Workers giving care to elderly relatives report being more attentive to their work after their employers adopted a geriatric-care management program as an employee benefit, a study suggests.
The study was sponsored by LifeCare Inc., Shelton, Conn., which provides elder care services as an employee benefit.
LifeCare conducted an 18-month study of what it calls "presenteeism"–which it defines as "being focused and on-task while at work."
The study measured presenteeism levels of employees at a large healthcare company who care for aging loved ones. It looked at the extent to which the employees reported needing to make changes to their normal work schedules, their perceived levels of caregiving burden, their views about their own health and their attitudes toward the support their employers provided.
Employees in the study fell into 3 basic categories:
Users of a resource-and-referral program;
