For Family Caregivers of Patients with Alzheimer’s or other Dementia
This blog is based on my experience as a caretaker for my parent with dementia, and the ideas I share in the book, Thirty Essential Tips to Start Managing Alzheimer’s or Other Dementia, Your Parent, and Yourself. I hope you find it useful.
CAREGIVERS ON THE JOB–PART 2
PREVENTING CAREGIVER BURNOUT ON THE JOB
Part One of this article looked at ways to prevent caring for your parent from negatively impacting your ability to perform on your job. It focused on ways to fix your lack of time, support, expertise, and other things that might be tripping you up.
Part Two will now focus on your on-the-job relationship with your manager and coworkers. It discusses communication as a means to bridge any gaps in those associations that so concretely affect your ability to produce an income and provide for your family member. These suggestions will keep them in the loop and reassure them that the company’s needs and priorities are part of your own.
Part Three of this article plans to look at what you need to consider when your job just cannot be made right by either improving your own performance or your communications with those with whom you work. It helps you begin to consider some ways to make a work change while the rest of your life—your caregiving life—remains in flux.
In Part One of this series, you learned that to prevent or fix caregiver burnout on the job you needed to fix your lack of time, support, expertise, etc., all the things trapping you in your new caregiver role. These were the things solely under your own control. You took stock of your home life, noted the elements needing improvement, and independently took the necessary steps to change what you could and to handle better what couldn’t be changed. With your home life shored up, you now had both the time and the energy to refocus on your work life. You began reviewing your on the job performance and correcting any deficiencies you noticed. With this article, we will look at tending to the job performance issues that we think are caused by “them,” those others who inhabit our work lives.
Before you made your job performance changes, your behavior on the job might have made it difficult for your manager to help you to adjust your job situation to more comfortably fit your caregiver role. For example, if you desired a different work schedule or the opportunity to work remotely, he or she might not have felt confident in your abilities to contribute in those situations–feeling unsure whether you were capable of handling your assignments if you worked hours slightly different from the majority of employees or whether you could be relied upon to complete certain tasks remotely rather than onsite. Your coworkers may have had similar feelings. Now the situation has changed, however. By now, you no longer come in late to work; you no longer look unprepared or unfocused; and you no longer seem frazzled or fried due to your attempts to combine your job with your caregiver role. But has their behavior changed?
How Do You Make “Them” Change?
Communicate More, If the Reason Your Job Doesn’t Work is Ever “Them”
Since your job performance issues have been handled, your manager (and coworkers) should have few objections to the changes that you require to continue to be a contributing member of the company and handle your caregiver role at home. But is that the way it is? Probably not. What if despite your positive changes you still have problems getting your job to work with your caregiver life? What if, for example, you have problems taking time off to tend to your mom or dad, even though you’ve seldom requested extra leave or special consideration in the past and your job performance is better than ever? What if your co-workers bristle at your requests that they handle something while you’re away, even though you seldom ask for their help and always pitch in when needed?
If the problem is “them”—your manager and coworkers—the solution is communication. Why is communication an issue? Because your manager may not know any of this. Your manager may have no idea that you changed your job performance. It’s not time for your evaluation yet and he’s got lots of other people and situations on his plate. He or she may have no idea that you ever had responsibility to care for a progressively ill family member at home, and if he or she does know that, then he or she may not know what that really means in terms of the duties you must handle at home, the hours you must attend to that person, the organization of health care products and eldercare infrastructure from adult day care to meal services to senior transportation situations that require your daily attention. He may have no idea the amount of work you take home when you’ve taken time off to get your family member to a doctor’s appointment, or the number of days a week you come in early or stay late to make things work for the entire team. There is only one way to make your manager and coworkers know that, to make “them” change: communicate, communicate, communicate.
Communicate Your Job Performance Improvements—
Made to Meet Your Obligations and Better Support the Company
Think about all of the ways you need to communicate with them. As mentioned earlier, yes, you made those tough, job performance changes. But, did you ever really inform management of the reasons behind your original job performance issues? Do they understand what Alzheimer’s or other Dementia care means? Did you help them to understand it, with enough, but not too much, detail? Did you let them know what you’ve been doing to balance your life and get their job done all along? Did you alert management to the great effort you exerted to fix issues at home so that they will have as little impact on your job as possible? That’s communication.
Did you also emphasize that you did this—that you made all these efforts—independently before they prompted you, before any complaints got back to you, before a less-than stellar evaluation pushed you? That’s communication too, and it’s communication that not only informs them, but communication that can improve your job now, help you mold it in a way that works for your new caregiver role, and help protect your work life in the future.
A lack of communication is the crux of many job performance problems—because you may know that you’ve changed (and worked hard and long to do it), but they may not. They are busy. They may not care one way or another. They may think it’s a typical day in April and you may have leapt over five giant obstacles just to be sitting there in your chair, prepared to do your job. Only you can make them know, see, and appreciate that fact.
