If you're managing work responsibilities while also caring for an aging parent, a spouse with health challenges, or another adult family member, this message is for you: Your caregiving experience matters.

Your experience as a working caregiver matters – every challenge you face, every skill you've developed, and every moment you've balanced both roles with dedication.

Here are the top five things every working caregiver should know:

1. Your Personal Caregiving Skills Transfer Powerfully to Professional Success

While caregiving presents real challenges, it also cultivates incredible strengths that many people overlook.

Transferable workplace skills: Through caregiving, you've developed project management abilities, time management expertise, resource allocation skills, crisis management capabilities, and enhanced interpersonal communication. These skills directly benefit your workplace performance.

Enhanced empathy and perspective: Caregiving experiences translate to greater empathy with colleagues and clients. This emotional intelligence is particularly valuable in professional settings.

Resilience and adaptability: The ability to navigate competing demands and adapt to changing circumstances builds resilience that benefits both your caregiving and professional responsibilities.

Self-care becomes essential: Sustainable caregiving requires intentional self-care practices. Many caregivers find that work itself serves as an important form of respite, providing mental stimulation, social connection, and a sense of accomplishment separate from caregiving responsibilities. Along with other respite and self-care activities, work can help sustain the ability to provide quality care. Studies demonstrate that caregivers make great employees, developing skills in empathy, productivity, and problem-solving that benefit workplace culture and operations.

2. Your Challenges Are Real and Valid

Emma* knows the feeling. It's 2 PM on a Tuesday, and she's in an important meeting when her phone buzzes with a call from her dad's doctor. Her mind is torn between the presentation and wondering if everything is okay at home.

Marcus* carries the constant mental load – remembering his wife's medication schedules while preparing for work deadlines, coordinating care appointments around job responsibilities, and feeling exhausted from providing hands-on care after long work days.

These challenges are real. When surveys show that 67% of working caregivers say they have difficulty balancing their jobs with caregiving duties, that's not personal failure – that's how demanding it is to excel in both roles without proper support.

Whether someone is helping a grandparent navigate healthcare from across the country like Jennifer*, providing daily care for a spouse like David*, or managing the complex needs of someone with dementia like Lisa*, these struggles are valid. When caregivers feel they have to do this alone, they often experience incredible stress, heading toward burnout and even compassion fatigue.

*Names are fictional but reflective of the experiences of university caregivers.

3. You're Part of a Much Larger Community

You're part of a community of 53 million family caregivers in the United States. That's one in five workers who are managing both professional and caregiving responsibilities.

Despite bringing valuable skills to work, too many caregivers struggle in silence. Nearly 44% of employees never tell supervisors about their caregiving responsibilities. But caregivers benefit from support and understanding. The best workplaces understand that supporting caregivers isn't just the right thing to do – it's smart business. Organizations with strong caregiver support see better employee retention, less absenteeism, and higher productivity.

4. Help Is Available and Within Reach

Although caregivers often feel alone, they don't have to figure this out alone. Many caregivers face social isolation and loneliness, particularly when attempting to fulfill all caregiving responsibilities independently. Add the time constraints of juggling work and caregiving duties, and that feeling of overwhelm makes it incredibly hard to connect with the proper support, information, or services.

The reality is that every caregiving situation is unique, and information, support, and services need to be more streamlined to fit specific needs rather than offering generic advice that often doesn't apply.

• HR Resources:
  • Dependent Care support and consultations; Childcare Choice and Back Up care programs
  • Connections to leaves, benefits, and flexible work arrangements;
  • Access to ComPsych's Employee Assistance counseling, legal and financial navigation
• Community Resources: Connections to aging and caregiving services, advocacy and support, including help with navigation of healthcare systems, insurance, and support groups

5. Developing Your Caregiving Plan

One of the most powerful steps caregivers can take is developing a personalized caregiving plan. The caregiver's story provides perspective on a plan of care that outlines the many things the caregiver is already doing and the real difference they are making in both life and work. Often, caregivers don't fully recognize their own contributions until we map them out together.

Your caregiving plan might include information, services, and support at the university and the community, guidance for meaningful conversations with both family and professional contacts about care responsibilities, connections to respite services that fit your schedule, or information to navigate healthcare and insurance systems.

The Path Ahead 

Your caregiving experience matters, all of it. The late-night worries, the juggling of schedules, the difficult decisions, the moments of joy, and the skills developed along the way.

You are doing a good job. Many caregivers tell me they don't feel this way, that they think they're not doing enough, both at work and in their family caregiving roles. But here's the truth: because you are doing the best you can while balancing both roles, you are indeed doing a good job. The very fact that you're managing these competing demands with care and dedication means you're succeeding, even when it doesn't feel that way.

Your challenges are valid. Your skills are valuable. Your experience matters. And support is available to help you succeed.