A report by Carers Week estimated that there are 10.6 million unpaid carers in the UK, and that 1 in 7 employees in the UK are providing unpaid care. Unpaid carers report significant stress and mental health challenges, uncertainty about practical support available to them, and difficulty having a life outside of caring.
However, recent changes to workplace rights have bolstered the protections and rights in place to help unpaid carers. For example, they are now entitled to a week’s unpaid leave each year and can submit flexible working requests from day 1 of their employment. This Law-Now explains what legal measures are currently in place to help and protect employees carrying out unpaid care work and considers what additional support proactive employers could offer carers within their workforce.
Existing rights
In the UK, employees with caring responsibilities have the benefit of a broad range of employment rights to help them balance work and caregiving duties. Key rights and protections include:
- Carer’s leave: employees have a right from day 1 of employment to take 1 week of unpaid carer’s leave every 12 months to provide or arrange care for a dependant with a long-term care need. Here, a 'week' means the number of days that employee normally works over a 7-day period. Unless the employer is happy to waive this requirement, employees need to give at least 3 days’ notice or twice as many days’ notice than they want to take as carer’s leave (whichever is longer). Employers cannot reject a request for carer’s leave, but if certain criteria are met, they may be able to postpone it.
- Parental leave: subject to meeting certain criteria, employees who have caring responsibilities for a child may be able take parental leave. Eligible employees can take 18 weeks’ unpaid parental leave (for each child), up to the child’s 18th birthday. As with carer’s leave, a 'week' here refers to the number of days that employee normally works over a 7-day period. Unless the employer offers a more flexible arrangement, employees cannot take more than four weeks' parental leave for any individual child in a year, and they must take parental leave in blocks of one week or whole weeks.
- Flexible working: all employees are entitled to submit two flexible working requests in any 12-month period. Requests could include changes to make it easier for an employee to tend to their caring responsibilities – for example, having more flexible working hours. An employer may only reject a flexible working request if there is a good business reason for doing so. The legislation includes eight business reasons (known as the statutory grounds) for refusing a request.
- Protection from discrimination: while being a carer is not itself a protected characteristic under the Equality Act, there are two ways carers could benefit from anti-discrimination protections. First, carers will be protected against associative discrimination – i.e. less favourable treatment which arises because of a person’s link to someone with a protected characteristic. So, if a carer suffers detrimental treatment because they look after a dependant who is elderly or disabled (for example, they are not given a promotion because of their caring responsibilities), that could constitute associative discrimination because of age or disability.
Second, they will be protected against indirect discrimination, which arises when an employer enforces a general rule, policy, or practice that applies to everyone but disproportionately disadvantages individuals with one or more protected characteristics. According to the 2023 report by Carers Week, women and people over 65 are more likely to bear the burden of unpaid care. So for example, if an employer requires all employees to attend meetings at 8am and refuses to make exceptions for employees with caring responsibilities, that could amount to indirect discrimination.
Where could we be heading and what else can employers do to support carers?
The Employment Rights Bill (ERB) contains measures aimed at strengthening the right to request flexible working. If these come into force in their current format, employers will be required to take the additional step of explaining why it was reasonable to reject the request by relying on one of the statutory grounds. However an employer can still refuse the request where there is a legitimate business reason and the eight statutory grounds for refusing a request are not changing. Although the ERB has been described as making flexible working arrangements “the default”, it seems likely that is overstating the position.
We may also be moving in the direction of paid carer’s leave, as the ‘Next Steps’ document the government has published to accompany the ERB says they will review the implementation of paid carer’s leave. However that reform is not likely to take place in the short term.
While the legislative landscape for carers is staying the same (for now), there are a host of reasons why employers might want to get ahead of the curve and offer broader support to carers in their organisation. These include:
- Retention: research by Carers UK shows that large numbers of employees give up their jobs every year because of caring. Employers who are equipped to support them with these issues reduce the risk of losing key personnel.
- Employee wellbeing: the demands of juggling care and work can have a significant impact on mental and physical health as employees face burnout and anxiety. Being able to support an employee by accommodating their needs should result in more engaged, productive staff who are less likely to be absent.
