Carers Rights Day is about raising awareness of the rights the UK’s 5.8 million unpaid carers are entitled to, and to help them get the recognition and support they deserve. To mark this year’s theme, ‘Recognising your Rights’, here are some reflections on how employers have been identifying and supporting carers in their workforce, and new research from Carers UK.  

Why does this matter?  The latest Census shows that nearly 3 million people in the UK are combining paid employment with unpaid caring. However, Carers UK’s polling research suggests that the numbers of working carers could be even higher: at least one in seven in any workplace.   

Yet caring is often still invisible in many workplaces, with carers ‘hidden in plain sight’.  

Without help or recognition in the workplace, many employees are at risk of giving up work, with earlier Carers UK research showing that on average, 600 people a day leave work to care if unsupported.  

And as our population lives longer with illness and disability, more and more workers will be caring. Already, the average person has a 50:50 chance of caring by age 50 – long before they reach retirement, with half of women caring by age 46. So, supporting carers in the workplace matters to employers as well as employees.  

There are clear business benefits for employers who address this issue (and risks for those who don’t). For example, Centrica, one of the founding members of Employers for Carers, has experienced estimated yearly savings of £1.8 million through reduced unplanned staff absences and a further £1.3 million per annum in retention savings, as highlighted in their business case. 

What can employers do?  

Experience from Employers for Carers shows that taking the following steps can help to address carers’ needs and support staff retention and resilience: 

• Make caring visible – be explicit and talk about caring, and carers, in the workplace. For example, use a simple and inclusive definition, like the one developed by EfC, to help raise awareness among managers and staff. 
• Talk about the support you offer – communicate openly to employees and managers about your workplace policies/provisions, and how they may be relevant to anyone who may be caring. For example, carers often value flexible leave and several EfC members have used the Carer’s Leave Act as an opportunity to promote or enhance their provisions for carers, as well as any other specific support on offer.  
• Use specific awareness raising opportunities – eg Carers Rights Day and Carers Week, and promote support for carers as part of wider activities like National Work Life Week, Mental Health Awareness Week or other inclusion/wellbeing events in your workplace.  
• Help carers to identify themselves – each year millions of people take on caring responsibilities whilst caring comes to an end for millions of others, so carers are a changing population in the workplace. Think about different ways of getting the right information to employees at the right time by using different channels to communicate support such as staff intranets, payslips, handbooks, bulletins and internal social media.  

What are good practice employers doing to support carers?  Here are some examples from within our membership:  

• Offering paid Carer’s Leave – and/or additional days unpaid. Evidence from employers shows this supports retention and recruitment, as well as staff wellbeing.  
• Including carers clearly within flexible working and other workplace policies – eg promoting flexible working arrangements for carers and offering them reasonable adjustments.  
• Encouraging employees to identify as carers - eg via staff surveys, self-declaration through a self-service HR system/online form, and introducing a workplace carer passport to facilitate employee-manager conversations.  
• Educating managers - including specific information about caring, and support for carers, within line manager training and resources.  
• Promoting health and wellbeing support to carers and signposting them to relevant sources of help for caring, eg organisations like Carers UK.  
• Connecting and engaging carers – offering peer support through a staff network/group and/or a ‘go to’ person with experience of caring who is happy to talk to others.  
• Championing support at all levels of the organisation, and especially through senior leaders talking about their caring experience and encouraging take-up of support. 

Good practice along these lines from EfC members has formed the basis of our employer benchmarking scheme Carer Confident which provides a practical framework for implementing support in the workplace. 

What next for carers in the workplace? 

Carers UK has welcomed the publication of the Employment Rights Bill and its provisions for workers and will be following further developments closely. It would also like to see a swift review looking at the benefits of paid Carer’s Leave as it believes these combined measures would make a significant difference to unpaid carers’ lives.  

In the meantime, new figures released by Carers UK and supported by EfC member TSB Bank for Carers Rights Day show that worry about the financial implications of taking time off work unpaid is the main barrier to unpaid carers accessing their rights under the Carer’s Leave Act.  

56% of working carers responding to the Carers UK State of Caring Survey 2024 said they can’t afford to take Carer’s Leave, highlighting the importance of paid leave provision. Carers UK is now asking the Government to build on the Act and lay the foundations for turning the existing statutory right to one week’s unpaid leave to paid Carer’s Leave through the passage of the Employment Rights Bill.  It is also calling on employers to implement the Carer’s Leave Act thoroughly within organisations, become carer-friendly and to go further by implementing paid Carer’s Leave. 

Other new Carers Rights Day research  published by Carers UK and the Centre for Care showed that unpaid carers in the UK are now providing care worth a staggering £184.3 billion a year. This huge increase – up by £64.9 billion since 2011 - is because families are providing more care than ever before, with a value equivalent to a second NHS. 

So, for many reasons, valuing and supporting carers has never been more needed. There’s a role for us all here in raising awareness and signposting carers to support. And whether we are carers, colleagues or managers, it’s never been a more important time to recognise the rights of carers!  

Katherine Wilson, Head of Employment and Specialist Delivery, Carers UK