as she just needed more help. But then after college, I moved home and lived at home with my mom and took care of her.

And it was hard. I was getting her up in the morning and helping her get dressed and with meals, and then going into the office, slipping home throughout the day to help her, and really leading this kind of second double life, this kind of-- had this separate full-time job caring for my mom. And it was-- felt some shame or some guilt. I didn't tell many people about it.

That went on for years. And then later in my 20s and into my 30s, I made the decision to move out of the home and set up support and infrastructure for my mom, hired and fired in-home aides, went through countless surgeries and special treatments, and then she was on hospice at the end. She passed away about eight years ago.

But it was really through the experience in caring for my mom, which was just-- it was all the emotions. It was incredibly challenging and lonely and isolating and expensive. It was also rewarding and joyful and quality time. And so really conflicting emotions over the years.

But it was through that experience that I just got sort of-- my eyes opened to just how challenging it is for families like mine to manage and navigate care. Could be a parent with MS like mine. It could be dementia or Alzheimer's or multiple chronic conditions. Could be a kiddo with complex care needs, or even just typical kids. Whatever the care scenario, we don't really do enough as a society to provide support and infrastructure for families, and I really got inspired to go solve that.

JOAN WOODWARD: Well, first of all, thank you for solving that. Of course, I'm sure your mom was so grateful that you took time out of your own life, your early life as you were beginning your career.

I want to maybe give my audience just a sense of some reports of very prestigious organizations that have really taken time to look at this issue of caregiving. So the Milken Institute reports that 53 million Americans are working caregivers. AARP reports that number is 63 million. Either way, the numbers are huge.

The Pew Research Center reports that nearly 25% of adults in the US are part of the sandwich generation, taking care of elderly parents and children. So we see reports of these numbers of women in the workplace is dropping. So that's concerning that women are leaving the workforce more so than men, according to these studies.

The former surgeon general has called the stress that working parents are under a "crisis." We had Dr. Jerome Adams, the former surgeon general, with us a few months ago, and he really did talk a lot about this as a crisis.

The cost of child care now exceeds the average rent or mortgage payment for families in every single state. Let me say that again. The child care costs are more than your mortgage. So the stress, the cost, the juggling is all very real. Greg, I want to turn to you. How is this all playing out at companies and organizations across the country? And what are you seeing? Why did we set up internally our caregivers network? Give us a sense of what's going on not just at Travelers, but other peer companies that I know you talk to the HR leads all the time.

GREG LANDMARK: No, absolutely. Thank you, Joan. And it's a privilege to talk to all of you today. You know, it's interesting. Lindsay mentioned sometimes you don't realize how big this need is. And it was a little bit more than five years ago when Lindsay and her team, I had the chance to interact with them about this concept, and we did some sampling of our workforce.

And you start to realize just how many people are having caregiving needs, and how much time it's taking them, and the challenge that's associated with it. So it was not a common benefit that companies had to support things like this.

So we think about how this was playing out at Travelers. Our stated purpose is taking care of our customers, our communities and each other. And you think about taking care of each other who are taking care of loved ones. It aligns so much with our purpose, right?

So we had the privilege of implementing caregiving support with Wellthy about four years ago. And it's interesting anecdotally how many people come up to us and say, I can't believe how important this is or how much this has changed my life.

And I would say statistically, we've had more than-- just within the last year, more than 15% of our employees have engaged with this benefit in some way. So you know that it's out there. The need is there, and things like that.

And I think that in this world where work and life kind of overlap so much and we're seeing that-- and when I talk to peers and stuff, they're seeing that too. We felt like this is important as far as how to help people succeed at work and in life. So I feel like it's been a great investment, and it's been a great partnership, and we've impacted lives. And so I think that matters.

JOAN WOODWARD: Thank you for that. Lindsay, talk about maybe your other clients and what you're seeing at other companies outside of maybe Travelers. And how is this playing out? I know COVID really changed how we live and we work, and remote work and travel. I'm in hotels like this a lot. How is this all playing out in today's modern workforce?

LINDSAY JURIST-ROSNER: Well, thankfully, I think the caregiving topic is getting more attention. Greg and his-- the team, your colleagues over on the Benefits team at Travelers were definitely ahead of the curve in paying attention to caregiving, but it's getting more widespread attention.

What's been an interesting trend that we've seen is COVID definitely made caregiving more urgent, presented the awareness in a bigger way, so employers started to pay attention. We saw kind of a wave of employers wanting to support employees with caregiving. And initially through COVID, it was the tech companies, it was professional services companies, financial services companies.

But what we've seen as a trend over the last couple of years is more and more organizations that have front-line workforces engaging on the caregiving topic, because there's a direct impact to people's jobs, and they see this in the data. So when you look at hospitality or health care or retail companies, a major reason for missed shifts and late shifts is care related. And so it's sort of undeniable that it has to be addressed. I feel strongly-- and I'll put this out there-- that I think caregiving is the workforce issue of our time that we have to address, because the trends point to it worsening over time.

