Why you should care about Carers

This week is Carers Awareness Week, which will run until the 18^th June, 2017. The annual campaign aims to raise awareness of caring and highlight the challenges carers face as well as the contributions they make to their families and communities throughout the UK.

The focus of this year’s campaign is Building Carer Friendly Communities. Building a community in which carers feel supported and recognised for their hard work is integral to making them feel included and nurtured within a community. This is important for their mental health and ability to deliver a high level of care to their loved ones.

As Employers, you can help raise awareness of carers’ needs and support them in the workplace to create more Carer Friendly Communities. Nearly half of carers work alongside caring for their loved ones, they therefore rely on good quality, flexible health and care services. But they also need to have a supportive employer who is willing to offer flexible working arrangements and the option for creating communities, such as Staff Network Groups.

Here are some simple steps that you can take to lessen feelings of seclusion and make sure that carers are able to balance work with their caring responsibilities:

• Introduce and promote flexible working policies
• Introduce paid care leave so that carers are not forced to take annual leave for caring emergencies
• Set up or encourage staff to set up a carers’ staff network group
• Invest in an employee assistance programme
• Ensure that there is regular communication to employees informing them of their rights, including their right to flexible working and take emergency time off to care for dependents when they need it
• Around 1 in 9 of your employees will also be carers. Use Carers Week to make sure they are aware of the support available in the workplace and externally, as well as promote all of your policies through Vercida all year round
• Ask your Human Resources department to highlight the kind of support people can get through flexible working.
• When you are recruiting, be aware that candidates may have gained valuable skills as carers such as managing direct payments, and complex scheduling such as co-ordinating a range of professionals.
• Provide training for managers so that they can offer effective support to carers

Vercida connects job seekers and employees with employers via their diversity and inclusion policies that show just why they’re the best place to work. We highlight all of an employer’s fantastic work to support and develop their workforce, making them an employer of choice for all potential candidates.

We do this by creating an employer profile, which features a brief overview of the company, as well as a list of all of the “Inclusive Features” that they provide. This can range from Flexible Working initiatives to aid new parents as well as those who have caring responsibilities; to Staff Network and Resourcing Groups. This is an area in which you can showcase your diversity and how you are supporting Carers in the workplace. Both Bank of England and Leeds Beckett University have dedicated pages on their profile, which detail the work they are doing to support carers’ needs.

Vercida also displays relevant information to the job seeker based on their profile, so we would be able to highlight the work you are doing for carers to those who care about it. This takes the form of Inclusive Features as well as articles, which are written exclusively by our team to highlight the importance of supporting carers for your company.

Vercida stands for Values, Equality, Respect, Culture, Inclusion, Diversity and Accessibility and provides an accessible platform for job seekers to discover your culture and stance on integral workplace values, such as carers rights and the support available to them.f

Vercida works with over one hundred clients who are committed to creating an inclusive work environment. If you are an employer and interested in working with Vercida to promote your diversity and inclusion initiatives and attract the best candidates, please call 02037405973 or email [email protected] for more information.

We are also officially recommended by Disability Confident as a step on achieving Employer status, please click here for more information.