Bailey sits on the vendor's board of directors and in that capacity she went through a simulation of what employees experience from their first phone call through the interviewing process. Herman Miller also makes financial contributions to Evergreen Commons, a senior center minutes from the company. The center provides adult day care, a noon-time meal and courses for seniors. We don't want to become paternalistic. We want our employees to develop self-sufficiency.
Smaller companies offering elder care benefits tend to come from a progressive tradition.
They don't think they'll get enough return for it. Although cost issues remain among the most understudied aspects of elder care, The Washington Business Group on Health applied its knowledge of elder care to data from a manufacturer with 87,000 employees. The group estimated what the company was losing in productivity and increased health care costs as a result of employees providing hands-on elder care. Included in the analysis were costs for worker replacements, absenteeism, partial absenteeism, work day interruptions, crisis handling, supervising care givers, increased physician care and increased use of mental health and EAP services. Some experts predict that as adult children realize that Medicare is likely to change dramatically in the next few years, they will purchase long-term insurance or press employers to provide access to insurance for their parents.