JOAN WOODWARD: So talk about the employees who are most impacted. Is it a specific age group? Gen X, millennials? We talked about women more than men. What are you seeing in your data, Lindsay?

LINDSAY JURIST-ROSNER: We're seeing in the data that-- well, first of all, what's really interesting is it's shifting. So in the early days of our business, it was definitely those Gen Xers that were more so impacted by care. Gen Xers, maybe even boomers.

What we've seen is the trend has shifted younger. So it's those millennials that now make up the biggest chunk of caregivers in the workforce right now. The folks who we care-- worry especially about are the employees who are sandwich caregivers, those sandwich generation. So those folks who are involved in caring for kids-- so they have kids in the house-- and they also have parents or a parent that they're involved in taking care of.

What happens with those sandwich generation employees is they are just squeezed. They're burning the candle at both ends. There's just a tremendous amount of time spent on care outside of working hours, and that bleeds into working hours as well.

We do still see that women are more likely to be involved in caregiving than men, although I will give credit. We see lots of male caregivers who are very involved. Greg, if you're comfortable with me sharing, Greg is among that population, very involved in his mom's care. So it definitely skews slightly more toward women, but it's 66% women. So it's just slightly more. And interestingly, for that millennial generation, we see it more as 50/50 between men and women. So some interesting trends for sure.

JOAN WOODWARD: And Greg, what are we seeing-- thank you, Lindsay. What are we seeing at Travelers? Is it Gen X, millennials? I'm assuming a lot of the baby boomers may be caring for their elderly parents in their 80s or 90s. What are we-- is there a specific age group or a specific cohort that we worry most about here?

GREG LANDMARK: No, great question. And let me just start with, thank you for mentioning that, Lindsay. I'm the only child of a single mother, so I have the responsibility and privilege of taking care of her, as she lives far away from where I live. So-- And I think there's a lot of people like that.

So at Travelers, metrics-wise, in our sustainability report we say that the average tenure at Travelers is 12 years. So you think about what that means for our age, and the types of people we have, and the number of people in that sandwich generation. And we have more women-- more women than men are engaging. But like Lindsay said, there's more men engaging as well now. That number of men is increasing. That's part of that.

And then we have a lot-- if we look at the statistics of who we're caring for kind of by age brackets and stuff, there's a lot of 80-plus-- people that are 80-plus that are being cared for. And there's some that are zero to 12 too, to Lindsay's point earlier. We do have some-- that group as well.

But there's so many people that are in the middle of that at Travelers, that are having to think about their children and the stages they have in life, and then also parents and loved ones. So our data's really consistent with what Lindsay has shared.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK, thank you. Lindsay, back to you. I want to talk about trends in your industry. So the care economy, I'll call it. What trends are you seeing with maybe peer companies of yours? I know there's a lot more springing up around us. Mental health is also connected to a lot of these caregiving conversations. So what are the trends you're seeing?

LINDSAY JURIST-ROSNER: Well, we've been proud to be part of the market-leading companies and spearheading the care economy. The care economy was only coined in the last couple of years, and that's very exciting.

The care economy is actually massive, Joan. The care economy's valued at $6 trillion. So putting that in perspective, that's six times the size of the pharmaceutical industry. That's more than GDPs of major companies. It's a massive industry, so it's not a small niche industry.

Some quick trends we see on the front lines here. I'll say the positive trend that we're seeing is a lot of innovation, a lot of interest on the part of entrepreneurs. Individuals who have been impacted by caregiving, not too different from us on the phone, are interested in getting involved and making a difference in helping families like theirs. And so that's very encouraging.

I'll share an example. I'll be later this week at Harvard Business School. There's a Wellthy case that's been taught in a class called Social Entrepreneurship and Systems Change. It's been taught for the last five years. That class used to be a very small, unpopular class. Our case was one of many.

Now it's two sections. It's well attended. The Wellthy case gets specific attendees who are interested in starting their own businesses in the care economy. So just some really exciting kind of positive momentum on people who want to make change.

The negative side, let me talk about that. So one of the very concerning kind of up at night issues I have is just the severe shortages we're seeing on the supply side of paid caregivers. So when I say paid caregivers, I'm referring to those individuals who work in various settings.

So, they could work in homes as an in-home aide for an older adult. They could work in facilities, maybe a long-term care facility or a memory care facility, assisted living, or day care, a child care center of some sort. Those individuals are called paid caregivers, or caregivers.

And what we've seen as a concerning trend is there was a shortage of these individuals before COVID. COVID forced a lot of these individuals into other work. Day cares shut down. Long-term care facilities reduced staff for various reasons. And so there were a whole bunch of people who went and took other jobs.

