How good employers handle wellbeing for employees with caring responsibilities

How good employers handle wellbeing for employees with caring responsibilities

Around one in seven employees in the UK workforce currently has caring responsibilities. Yet as many as one in six carers have left work or reduced their hours to accommodate those responsibilities, even in organisations that can point to carers’ leave, an EAP and a flexible working policy. With 44% of working carers reporting that they find it difficult to combine paid employment and caring, this is not a marginal issue or a matter of “individual resilience”; it is a structural workforce and wellbeing risk.

The tension for HR is clear. On paper, support exists. In practice, many carers still step back from work, absorb significant stress or quietly burn out. The gap is rarely about the absence of another benefit. It is about how employers handle the reality that caring is unpredictable, uniquely experienced and only partially addressed by statutory tools such as the right to request flexible working. Increasingly, organisations are also recognising that reactive, hotline-based EAPs do little to change that lived experience. New-generation, behaviour-change-led support – including mental fitness platforms such as Leafyard – is shifting the focus from one-off interventions to sustained, everyday support.

What distinguishes “good” employers is less the volume of schemes they can list and more how they combine three disciplines in day-to-day practice: ongoing conversations, flexible design and clear legal guardrails.

When policies meet unpredictable lives: why standard offers don’t reach working carers

The starting point is to accept what the research makes explicit: taking on caring responsibilities is a stressful experience, and balancing work and care can be a real struggle. Caring responsibilities can be unpredictable, demanding and have a direct impact on the carer’s health and wellbeing. That unpredictability is precisely where many well-intentioned policies fall short.

Most employers now lean heavily on the statutory right to request flexible working as their primary mechanism for supporting carers. But that right is tightly defined: it covers a change to regular contractual terms. It can be extremely helpful where needs are routine – for example, a predictable change in hours or location – but the legislation does not cover working flexibly on a day-to-day basis. Employers may also lawfully refuse a request on specified business grounds. For carers whose demands fluctuate week by week, this creates a mismatch between the legal tool and the lived reality.

Something similar happens with generic wellbeing offers. A standard EAP or a library of passive content can be valuable in moments of acute strain, but it does not, on its own, help carers build sustainable habits that protect their mental fitness over time. That is why many organisations are now looking at habit-based, evidence-informed support – Leafyard among them – that employees can access anonymously and repeatedly as their circumstances change, rather than only when they reach crisis point.

The legal framework adds further nuance. Employees who are subjected to a detriment on the basis of their caring responsibilities may be protected under the Equality Act on the grounds of associative discrimination, if the person being cared for has a protected characteristic such as age or disability. At the same time, the requirement to make “reasonable adjustments” applies to the disabled person, not to that person’s carer. In other words, an employer can place a carer under significant strain, or allow subtle career penalties to accrue, without necessarily breaching the letter of the law.

A “policy plus process” mindset – focused on static arrangements, minimum legal compliance and signposting to a traditional EAP – therefore leaves a sizeable wellbeing gap. It does little for carers whose responsibilities are volatile, whose needs shift over time and whose risk lies as much in cumulative overload as in any single event. Good employers recognise that closing this gap requires more than adding another benefit; it requires changing how support is designed and delivered.

What ‘good employers’ actually do: conversations, flexible design and legal guardrails

A common instinct in HR is to treat all carers identically, on the assumption that uniformity equals fairness and legal safety. The research suggests the opposite. Everyone’s situation is unique; what works for one caregiver will not suit another. Good employers therefore move away from a one-size-fits-all approach and towards a disciplined, structured way of tailoring support within clear organisational and legal boundaries.

The first discipline is conversations. “No size fits all” is not a slogan here but a practical instruction: having wellbeing conversations that consider age, disability, religion or belief and other protected characteristics can play a key part in improving the lived experience of staff with caring responsibilities. That means equipping managers to ask about how caring interacts with other aspects of identity and circumstance, to revisit arrangements as situations evolve, and to normalise early, low-stakes discussion rather than waiting for a formal request or a crisis. Digital, behavioural-science-led tools such as Leafyard can reinforce these conversations by giving carers confidential, always-on support and structured prompts to reflect on what is and is not working for them.

The second discipline is flexible design. The right to request flexible working remains important, but it is a blunt instrument for managing day-to-day volatility. Good employers look at where they can design local flexibility into roles and teams: adjustments to hours, patterns or locations that can be varied within agreed parameters; clear protocols for short-notice changes; and manager discretion that is bounded but real. The aim is not to promise unlimited flexibility, but to move support closer to how caring actually unfolds, while staying within operational constraints. Platforms like Leafyard, with their focus on habit formation and microlearning, can help managers and carers alike experiment with small, sustainable changes rather than relying solely on formal contractual shifts.

The third discipline is legal guardrails. HR leaders need to ensure that managers understand the Equality Act lens: that carers may be protected via associative discrimination when the person cared for has a protected characteristic, and that reasonable adjustments are owed to the disabled person, not automatically to the carer. In practice, this means codifying expectations about avoiding detriment – for example, ensuring that carers are not consistently overlooked for development, promotion or desirable work on the assumption that they are “less available”. It also means monitoring patterns in performance ratings, pay and progression for employees with known caring responsibilities, and documenting the rationale for decisions where caring is a factor.

This is where data and insight matter. Organisations deploying modern, analytics-enabled EAPs such as Leafyard are starting to combine engagement metrics with HR data to understand where carers are using support, where they are still leaving or reducing hours, and how that correlates with local management practice. That kind of feedback loop allows HR to move beyond anecdote and to target training, policy refinement and communication where they will have most impact.

For HR directors, the practical next step is a focused review. Where are carers still exiting or cutting back despite existing schemes? How is the statutory flexible working regime being used – or not used – for employees with unpredictable caring demands? Are managers explicitly expected to hold personalised wellbeing conversations that take account of protected characteristics and potential associative discrimination, or is this left to individual discretion?

Guidance from bodies such as CIPD, Carers UK, NHS Employers and legal advisers can help stress-test whether conversations, flexible design and legal guardrails are genuinely aligned in your organisation. The employers that stand out are not those with the longest list of benefits, but those that treat caring as a dynamic, individual reality – and build everyday practices, supported by thoughtful tools like Leafyard, that protect carers’ wellbeing without losing sight of legal and operational constraints.