Communicate Assignment Status, Details, and Instructions—
to Ensure the Work Team Can Handle the Work in Your Absence
They Need Accurate Information to Perform Their Jobs
You need to know that your supervisor is not the only one who depends on you and thus needs information from you. Your coworkers need it too. You and your coworkers have interdependent responsibilities. They probably would love to be able to achieve everything they want alone, without relying on another person, but that’s not the way companies (or most organizations) operate. They need you. They need you because they may have to take care of tasks on the job possibly for hours or days when you’re not around. They need you because their job responsibilities will often be dependent on your own. Whether they like it or not—and whether you like it or not—their next evaluation may hinge on how well you performed your portion of a team project, whether you stayed late and put the finishing touches on a report, whether you were meticulous about handling a customer’s complaint. Your coworkers are striving toward the same company goals as you are. In addition, they may be working hard toward promotions, reaching a particular income or service level before retirement, or other professional goals. They need you to help them get there.
They Need to Know How and When to Handle Interdependent Projects
If you’ve ever had a work assignment that was due, contacted your co-worker whose portion of the assignment was instrumental to completion of your own work and found that he or she was out for the next two weeks, then you know that you depend on your coworkers and they on you.
Just as you sometimes get left in the lurch, your employer can experience the same thing. Sometimes, it’s because someone needs to handle a last-minute caregiving situation (child or parent). For example, when school or adult day care are cancelled for snow and work is not. These are minor glitches in the work machine and can usually be navigated with a minimum of work interruption. When the unexpected absence, however, is actually an ongoing homecare situation, such as with a parent with Alzheimer’s or other Dementia, who has just started to show more advanced symptoms, the effects on work requirements can become more serious. This situation needs to be handled by proper decisions at home for the parent and by appropriate communication at work with management.
Communicate Your Plans for Caregiving Leave or Schedule Changes—
to Ensure the Work Team Can Plan and Achieve Its Goals
Realize what your manager and coworkers are up against. If your performance is integral to the achievement of company goals, it’s because of the interdependent nature of work. What they do affects you, and what you do affects them—whether or not you would prefer to see yourself as simply an individual contributor. These team members need to know what you’re doing and when, so that they know what they need to do and when, as far as it comes to meeting company goals, winning clients, achieving sales quotas, or whatever your team’s goal is. It’s as though they can’t know how to arrange the players on the field and win if they don’t even know who’ll be there for the game. You must communicate that you’ll be there for the game.
They need to be able to cover requests from other departments and other managers, who are dependent on the products of your efforts—whether they are written reports and documents, mechanical objects, or service quotas. They need to cover obligations to customers, who are expecting timely, efficient, and agreed upon pick-ups, service calls, or product delivery. They also need to be able to cover the needs of other staffers, like your coworkers, who must coordinate their own lives and their own family obligations by fitting into the general schedule and work scheme. If your manager cannot rely upon you, in the scheme of things, he or she loses business and you might lose your job. According to the United States Department of Labor’s publication, Need Time? The Employees Guide to the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), when adapting your job schedule to your caregiving life—taking Family and Medical Leave or making another arrangement—communication between workers and their managers is key[1]. In other words, how do you ensure that your manager or supervisor has the information he or she needs to continue to function in top form in your absences? You communicate.
Communicate Your Whereabouts—
In a Pinch or In an Emergency, They Need to Know Where You Are
Approach your employer correctly with an appropriate amount of personal detail and a plan for work during this time period. Make sure that the changes you include in your plan will not only put out any brush fires burning but prevent any additional ones from starting. Reinforce your commitment to your job and your desire to contribute—as well as care for your family member. Then, communicate who, what, when, where, why, and how, to make sure your manager stays informed (and feels your presence even when you absent):
- Who (which coworker) will be available to handle critical tasks or assignments in your absence (if that is appropriate for the kind of work you do and your job situation)
- What the critical tasks or assignments are, as well as the status of any on-going projects
- When you will be there (and make sure to be thre)
(Sometimes there are emergencies at work. These days especially, they need to be able to account for you. They need to know whether you were in the building and/or that you are somewhere safe. You do not want a fireman checking again for you in a building because no one knows whether you were there or not. Or your sister might call your job from five states away with a family emergency. People need to know when to expect you and where to expect you.) - Where you will be (as appropriate) when you are not there
- How (phone number, alternate phone number, and e-mail) you can be reached and an alternative means to reach you, if possible
Your manager needs to know when you’ll be there, whether you have planned for someone else to handle critical (in time or in execution) tasks and assignments, and how you can be reached if necessary, while you’re away. Make sure they don’t have to run after you for this information.
Okay, you learned that you owe your company your good job performance. Now you have also seen that you also owe them the information they need to schedule work, manage other staff’s expectations, and fulfill company goals and obligations. What else do you need to know?