We have not seen people return to those roles. The pay isn't great. It's really hard work. There's not a lot of-- we don't, as a society, recognize and reward these paid caregivers and hold them up as the heroes that they are. There are no benefits. And so it isn't a huge draw of a career for most individuals.

And so the very concerning trend we're seeing is that there's more and more demand. There's more and more need, just larger aging population, people living longer than ever who require more care, and fewer and fewer individuals who are qualified to provide that care.

The result of that, if you're following the kind of equation here, is we will see more and more people who look like us have to step out of their own careers to provide this caregiving support because they can't find the professional caregivers. Sorry for the doom and gloom there.

JOAN WOODWARD: No, it is-- it's definitely, as the surgeon general called it, a "crisis," because again, the pay is not very good for a lot of these folks, and they're doing heroes' work many times. Where do you think people need the most help? So what categories of people do you think need the most, and what trends are you seeing there, Lindsay?

LINDSAY JURIST-ROSNER: Yeah, I'll start. And Greg, would love your feedback too. But on our side, we see Alzheimer's and dementia as really challenging for families. The trend is that individuals with Alzheimer's and dementia can live longer with these conditions, and that's an incredible thing due to science and medication and other supports.

But the challenge is that the course of the disease looks so different, and families are just having to try to figure it out as they go. And it's very long and isolating and challenging, and this person you love could have behavioral changes. And so Alzheimer's, dementia I'll put up there as high on the list.

Kids with complex needs. The challenge for those parents is unlike a parent of a neurotypical or typical child, you launch your kid into their life at a certain point. That could be after high school. That could be later. It depends.

But if you are a parent with a kiddo with complex care needs, that parenting journey doesn't end. It's harder. It's longer. It's more stressful. There's more work and more expense. And so we do see those parents with kiddos with complex needs in many cases, more reward-- again, can be even more rewarding, but can be more stressful and more time-consuming.

The third category is probably a catch-all, just taking care of an individual with multiple chronic conditions or a terminal illness, or an ongoing, long illness like my mom, like neurological or autoimmune, cancer. I mean, you name it, it's really kind of complex care ends up just being very challenging for families.

JOAN WOODWARD: Yes.

GREG LANDMARK: I would agree with the categories Lindsay said. In our data at Travelers, when you mentioned cancer at the end, that was the one I was going to add, because we do have the dementia, hypertension, anxiety are common ones, and then the complex care for kids. But we've had a lot with cancer as well. I think people are surviving cancer. But if you have an aging parent or something that's doing that, they have additional care needs associated with that, and we're seeing that being, in our data, an important area, for sure.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK, great. Thank you for laying out what the problem is, the crisis is. Now let's talk about what organizations can do about it, and what Travelers does about it, and what business leaders can do.

So what are the specific strategies-- and we'll start with you, Greg. What are the strategies that maybe we employed at Travelers and other best practices in other industries that you've seen and maybe we've adopted here at Travelers? So tell us those specific things, because I know there's a lot of people who joined this call to understand what they can do to help their employee base.

GREG LANDMARK: Well, I think it's helpful. Thank you for that question. I think it's helpful to align with the business goals and strategies, right? So I mentioned earlier our purpose of taking care of our customers, our communities and each other. And our benefits have an important role in that, and so our benefits then are designed to help employees succeed in work and in life.

And so what does that mean? What benefits do you provide? And I think people think a lot about health care benefits. And that's so important and so common, and there's so much in the media about that.

But it's more than just health care benefits and retirement benefits and things like that. But it's, how do you find out what's really impacting people's lives? And we can talk about-- I know we're going to talk about mental health at a different-- at an upcoming session and stuff too, but mental health is so important.

But things like this, and identifying the need, and realizing the impact it can have on your business matters. So I think for us it was identifying that need and figuring out what the business case was around it, finding a great partner that can help us execute on that, which we did with Wellthy.

And then it's like implementing it within your organization and helping get the organization behind it. And I can see testimonials and the momentum that it's created at Travelers. As people talk about-- I'll just state it. Like, probably the most common story that I'll hear-- and this is one that'll make sense to people is a person has a parent that usually lives somewhere far away. In our society, we don't often stay by our parents. And their parent is going through this question about, do I get assisted living or in-home support?

And the employee's like, I've never been through this before. This is my parent, and they're doing this. What do I do? And then often, the siblings are disagreeing on what they should do. So what's the right solution, right?

So having something like we have with Wellthy, our caregiving support with Wellthy, it engages a concierge. Then the concierge then interacts with the full unit-- the person needing the care and the employee and their siblings-- to come up with a solution. They execute that solution for them. And then it just creates some harmony and some things that, again, are life-changing to the employee.

