Combining employment and care: a win-win situation?

Austrian researchers have devoted a study to the scarcely visible group of family caregivers who also hold a job. Their conclusion: if employers provide good support for reconciling the two things, having a job can help relieve the burden on family caregivers.

Culture and Society

October 28, 2024

Happy elderly woman in wheelchair with family sitting at table and drinking at home — While balancing a job and caregiving obligations can be challenging, a recent study shows that many caregivers want to continue working. Working outside the home has advantages and facilitates social contact, as long as employers offer flexibility. © unsplash+

Around 800,000 Austrians provide support and care for their elderly relatives who live at home. They help in handling modern technology, fetch shopping, drive them to medical appointments or help with personal hygiene. The majority of these caregivers do not have paid work – mostly because they themselves are already in retirement.

However, the number of people who provide support, care and nursing and also continue to hold a job is high, says Karl Krajic, a sociologist from the Working Life Research Center (FORBA): “We estimate that around 300,000 individuals in Austria are trying to provide support, care or downright nursing to their relatives while holding down a job at the same time. That's a considerable number.” Most of these people are older than 50, around three quarters of them are women. All of them have one thing in common: their daily lives are stressful. Depending on the intensity of care, they spend on average between five and twelve hours a week on care in addition to their job, household chores and, quite often, looking after their grandchildren as well.

In the context of the research project “Combining employment with informal care for the aged (COMBECA)”, Krajic and her colleagues explored how employers and those affected deal with the reconciliation of care and gainful employment.

The Austro-Swiss partner project COMBECA examines existing measures and activities of companies to reconcile employment and caring for relatives.

An Austrian-Swiss cooperation

Krajic is conducting this research project together with political scientist Ingrid Mairhuber and sociologists Viktoria Quehenberger and Charlotte Dötig (all from FORBA), and she is collaborating with researchers from the School of Social Work from the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland. The Swiss team focused on selected cantons, the Austrian team on the federal states of Vienna, Lower Austria, Styria and Vorarlberg. The two teams collaborated in the development of instruments and the coordination of the research design.

After analyzing the relevant literature, they interviewed experts from politics and administrations, as well as people who advise companies and those affected. “We were interested in whether there was awareness of the issue in their respective organizations and in how they assessed current employer practice from an external perspective.” explains Krajic.

Working family carers – invisible and strained

Thus, the researchers in the COMBECA project wanted to find out what significance social policy and social administration assigned to the issue of reconciling care and gainful employment. The result? “There is not a lot of awareness in these circles that a considerable proportion of those providing informal care is also in gainful employment,” says Krajic.

In a next step, the researchers identified five companies with a staff of between 80 and 2,000 people who were willing to take part in the study. One was from the manufacturing sector, the others from the social and healthcare services sector. They interviewed around 50 people from middle and senior management and team leaders. “The interviews soon made it clear to us that the companies have little information about just how many of their employees are affected,” explains Charlotte Dötig.

The researchers conducted focus group discussions and biographical interviews with working family caregivers and some of their colleagues. In addition, 500 staff members of the companies took part in an online survey – around a third of them were “family caregivers”. This is one result: around a quarter are directly involved in everyday care, such as the personal hygiene of their relatives. Three quarters help relatives with technical and practical issues, shopping and, above all, psychosocial support.

The strain is not always double as high

One result that might come as a surprise was that many of those affected want to stay in their job for as long as possible. “Caring for their relatives is a difficult topic that they do not readily talk about in the work place. That's why they are happy if solutions can be found that fit into the work context. Like that , they earn money, are covered by health insurance and contribute to their retirement pension,” says Charlotte Dötig.

The researchers also noted, however, that earning money is just one aspect among several. A job also brings with it social status, doing something that is interesting, opportunities to experience success and participate in professional and social networks. “There was one woman who said: ‘Work gives me normality. It's good for me. That's why I want to keep working’,” reports Dötig.

Currently, social policy considers family caregivers primarily as volunteer helpers, without whom the system would not work, says Krajic. For perspective one should know that around 70 percent of the roughly 500,000 Austrians who receive care benefits are primarily cared for at home by their relatives. “The focus is on supporting these people in their role as carers, with social insurance options, for instance, so that they can continue to provide care,” says the sociologist. “But these instruments have the disadvantage of encouraging people to leave the workforce – they don’t exactly contribute much to facilitating combining the two things.”

While social security when leaving employment is certainly in the interests of some family caregivers, many of the people the researchers spoke to do want to continue working. “If the work and care balance is well supported, employment can be an important resource,” says Krajic. He reports that there is a widespread expectation that caring and working doubles the strain on people. This is true if people are not at all or inadequately supported. This is the conclusion drawn from the interviews: if the job is compatible with the care tasks, it can also give the carers enormously important moments of reprieve from their demanding care work.

Flexibility as the greatest asset

This combination can only work, however, if there is communication on an equal footing and, above all, flexibility. After all, how much and what kind of support a person needing care may require varies from situation to situation. Care requirements can also change quickly, for example due to a fall or an acute illness. So how do the five organizations selected deal with this?

“We have seen that there are very few formal guidelines,” explains Krajic. The entire bandwidth of possible working time agreements is drawn upon and adapted to the individual situation. Established and tried-and-tested instruments come into play here: including flexitime or part-time work, special leave or overtime reduction. Working from home, at least temporarily, has also been an option in some cases. Where possible, companies and teams are also adapting tasks, work processes and human resource allocation to cope with a given situation.

The researchers emphasize that employers must manage to provide fair support for caregiving employees and their colleagues. Support from management and the HR department is important. “The line managers in the teams are crucial – because they have to organize the work processes,” explains Krajic.

Supporting family carers to remain gainfully employed can bring many benefits: for those affected, the companies, the labor market and, hence, the national economy. While elements of social policy support exist, hardly any of those surveyed opted for care leave or part-time care leave, for which there has been a legal entitlement since 2020. According to the interviewees, this is difficult to reconcile with the constantly changing care requirements. Karl Krajic sees a need for socio-political action here. It would be in the interest of many of those affected to have flexible models that are practicable in everyday life. According to the researchers, it is also necessary to expand the availability of professional nursing and care support. And much more public attention is needed: for working family carers and for the companies that enable them to combine work and caregiving.

Personal details

Karl Krajic holds a doctorate in sociology and teaches as adjunct professor at the University of Vienna and other universities. He conducted research at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institutes for Medical and Health Sociology and Health Promotion Research. At the Working Life Research Center (FORBA), Krajic’s research includes topics such as health promotion and quality development in care for the elderly.

Charlotte Dötig is a doctoral student in sociology at the Vienna Doctoral School of Social Science. She has been a research assistant at FORBA since 2016 and combines gainful employment with raising children. The Austro-Swiss partner project COMBECA was awarded EUR 350,997 in funding from the Austrian Research Fund FWF. The project will be finished in January 2025.