Communicate Your Intention to Continue Working for the Company—
to Spread Facts and Avoid Water-Cooler Gossip in Your Absence
You Need Accurate Information Circulated to Preserve Your Job and Professional Standing
You also need to know that there are some things that you need on the job that will effect both you and them. One of those things is water-cooler talk or gossip. You need to know that it happens in the best of work places and that it is crucial that you control your information and have accurate information circulated about you to preserve your job. Your manager and coworkers also need accurate information circulated about you, so that they can continue to see you as a professional colleague, have respect for your efforts, and be able to work effectively with you to achieve company goals. None of that happens when gossips rules. People will always think that they are above gossip. Yet people cannot control what starts boring a hole into their brains after it is allowed to enter their ears; and usually, the person that gets there first with the story wins. Why am I telling you what everyone inherently already knows about work? Because these are the very easily forgotten things that are going to trip you up.
People will probably casually ask where you are when they see your empty chair, or when you’ll be back, or even what’s going on with her or him. They need to get those answers from you, not from company water-cooler talk, so that they can pass on accurate information to the other employees. You need them to have it so that they can work for you by downplaying the inevitable water-cooler talk that any change at work tends to create. Your coworkers are striving toward the same company goals as you are. In addition, they may be working hard toward promotions, reaching a particular income or service level before retirement, and other professional goals. Most of the time this kind of talk is benign, just a way to pass the time while double-checking rows on your Excel spreadsheet, but sometimes it can become more serious. The work grape vine will put information out there about you that is inaccurate, information that can destroy the good work name your job performance created. Though it’s not always a vicious thing, it’s usually a bad thing, for you. People that work together are often curious about each other. And we all know people whose imaginations are always one step ahead of their sense of propriety. So, protect yourself here too. You may not be able to control it, and it’s difficult to fix once something is out there, but you can try to influence it from the beginning.
For starters, don’t be too discrete about your situation at home and your plans to alter your work slightly. Let everyone know your situation. For example, you can use either brief work team e-mail, if appropriate. Do not rely on water cooler chat to deliver accurate information. Make sure that rumors don’t get spread, while you’re focusing on being polite. Let’s say, for instance, that you have arranged with your supervisor to make daily or weekly visits to your parent or to get home early to relieve another caretaker. The two of you discussed it and agreed that you could come in an hour early and leave an hour early in order to accommodate the long drive to and from the facility and the need to spend some quality time with your parent within the facility’s established visiting hours, or to get home to relieve your wife who has a class or a caretaker who needs to catch the bus. It doesn’t take much for your true actions to become obscured. Next thing you know, you’re hearing gossip that you’re skipping out on work, or having an affair, or worse. Maybe one of your coworkers isn’t a fan and uses your absence to sow dissention, and people become more difficult to work with when you are in the office. Give no one a chance to ruin your career for you, alert everyone.
When you communicate with your coworkers and other managers, do it all at once and do it openly. In person and in writing is best. If possible, that means say something brief during the announcements portion of an appropriate staff meeting—which means make sure that all of the people with whom you currently interact are present. That also means that you should follow-up with an e-mail to capture those individuals who were absent for your announcement.
If after your efforts to communicate someone still goes ahead and spreads rumors, then you know that this is not someone you can trust in any area of your life. Alert your Human Resources Office right away, but don’t count on them. They work for the company, not you. Rely on your own resources. Contact an employment lawyer for advice on how to proceed and be prepared if necessary to engage this lawyer to protect your rights. Remember, it is better to get out in front of any situation than to let it escalate by wasting time hoping it will improve on its own. It usually won’t.
One last word on managers. If you have what you (and possibly others) would describe as a “less than ideal manager”—however you envision a “less than ideal”—then take my words with an appropriate grain of salt. In other words, do what you need to do within the bounds of employment law to take care of keeping your job and helping your parent. Some of the suggestions made here might not be well-received in such an atmosphere. Be aware of that and be careful of that.
Conclusion
You need your job and your work reputation for the financial stability to care for your parent while he or she is still here. You also need your job and reputation in good repair to care for yourself throughout the remainder of your career and life. You cannot allow other people to purposely or mistakenly jeopardize your job and the income it provides for you and your family. Take care of yourself. Inform those you work for and with by communicating when you need to do so, and even better before you need to do so. They will thank you and your ease on the job will be your payoff now and in the future.
For More Information
For more suggestions, visit the Alzheimer’s Association (Alz.org) online. Its Alzheimer’s and Dementia Caregiver Center has information and articles there that will help you realize just how normal it is to have problems combining work and taking care of a parent with Alzheimer’s or other Dementia. Not only that, but it will connect you to resources you may not see elsewhere. Also, consider reading my book, Thirty Essential Tips to Start Managing Alzheimer’s or Other Dementia, Your Parent, or Yourself. As noted above, it has additional suggestions on ways to start managing your life rather than being managed by your caretaker role.
References
United States Department of Labor (dol.gov). Need Time? The Employees Guide to the Family and Medical Leave Act. https://www.dol.gov/ fmla/employeeguide.pdf (accessed on February 21, 2018).