The employee comes back engaged. They tell other people, and they're appreciative of it. And it just-- the momentum that it creates and the positive impact it has on the employee is incredible. So I couldn't help but share that story.

But kind of getting back to the business case. And Lindsay's done a great job of stating the challenge in the business case overall. But that business case applies to each of us as employers and stuff too. How do we help our employees succeed in work and in life? And caregiving's a big part of that.

JOAN WOODWARD: So it's not just providing a list of, here's the 10 people you could call for in-home care. You actually-- Lindsay, your folks have a concierge that takes the family through each of the decision points.

And explain how the process goes, because I think-- and what's a little bit sad to me is a lot of people, maybe at Travelers or other employees, don't even know this is a benefit that we offer. And so they're out there struggling, suffering in silence, not knowing that this incredible benefit is available and free to employees. So can you walk us through that, Lindsay, what you're offering then?

LINDSAY JURIST-ROSNER: Yeah, absolutely. And Joan, just to summarize, what we see families struggling with the most are four areas as it pertains to caregiving. One is navigation. What's the right option? What's even out there? What might be the right fit? So the navigation piece.

The second piece is access. Because there are shortages, families can really struggle to access the care that they need. There might be an application process or multiple steps. You might have to gather medical records. And for busy professionals, that's a lot of work that can be overwhelming.

The third piece is affordability. So we talked about child care being as expensive as rent and mortgage payments. The senior care side of things is exorbitant. You could see, for privately paying for senior care, upwards of $80,000, $100,000 a year for facilities, depending on your geography.

And then the final piece is just decision support. Greg said this beautifully. So often, caregivers become a caregiver pretty quickly without any preparation or warning or training. And you're thrust into making these very critical decisions that are life and death and have financial ramifications. So navigation, access, affordability and decision support are the four key areas we key in on for families that actually-- kind of how it works.

One of the things we kind of observed early on in the business as we set out to build the right solution for families was we asked the question, is there a skilled workforce that is best equipped to help families navigate care? Is there a workforce that currently exists?

And we found that indeed, they do. It's social workers. Social workers are this incredible trained and well-equipped workforce to help families navigate care. The challenge is social workers in various kind of health care settings aren't always kind of paired up with families in a way that's conducive to providing that support.

And so we set out to really empower a very positive relationship between families and social workers. And so the way that we do that is we kind of match a family up with a dedicated-- we call them care coordinators in our world. But really, that person becomes the family's partner and sounding board and expert. Helps families navigate and access and help with decisions.

And the analogy I'll give you, it's almost the same way that you might work with a financial advisor, right? Like, you think about other complex areas of our life. We consult experts, right? And so why wouldn't we do that here?

And so with Wellthy, our business is in part kind of setting up this new type of work or partnership or model in supporting families with care. And it really is that relationship with that care coordinator.

And then we've built a lot of expertise over the years. We have a very robust database of various services and providers we've vetted over the years, and so have preferred folks that we can recommend. And we have experts on our team who really know Medicaid and really know VA benefits. They're very complicated areas that require some deep knowledge, so those are some of the other things we've built over the years.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK, so you can also help with federal government employee-- federal government programs like veterans benefits or Medicare or Medicaid? That's also part of the offering?

LINDSAY JURIST-ROSNER: I'd say biggest ask-- biggest ask we get is, what's the right care for my parent? We see No. 1 use case is aging-related care, as Greg mentioned, consistent with the Travelers data.

And No. 2 question is, how do we pay for care? Most people say, does Medicare cover long-term care for my parent? We don't know a lot about these things. Medicare does not, for the record. So it's really accessing Medicaid or a long-term care insurance policy or veterans benefits if a loved one's served.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK.

LINDSAY JURIST-ROSNER: And we handhold families through those processes. They're very complex. 50%-- yeah, 50% of veterans who are eligible for benefits aren't receiving them, and we believe it's because the process of gaining access to those benefits is so hard and complex.

JOAN WOODWARD: Oh, that's really a sad number, actually, that they-- so complex to even get in. So anyone on this call listening, Wellthy provides all these services that I-- this is not a commercial for the company. This is just us really just eyes wide open that we've discovered all this help for our employees.

And I'm just hopeful that if you're a Travelers employee listening to this, you take advantage of this benefit for your family. But Greg, is there any other support network benefits that Travelers has before I move on to a different topic that you wanted to talk about?

GREG LANDMARK: Yeah, the couple things I'd mentioned is I'm going to reinforce what Lindsay said about the care coordinator. It's interesting. As people use that, they know the name. Like, I hear more about, oh, yeah, that's-- and they'll say the name, because it's such an important connection. So I would reinforce that.

I mean, I think the other benefits that this coordinates with that I think's really important is mental health, because the mental health benefits that we provide link well with caregiving support, for sure. And then also the navigating health care, I think that is very important. And we provide benefits that help people navigate health care.

