Check out a short recap with some of our favorite moments from the discussion.
We asked our three panelists one question at the start of this webinar: when you hear the word "caregiver," what do you picture?
They gave three completely different answers:
A parent caring for young children.
A “sandwich generation” adult juggling aging parents and kids at home.
Someone who just spent two days at the hospital with a best friend who had no one else.
That dissonance is telling. If a room full of HR professionals can't agree on what a caregiver looks like, it's no wonder most companies are undersupporting them—often without realizing it.
The stakes are real: about 1 in 4 adults in the U.S. have caregiving responsibilities, 53% report arriving late or leaving early, 80% say it impacts their productivity, and the U.S. absorbs an estimated $25.2 billion in lost productivity tied to caregiving annually. And those numbers likely undersell the problem—because many of the people they're trying to count don't even identify as caregivers. With this panel, we brought three different leaders in the HR space together to share their expertise and experiences to help organizations broaden the lens about what caregiving is, who might be a caregiver, and how to better support them in the workplace.
Who is a caregiver and what defines caregiving?
In the eyes of the FMLA (and many state leave policies), caregivers are people taking care of the serious medical needs of a legally recognized family member. So whether or not you have an official caregiver leave policy, employees may be entitled to legally protected time off. But many caregivers might find themselves in situations that don’t strictly fit that definition. This conversation highlighted that it's best to be prepared, and to adopt a broader understanding of caregiving.
💡Start with a caregiver leave policy—our free generator can help you draft one in minutes.
A caregiver can be anyone supporting a person they love through a moment that requires more of them than a typical day. Caregiving can be full-time, part-time, suddenly, ongoing, or on an on-call basis. It can entail caring for someone with a serious illness, after an accident, or pitching in to keep someone healthy and cared for. Because the definition is so elusive, a lot of people don't self-identify—which means employers often have more caregivers than they think.
Grace put it well:
The majority of people with caregiving responsibilities are doing it in a part-time capacity—being the person on call, picking kids up from school... All of these things are meaningful caregiving responsibilities, but they aren't as visible because they don't fall into this big capital C caregiving of 'I'm a full-time caregiver' category."
“It’s personal”—why caregiving stays hidden at work
For employees and employers, both tend to be uncomfortable broaching the subject of caregiving in the workplace.
Employees stay quiet because of stigma, and because many caregiving scenarios—a parent with cancer, a sibling with a chronic illness—aren't fun to discuss in any setting. Employees worry they'll be seen as less productive or like they’re asking for special treatment.
Employers don’t want to seem like they’re prying, and managers don’t know how to have the conversation—both emotionally and from a compliance and company policy perspective. They aren’t versed in either. Without clear guidance, most would rather wait for the employee to come to them, which often doesn't happen.
Angela named a third factor: the "absorptive capacity" problem. Employers are increasingly asked to care about employees as whole people, which can be genuinely hard when bandwidth is limited. “It's not a reflection of how compassionate an organization is… it’s about realistic bandwidth.”
Rachel also pointed out that you can’t always draw a neat boundary around caregiving and a caregiving schedule like you can with some parental and medical leaves. That can make it hard to understand what a caregiver’s needs are, what the impact of caregiving is on their work, and what realistic expectations are for everyone.
These are all valid problems, but that doesn’t mean they should simply go unaddressed because they’re simply “too hard.” It might be as simple as being brave enough to initiate the conversation, as Grace noted, “the more we can have honest, open discussions about caregiving, what it looks like, how many people are impacted, it makes those conversations easier and easier."
The gender and equity lens you can’t ignore
Caregiving duties aren’t distributed equally, with women accounting for the majority of caregivers. “We already know about ‘the motherhood penalty’ that can lead to less pay and have compounding negative career impacts. This likely expands to caregivers, who might leave their careers to care for someone—but we don’t even have all the needed research on this.” The AARP’s Caregiving in the U.S. 2025 Research Report gives some idea: a quarter of caregivers take on debt to do so, and half report negative financial impact—with millions of hourly wage workers highlighting how disruptive it is to their job.
Often the people most affected by caregiving are the same people most vulnerable to dropping out of the workforce or being paid less. Supporting caregivers isn't just a culture play—it's an equity one.
Strides have been made, however. In reflecting on her career, Rachel explained that 20 years ago it would have been unthinkable to bring up these topics in the workplace, but now she sees men and women of younger generations engaging with these conversations differently.
One place to start: equal bonding leave for birthing and non-birthing parents. It's the choice Rachel made at Canary, with the reasoning that leave policy can help establish a more equal caregiving expectation at home.
💡See how caregiver leave stacks up against parental and medical leave at companies like yours.
Concrete steps you can take to better support caregivers (without going from 0 to 100)
1. Educate managers on policies and conversations
Angela urges companies to start with managers. Teach them not only how to open these conversations with tact and compassion, but also make sure they’re somewhat versed in the right steps to follow after it. “Don’t put them in a position where they’re improvising an answer to an employee’s leave off-the-cuff. Clear policies protect everyone.”
💡A caregiver leave policy is a good foundation.
2. Ask before you assume
Rachel brought up the time an HR leader surveyed their workforce about PTO and leave policies and was surprised to learn that hourly workers’ #1 concern wasn’t hourly flexibility, but to have access to some unpaid PTO. “Ask the question. You might be surprised by the answer,” she notes.
3. …If you do assume, assume the best
The throughline from Rachel’s career in People Ops often comes back to “when people feel trusted and respected, they don’t abuse the system. When they feel surveilled and suspected, they lose the sense that this is a community resource worth protecting. Angela agreed. “If you do have an abuser, there’s a solution and process for that. Don’t punish 99% of your workforce for that possible 1%.” This is a good philosophy not just for caregivers and leave policies, but your HR policies in general.
4. Set clear performance expectations
Rachel recommends always setting clear expectations for deadlines, workload balance, and performance. You can be understanding and realistic, while also drawing clear lines about where schedules and work are flexible or not, and up to what point. “That helps everybody know what’s expected, level set, and adapt to scale up or down.”
💡 Leaning into tools like Cocoon not only helps you have this conversation, but codify it and track schedules.
The culture you build is the culture you get
Caregiving policies aren’t just an HR issue—it’s a mirror for your organization. How you respond when an employee's parent is sick or their friend is in the hospital is a referendum on what your company actually values, not what it says it values.
As Rachel put it:
If you're generous with your people, they'll be generous back.”
Beyond what you do on a company level, there’s a bigger societal shift at play. More people across genders and generations are normalizing these conversations and mental health discussions in the workplace. There’s also legislation that’s slowly catching up (like California’s expansion of covered relationships to include cousins, aunts, and uncles; or caregivers receiving pay for the first time from Medicaid, the VA, or other state programs).
There are also more companies than ever building solutions to address these problems from different angles—Canary, Milk Stork, Maven, or Cleo. Leave and taking care of caregivers can no longer be an afterthought. Cocoon is proud to be part of this forward momentum. We’ve carefully crafted the caregiver experience in our platform since the beginning. We’re also proud to open up spaces to bring these topics to the forefront (like this webinar!), push for paid leave, and to help companies set guidelines and benchmarks so they don’t have to start from scratch.
The question isn't whether caregiving is happening at your company—it is. The question is whether your employees feel like they can tell you about it and know they’re supported.
Ready to build a caregiver leave program? Start with our free policy generator or see how other companies approach it in Cocoon.
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