- Recruitment: given how prevalent caring responsibilities are among working age adults, offering flexibility and support to them could be highly attractive and helpful in recruiting top talent.
- D&I culture: understanding the needs of carers is about inclusion and belonging. An employer is saying to their employees who are carers: we understand this can be challenging for you, we value you and we want to support you. This is a powerful cultural message to share both internally and externally.
With that in mind, there are several steps proactive employers can implement with the aim of supporting working carers in their organisation. Most of these changes do not involve costly interventions. In a report by Carers UK the top three interventions for workers with caring responsibilities involved a supportive manager, flexible working and paid carers’ leave of between 5 to 10 days. As a result, we would recommend that employers consider the following measures:
- Understanding needs: care work is diverse, and caring responsibilities vary from case to case. For example, foster carers might have more clearly defined caregiving periods that align with the duration of foster placements. However, these placements can vary widely, from short-term emergency care lasting a few days to long-term arrangements that span several years, depending on the type of placement and the specific needs of the foster child. By contrast, kinship carers (who look after children if their parents are not able to) typically face more open-ended commitments, with responsibilities that can stretch over extended periods and follow less predictable trajectories as the needs of those they care for evolve over time.
Without understanding what caring responsibilities look like within an organisation, it will be difficult to provide effective and meaningful support to carers. Before putting measures in place, employers should therefore consider carrying out a census to understand the makeup and impact of caring responsibilities within their workforce.
- Raising awareness: according to a YouGov poll conducted for Carers Week, nearly three quarters of those who have provided or are providing care would not describe themselves as carers. A significant number of these unpaid carers may be unaware of the support, advice or information that could aid them with their caregiving role. With that in mind, employers could raise awareness around existing support, including by:
- Publicising relevant policies and moving away from a model that says ‘it’s here if you ask’ to ‘starting the conversation’ with current and prospective employees.
- Appointing a key contact or ‘champion’ in the workplace with whom carers can address any concerns and seek support.
- Having an internal carers network, group or forum to enable carers to meet, support each other, share information and useful resources, and raise awareness about caregiving.
- Reviewing existing policies and support measures: there are many workplace policies that could be relevant for carers, including D&I, flexible work, mental health, and leave policies. Employers can review these with an eye to specifically supporting carers, and consider implementing other non-mandatory measures of support, which could include:
- Supplementing existing statutory entitlements, for example, offering longer unpaid leave, paid leave, and/or flexibility at key times (such as during end of life care).
- Introducing a new working carers policy.
- Offering coverage for dependants on insurance/PMI policies – and possibly expanding the meaning of ‘dependants’ beyond only family members.
- Providing subsidised childcare and elder care, or access to vendors who can assist with caregiving needs.
- Allowing carers access to phones at work to facilitate easy contact with their dependants if the need arises.
- Reserving parking spaces closer to work to help reduce journey times for carers returning home to attend to dependants.
- Consider asking a question in your diversity data around caring responsibilities
The old adage “what gets measured gets managed” applies here. Employers are increasingly adding questions in their diversity data to ask about caring responsibilities. Having the relevant data can then inform the strategy for understanding the prevalence of caring in the workforce, and assist with understanding what benefits may be relevant and drive other changes.
Given the diversity and complexity of caregiving responsibilities, supportive employers should engage in ongoing dialogue with their working carers to develop policies and practices that align with their needs. This approach benefits both the carers and the organisation itself, by fostering a supportive environment that enhances employee wellbeing and strengthens recruitment and retention of talent.
The legal landscape may evolve in time to offer new protections and rights to carers, and in the meantime, employers should ensure that their policies and practices are compliant with current employment legislation. Should you have any questions about the rights and protections carers have, or if you are considering reviewing your organisation’s policies, please do not hesitate to reach out to your usual contact at the CMS Employment team.
This article was co-authored by Nicole Ho.
Social Media cookies collect information about you sharing information from our website via social media tools, or analytics to understand your browsing between social media tools or our Social Media campaigns and our own websites. We do this to optimise the mix of channels to provide you with our content. Details concerning the tools in use are in our Privacy Notice.