The challenge is, this isn't navigating your health care. Often, it's navigating, let's say, your parent's health care. And our benefits in the past wouldn't have done that. Now that we have caregiving support with Wellthy, health care navigation is an important part of that that people are challenged with.

So it all aligns with the concepts of taking care of our employees and helping people be successful in work and life. So it all aligns with that. But we're trying to think about wellness as broadly as we can, and we're trying to impact people's lives each day, and it's a privilege to do that.

JOAN WOODWARD: That's wonderful. OK. Let's move on and talk a little bit about-- well, we've talked a lot about the large companies. So Lindsay, what is your advice to a CEO or a leader of a smaller organization or company? How can they support their caregivers? So say a mom-and-pop insurance agent out there in rural America. Doesn't have these huge resources for their employees. But what is your advice for these smaller companies?

LINDSAY JURIST-ROSNER: Joan, I love this question, because actually, I think there's a misconception around this. I've been doing a lot of work in Washington, D.C., with Bipartisan Policy Center, and this issue comes up a lot between, oh, large companies can afford to help caregivers, but it's the small companies.

And I would argue, first of all, I think it's even more important for small companies to embrace and support caregivers. And Greg mentioned supporting caregivers can look like a variety of things. There's support programs like Wellthy. Travelers has great peer support networks, the ERGs and the affinity networks that are wonderful for parents and caregivers. We do see some companies setting up really cool caregiving leave policies and thinking about intermittent leave that's very specific for certain use cases.

And so-- And just even being there and supporting and offering some flexibility with hours. It doesn't have to be a formal program or policy as much as it can be just tuning in and showing up.

I'd say for small employers, the impact of caregiving on the workforce is more severe because if you have that-- if you have a very small team and you have that one employee who's missing a lot of work, and they're distracted, they're going through real hardship, that one employee has a more meaningful difference at a small organization than they do at a large organization.

It has an impact for that employee. They're going to be less productive. It also places more-- I hate to say burden, but can displace work onto their colleagues where other colleagues are assuming some of the responsibilities if that employee is missing work or out of commission for a period of time.

And so I would make the argument that small employers absolutely should be embracing the topic. It's not hard. It's just doing exactly what Greg suggested, which is listening to employees, thinking about your values. I mean, I think Travelers and Greg and the leadership team just does that so beautifully, really living those values. So caring about the team genuinely and showing up and listening I think is the right first step. And then figuring out, what are the support programs?

And I'll say a company like Wellthy ends up being more expensive for a large company. For a small company, it's not that expensive. Could be a couple hundred dollars type of thing per month if you're a very small organization. So it's not that it's prohibitively expensive. And it really is-- it really is, to Greg's point, it's life changing when you show up for caregivers.

GREG LANDMARK: The one thing I would add to that too, because we considered caregiving leave and more time off. But the reality that we see is if you ask an employee to say, hey, we'll give you a day off to go take care of these challenges, it's not like a point in time challenge. It's not like you can take-- from my perspective, it's more cost and time-efficient to get an expert to help you do that efficiently than it is to tell your employee to-- you know? That I think's the challenge, because I feel like people get lost in the decisions.

JOAN WOODWARD: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Lindsay, I love what you said in terms of the leader of an organization-- of a small organization. I know our CEO, Alan Schnitzer, spends many many, many hours reviewing what the benefits should be, what the employees-- he asks employees to call him and let them know about our benefit package every year. And it's just-- just so wonderful to know that he cares about my family, you know? And so I think just the way you speak about it to your employees goes a long way, along with the benefits.

All right, let's talk about the return on investment. Because what is the business case for doing this at an organization? So what's the ROI for employers who want to support family caregiving? Lindsay, you first.

LINDSAY JURIST-ROSNER: Well, I love this question, Joan, because for so long we were arguing at Wellthy that providing caregiving support isn't a nice thing to do. It's not a social good. There's an economic reason. And in fact, it's been great to engage in Washington, D.C. And the recent passing of the recent bill through Congress, which had some great child care components and tax credits for employers, it really is a topic that is seen now, I think, as having real economic consequence.

And so the major driver of ROI for caregiving support is really about labor participation, workforce participation. How do you get people to be able to be in jobs, stay in jobs, stay productive and engaged? And caregiving ends up being a major reason for that. Actually, caregiving's the No. 2 reason why people leave the workforce right now. Retirement's No. 1. Caregiving's No. 2.

And so anyway, we've been chatting about this for a while. We had a lot of great proprietary data on the impact of providing caregiving support around productivity and retention and reduced leaves of absence, those types of things.

But it was last year-- we partnered with Harvard Business School that put out a more formal report on this. Fully independent, third party. And we passed along our data to them blindly. Here's-- I think it was 100 companies over a couple-year period, and they looked at quantitative and qualitative data.

