Stream B: Healthy, Productive Work Partnership Grant

The aging population in Canada has resulted in more than 5.6 million employees, or 35% of the workforce simultaneously managing adult/elder care responsibilities.  Lack of workplace support can result in caregiver-employees leaving the workforce, taking early retirements, and/or missing work days – all of which reduce productivity and cause avoidable costs to employers. Recognizing that the aging demographic will affect all workplaces, it is incumbent upon workplaces to implement gender sensitive caregiver-friendly workplace practices, such as the implementation of the newly unveiled Canadian Standards Association Caregiver-Accommodating & Inclusive Workplace Standard.  In doing so, workplaces have the potential to enhance work-life balance, retention, autonomy and reduce health insurance costs.

In partnership with 12 academic researchers, 12 diverse, committed partners – representing academia (5), government (2), non-government/non-profit (4), private business/service providers (1), and labour (1), the scaling up of the Canadian Caregiver Inclusive and Accommodating Workplace (CIAW) Standard, which is a gender-sensitive, accessible guide for employers, human resource professionals, and a wide variety of workplaces. While facilitating the realization of strong partnerships, based on respect, communication and a common interest, the proposed program of research will scale up the Standard and the many associated tools to the international level, while conducting intervention testing and economic evaluation research in specific workplaces.  Simultaneously we will disseminate knowledge specific to the culture change needed in the workplace, while creating and mobilizing implementation tools for the Standard.  In so doing, we will not only best capture variation across workplace sectors, but also provide the evidence-based research for scale-up of the CFWP across the country and the globe via up-take by the International Standards Organization (ISO).

Led by a CIHR Institute for Gender and Health Chair in Gender, Work and Health, who is a sex/gender specialist, the scaling up of the CFW Standard involves six projects.  The first is the internationalization of the Standard, which aims to promote implementation of the CFW standard on a global platform. The second project will be the KM and KM evaluation of the Standard and associated tools through universal access points, such as the CSA Communities webportal. The third project is an educational campaign that involves reducing barriers and strengthening drivers for culture change in the workplace, specific to carer-employee issues. This leads into the fourth project, which involves a feasibility study better to understand implementation of the standard. Afterwards, an intervention study will be conducted using the CFW Standard as an intervention in a pre-post research design, where quality of life, work satisfaction, health outcomes and economic evaluation of the Standard will be carried out in various workplaces. The fifth project uses an intersectionality approach to capture differences in Standard uptake, as defined by various sectors, characterized by sex, gender, ethnicity, pay, employment status, etc. The final project encompasses assessment of Standard uptake and associated tools across indigenous populations.