Broadcast Retirement Network’s Jeffrey Snyder discusses the key attributes of caregivers that employers are looking for with Rutgers Business School’s Lisa Kaplowitz.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Well, joining me now is Lisa Kaplowitz from the Rutgers School of Business. Lisa, so great to see you. Thanks for joining us this morning.
Lisa Kaplowitz, Rutgers School of Business
Thanks for having me.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, I’m so excited to tap into your knowledge and the research that you and your team have been conducting around caregiving. Let me start with a basic theoretical or comment, and then I get you to react to it. Aren’t we all, you, I, our children, if we have them, aren’t we all gonna be caregivers or receive caregiving at some point in our life?
Lisa Kaplowitz, Rutgers School of Business
Yeah, exactly. So all of us are probably gonna receive caregiving at some point in our life. And in fact, studies have shown that over 73% of employees are caregivers, and they could be caring for children, they could be caring for elderly, like their parents, or sick or disabled relatives.
So we’re all gonna be part of this caregiving ecosystem at some point in our lives, either on the receiving end or the giving end.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, so everyone, whether you’re young, mature, a senior, a Gen Z-er, people should probably listen up. Let me ask you, cause you’ve done a lot of research on this. How has caregiving, the impact of caregiving, how has that impacted our current workforce and the economy?
I would posit to you that it’s been very impactful and continues to be.
Lisa Kaplowitz, Rutgers School of Business
Absolutely. I mean, one of the biggest challenges in the economy is that it’s not measured, it’s not captured. The unpaid labor at home is not part of our GDP.
And I have colleagues that are studying that, measuring that, and trying to incorporate into that analysis because that’s really a determinant of how strong and how big our economy is. At the same time, since most of us are caregivers, that strain that we feel, that those tasks that we have to do doesn’t shut off during the workday, just like a lot of times work has become greedier and greedier and it doesn’t shut off at night. So it’s bleeding through all of that.
And it’s not an individual issue, it’s really becoming a systematic challenge and opportunity for the entire ecosystem to solve together. Workplaces, people, governments, NGOs, we all need to work together to figure out how to make work and life work together.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
And when you look at specific industries, you look across the economy and you mentioned NGOs, government, are there areas that maybe are more strained or industries that are more strained than others when it comes to having caregivers in the workforce?
Lisa Kaplowitz, Rutgers School of Business
You know, I actually have not done specific research on the industries. It’s something we are in the process of commencing right now and looking in particular, which industries have more caregiving employees in those industries and what is the gender breakdown of those industries? So if you give me a couple of months, I’ll be able to come back to you with some hard stats.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Absolutely, and you have an open invitation to come back and we’ll pick up the conversation because this is not something that goes away tomorrow. You could, you know, I think people like yourself and people in the caregiving industry and the long-term care industry will be continuing to do these types of deep dives and to understand how it impacts the economy. Let me ask you about the strains.
Employees that are also caregivers, they, you were talking about it, they can’t turn off the work at night, but then they have to go care for a loved one, a senior, a child, all of the above. I mean, so it puts a lot of strain on these individuals.
Lisa Kaplowitz, Rutgers School of Business
So we did some research in the summer of 2025 and what we found was that caregiving strain was the leading cause of burnout and likelihood to exit the workforce. So what we ended up finding was that, yes, more women are caregivers than men typically, but those who reported that they had strain, that they had responsibilities, that this was impacting them personally and their lives was not gendered. So folks that had caregiving strain, taking care of loved ones, were just as likely to burnout and leave the workforce, which isn’t surprising.
And what’s so interesting is some other research we did that we just published as well, found that the skills that caregivers get, so we did two studies. We did one in 2023 that we published in Harvard Business Review. And what we found through lived experience of caregivers was that there are 18 skills that caregivers develop that we categorized into three categories, humanity, productivity, and cognitivity.
So think humanity, empathy, emotional intelligence, collaboration. This is what increases retention and engagement at work. Productivity, I’m a finance professor and I spent my entire year in finance, so I’m all about productivity.
Efficiency, persistency, patience. This is what increases the bottom line and the profitability of your company. And then the last one we coined a term, this was Kate Mangino and I, one of my colleagues, called cognitivity.
This is prioritization, anticipating needs before they happen, multitasking, project management. This is the glue work that really defines the culture. And so that was a study we did in 2023.
We carried that forward. We did another study last year that was just published in MIT this month. And what we did was we matched these 18 skills and brought in my colleague, Crystal Duarte, into this as well.
We matched these 18 skills against the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics is the employer perspective. And these skills had a 77% overlap on the competencies that employers are looking for today.
When we looked at the managerial level and we looked at the top competencies, there was 100% overlap. We took that one step further. We looked at what the World Economic Forum was saying.
And the World Economic Forum said, these are the skills that AI is least likely to replace. So if you think about these caregiving employees that you have, that are the ones feeling the strain, that are more likely to burn out and exit, these are your best employees and these are your current and future leaders in your organization. So you need to protect them.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, sorry to interrupt you. I didn’t mean to jump on you. In terms of, so it sounds like caregivers are great employees.
What can employers do, A, to provide benefits, to help support caregivers? Obviously, we can all do things better. This is kind of a new area for many employers.
They’re really taking the gloves off, so to speak, and trying to improve the retention, as you said. So what can they do better? What type of benefits could they offer to keep caregivers supported, but also retained?
Lisa Kaplowitz, Rutgers School of Business
Yeah, so I think a lot of companies have these policies. Flexible work. Flexible work meaning in the office versus remote hybrid schedules.
Flexible work meaning times of day that you are doing the work. Parental leave, family leave. The biggest challenge that I think companies have is not establishing the policies, it’s making it culturally acceptable for everyone to practice the policies that actually exist.
Because if men practice the same policies and take advantage and they’re not stigmatized, oftentimes even more than women to take advantage of these policies, then all of a sudden it’s not gendered. And it just becomes part of life and everyone can plan and account for people having more flexibility and really think about the work that needs to be done physically together. And there is some that needs to be done physically together.
Studies have shown that the younger generation is not getting up the learning curve nearly as quickly in a remote environment all the time. But we don’t have to be together all the time. There’s heads down work and then there’s collaborative work that we need to do.
So I think it’s really taking advantage of the policies that already exist and making it culturally acceptable for everyone in the organization to practice and to role model it. So again, as we built the Center for Women in Business, the research center I run at Rutgers, we were hyper-intentional from the beginning to really create a workplace that works for women, which means it’s gonna work for everyone as well. And to not stigmatize men in the process of doing this work, to include them, to expand the role of what is acceptable and desired by them.
And if you look generationally, we have five generations in the workforce right now. And Gen Z and soon to be Gen Alpha in the workplace, which will give us another one, has a very different view of work and life than X or boomers do, or even the silent generation. And so we’ve got to really talk together, to come together to find workplaces that work for all of us.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, really well said. Excellent research, Lisa. Look, we look forward to having you back and we can continue to have this conversation.
Because as I said at the outset, this is not something that’s gonna be solved. Maybe it won’t be solved ever, but we’ll constantly be refining and improving things. Thanks for joining us.
And we look forward to having you back again very soon.
Lisa Kaplowitz, Rutgers School of Business
Thanks so much. Happy to be here.