And they produced this report that shows that caregiving support conservatively has a 3.6x return on investment, meaning for every dollar an employer spends on caregiving support, they're going to get that back that 3.6 times. And so that is a powerful ROI. And again, independent third party from Harvard Business School.

The major driver of that is retention, because the theory is that if you have-- and you talk about Travelers. Like, Travelers with your tenured employees, if that tenured employee says, you know what? I can't do it anymore. It's too much to juggle both caregiving and work. I'm going to have to step away and focus on caregiving for a period of time. That employee's very hard to replace.

The institutional knowledge over the 12-year-- did you say average tenure, Greg? I mean, the lost institutional knowledge, the recruitment of the replacement, the training costs, the cost to replace is very high. And so that's where really a lot of the return on investment is derived from.

Productivity, reduced leaves of absence, those are meaningful as well. But it really is keeping that individual in their job, able to show up to work and be their best self. That is the piece that drives the ROI.

JOAN WOODWARD: That's really--

GREG LANDMARK: And I would-- just to build on that for just a second. Just within the last year-- so I was just looking at our metrics. And at Travelers, metrics are important for sure. We look at data for sure. And we've had about-- let's say roughly 1,000 cases where care coordinators were used, like what Lindsay described.

And they self-identify how many hours that care coordinator save them. And on average, it's about 30 hours per case that the care coordinator saved them. So you think about 30 hours. Some of that's time at work that was saved, and some of that is time away. And so that's a big impact. It's a big ROI in my mind.

JOAN WOODWARD: And I think there's-- also, if you don't have someone like this to help you navigate these things that you know nothing about. You may be an underwriter, or you may be a producer out there. And you're very good at what you do, but you don't understand Medicare. You don't understand VA benefits. You don't understand how to get that backup child care with a list of people who are really reliable in your community.

So Lindsay, let's just go right into it. So we talked a little bit about the concierge. You get assigned. I want to talk a little more deeper about your process when a Travelers employee shows up in your door and either needs child care, backup child care, aging parent care. Walk us through a couple of scenarios that so people can understand how you work.

LINDSAY JURIST-ROSNER: Yeah. Well, thanks. Thanks for asking, Joan. Yeah. So we try to make it as simple as possible so an employee can sign up. They share a little bit about what's going on with them, if it's an aging parent and maybe there's some decision support around a transition.

We use that information in real time to match that employee up with the best fit care coordinator. Because as you can imagine, we have a large team of folks with varying backgrounds and areas of expertise. So some of our care coordinators, prior to coming to Wellthy, did a lot of work in the community supporting older adults in various facilities or other clinical settings, or maybe they worked extensively with kids with complex care needs. And so having that connection point where it is a person who deeply understands what that employee is going through is very important to our model.

That care coordinator gets to know the family's situation, their goals, their needs, sets up a plan, and then goes about getting things done. So one of the things we feel very strongly about for caregiving is what happens is there's just a lot of administrative and logistical details to figure out.

If you're, for an aging parent, navigating a transition of care, to Greg's earlier point-- very common use case-- that employee is trying to figure out, what's the right facility? How do we access maybe financial aid to cover the cost? Will this change-- will this impact who Mom or Dad sees in terms of their providers? Does this impact their insurance coverage in any way? There are all these considerations.

And so what we set out to do is help families set up a game plan, set up some tasks that we're going to work on, and then take some of that legwork off of the family's plate. So one of the things we see with caregiving is the health care system is so good at the medical side of care. Prescribing, diagnosing, treating medical conditions.

Once you get outside of the medical setting, it really falls to families, and there really is no infrastructure to help. And so not only do we want to help provide guidance, but we want to help make those phone calls, set up those appointments.

So much of those activities have to be done between 9:00 and 5:00 during the workday. So it's like, during your day as you're juggling clients or back-to-back Zoom meetings, you're also having to maybe make phone calls around insurance coverage and provider access and seeing availability of facilities. And so our team really likes to take those components off people's plate, and to Greg's point, really helps save some time. And so we go about just getting work done, helping to make the phone calls, do the research, assess the options, vet the options, try to narrow it down for the family as much as we can, and help them make the decisions.

And then if the family is, say, moving into a long-term care facility, we can help with the move. There's a whole specialty practice of senior movers, most people don't realize. And these are movers who have expertise in helping seniors make this big transition, make this move, set up an estate sale if there's an opportunity to give away some items. So there are the activities that happen even after that decision has been made by the family.

And so our goal is to stand by the side of the family, help really get things done and help the family get into a good place. Does that answer your question, Joan?

JOAN WOODWARD: Yeah. That's a lot. I had no idea there was such things as senior movers.

LINDSAY JURIST-ROSNER: Yeah.

JOAN WOODWARD: Let's talk about the backup child care option. So if I'm a Travelers employee, I call you. My child care fell through. I assume you would have to get a list of providers or have a pre-- you can't call the day of. You can't call it 7:00 AM and say my-- right? You can't-- that's not-- you have to have it set up before, right?

LINDSAY JURIST-ROSNER: Good point. So Joan, so this has been a super fun, kind of new evolution and exploration and innovation for Wellthy. So over the last couple of years, we've launched backup care. And the biggest piece to your point was building that network.

So it's kind of opposite from how we built concierge. For concierge, people come to us and we can go do legwork, and then we can capture that information into our database. For backup care, we had to go out and do all the research in communities.

What we found-- what we knew going into backup care from our years of supporting families with child care, with emergency care needs-- we've been doing backup care since the beginning. We just didn't call it that.

But what we knew is that in every community, there's actually a wide array of different child care provider types that can offer great backup care. So an example is a local YMCA, or a Boys and Girls Club, or maybe a faith-based provider, a church or a synagogue or mosque that has a child care program.

And then we see the more traditional, the nannies or the babysitters who have some extra hours. Maybe they're a grad school student. They don't have class on Friday, and they want to be able to earn some income on Fridays, and they can fill in as backup care. We also see retired teachers as a great community for being able to-- they don't-- maybe they don't want full-time care for whatever reason, but they can be able to do that incremental various days of the week.

And then there's the more traditional child care facilities, the day cares, the KinderCares and the Bright Horizons that are the larger day care centers. And then we see great small community options, an entrepreneur that can take kids in her home, five to seven kids, fully licensed. And that can be a wonderful environment for a kiddo who's used to smaller day care environments.

And so it is a real gap. We see school closures for holidays or spring break or winter break, a sick kid, care falling through for some reason, if you have a regular babysitter, but that babysitter is sick. And so that's a reason why people maybe will miss meetings or not be able to show up for work. And so we built this large database to be able to basically on demand kind of match the family up with a provider in the community who can fill in for that last-minute care need.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK, great. Greg, just to you real quickly. I know Wellthy offers-- I read this-- the care for families impacted by natural disasters. And we know something too about natural disasters and how they could just have chaos in people's lives. So I thought that was pretty cool to see a natural disaster is also part of the offering there.

GREG LANDMARK: Such a connection between our companies, right, Joan? I agree. And the one thing that Wellthy-- another thing that Wellthy's really good at is knowing the community resources. So when there are natural disasters, they are great at connecting our employees to community resources that are available, which is very helpful.

JOAN WOODWARD: Awesome. OK. We're going to take a lot of audience questions, because we have a ton of them coming in. So first one's going to be to you, Greg. We've had so many questions come in-- I've been reading them-- from the audience members who are caregivers. They're telling us they're just exhausted. They're overwhelmed. They can't keep up.

They feel guilty, right? They feel guilty that they're not serving maybe Travelers or their organization because they have been pulled away by these family demands. So what is your advice-- we'll go to you, Greg, first-- for anyone listening who's really trying to juggle this in their lives?

GREG LANDMARK: Yeah. I'd say three things come to mind to me right away. One, I just want to acknowledge they're not alone. So hopefully, this webinar's helped them realize that, that they're-- it sometimes feels isolating in that you're doing this thing, and others aren't. But you're not alone. Other people are doing that.

And I would also lean into resources. This is-- don't think that this is a thing that you should just handle on your own. And like Lindsay said, there are community resources available sometimes, but lean into resources.

Hopefully, you're at an employer that offers some-- has the opportunity to offer something like caregiving support with Wellthy. And for Travelers people listening to this, if you don't know about it now, hopefully you know about it now, this resource that's available to you. But lean into those-- lean into those resources.

And then I would say communicate. Communicate with people as much as you can. Those would be my three things. Lindsay, you could say it more eloquently, but those are a few things that I would highlight.

LINDSAY JURIST-ROSNER: Oh, I think those are perfect, Greg. And I would just add, I mean-- yeah, the emotions are real. The guilt, the resentment, the exhaustion, the at times joy and sense of feeling rewarded. It is such a range. It could be a range in a day and in an hour, even.

And I do want to call out one other kind of very major emotion that I want folks to feel is very normal, is this concept of anticipatory grief. So we think about grief as something that happens after a loved one passes.

But what we actually see with caregivers is many times, caregivers are in a pretty continual state of grief, because you're grieving the loss of capabilities, or grieving the loss of memory, or grieving the loss-- and grief as emotion is just tremendously exhausting. And so if you're in a constant state of anticipatory grief, of anticipating that next step where your parent doesn't recognize you or the next step where your parent can't drive, that alone is just exhausting. Forget the actual physical labor, but the emotional components are exhausting.

I completely agree with Greg saying, raise your hand. Don't go it alone. There are so many-- find your community. I can point to countless kind of great virtual communities. We have a community at Wellthy that we love, but there are great online communities. I'm a big fan of Daughterhood, which I'll recommend. And they do these Daughterhood circles in different communities, bringing caregivers together. So find your people. Find your outlet. And make sure you have your system, your support.

I would say delegate if possible. If you have a neighbor, a friend, a sibling, ask them to take over a day of taking Mom to the grocery store or get a day for yourself.

And final piece I'd just say for caregivers is, don't be ashamed to feel selfish sometimes. Get the care you need. Put the oxygen mask on yourself. If you need talking to therapy-- I used talk therapy as a solution for me when I was in the throes of caregiving.

Simple things like go take a walk and be in nature. Find five minutes. My simple pleasure-- Joan, similar to you, I have four kids and a busy home life, caregiving beyond losing my mom. But my little simple pleasure is I go and get a manicure every weekend.

It's like my-- I say I have to get it done. I don't need to get it done. But it's my 30 minutes to myself, and it feels like an indulgence, and it feels affordable, and it's me time. And so whatever your me time is, get those moments. Make them important and savor them. I think that's really key. And then yes, get the support and the expertise and the resources.

I think people-- even if affordability is a challenge, get more paid caregiving support, I think most people don't realize that there is so much financial aid available to support in covering the costs of care. So don't go it alone, I think is the major message.

JOAN WOODWARD: I think that's tremendously helpful. A lot of more questions coming in. We're going to go to Greg on this one. A lot of audience members here are asking how to approach their manager and talk about balancing work or caregiving responsibilities.

I mean, this can be a touchy subject, because you don't want to suffer in silence, yet your employer wants you to work and be present. Not just physically present, but mentally present, working on the job that needs to be done, not working on family issues during the daytime or-- it's a juggling act. So other than making people aware of your situation, how do you approach your manager in a way that's fair for the employee first and for the employer?

GREG LANDMARK: No, great question. And I think about balance. How do you do it in a balanced way so it's a win-win? So what's the case around, how is this going to help the manager by having them help you accomplish this? Because I think that's the open dialogue we want to have.

And I think to Lindsay's earlier point, I think we're in a caregiving economy now, and people are more and more understanding that that's part of life, and stuff like that. So I think if the employee and the manager-- if the employee can approach the manager with honesty and balance and say, here's what's in it for the business and what's in it for me, and try to think of it that way, I think that's always best.

JOAN WOODWARD: All right. Sounds good. Next question. What are the top three types of caregiving Travelers employees are engaging Wellthy to assist with? So elder care I assume is one.

GREG LANDMARK: Yeah, the types of caregiving. Like, if I think about what's happening, it's interesting, because we've spoken to all these. Finding an assisted living is No. 1. In-home support, 2. And then medical providers, 3. Like, those are the three results, I guess, that are the most common. And then as I mentioned before, if I think about dementia, hypertension, anxiety, cancer, the areas that have the most support, the diagnosis.

JOAN WOODWARD: And so Greg, just for Travelers employees, do you have to have a Travelers health plan to participate in the Wellthy? Or is Wellthy--

GREG LANDMARK: All employees can participate in Wellthy. You don't have to be in Travelers' medical plan.

JOAN WOODWARD: All employees can. Open to everyone.

GREG LANDMARK: I'm glad you mentioned that, Joan. Yes, it's all employees. You don't have to be in our medical plan to use Wellthy.

JOAN WOODWARD: And that's also Spring Health. I know we're going to have the CEO of Spring Health come on in a few months with us, but that's also true of that, the mental health.

GREG LANDMARK: It's also true of Spring Health as well.

JOAN WOODWARD: So you don't have to have the Travelers health care plan. OK--

GREG LANDMARK: And I'll say it one more time too. The connection between mental health and caregiving is really strong. And--

LINDSAY JURIST-ROSNER: Really strong.

GREG LANDMARK: --it's great that we're working with Spring Health and with Wellthy, and they partner very well.

LINDSAY JURIST-ROSNER: And I want to just second that, Greg. And the data shows, caregivers have a higher incidence rate of depression and anxiety and chronic stress. And so we do see the two solutions working so beautifully together.

JOAN WOODWARD: Wonderful. Listen, the hour has flown by. We could have spent at least another hour talking about different strategies, but I want to thank you both for your leadership. Greg, your and Alan's leadership to our employee base is stellar. I mean, we just feel like you have our backs. So thank you very much for not just today, but all you've done for our 30,000-some employees. And to Lindsay, thank you for creating this amazing company and giving us all access to it. It is just incredible.

And as you say, I'm glad you pointed out, for smaller organizations it might not be that expensive, right? And so having the service available to employees is something everyone should check out. So thank you both.

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