Stream B: Healthy, Productive Work Partnership Grant

In Canada, more than 5.6 million people are balancing unpaid care with paid employment, known as Carer-employees. This means 35% of the workforce are simultaneously managing unpaid care for older adults, as well as those aged 18+ with mental of physical disabilities, long or short term. 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 CSA B701:17 (R2021) Carer-inclusive and accommodating organizations Standard.  In doing so, workplaces have the potential to enhance work-life balance, retention, autonomy and reduce health insurance costs.

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 17 diverse 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 sixth project encompasses assessment of Standard uptake and associated tools across indigenous populations.

Originally designed for six projects, the Partnership Grant has expanded across 11 additional projects. The seventh project works to identify the dissemination targets/audiences specific to French-speaking Canada. The eighth project aims to understand the experiences of LGBTQI2S carer-employees (CEs) and how their LGBTQI2S identity impacts their comfort in accessing workplace accommodations. The ninth project uses the Canadian Longitudinal Survey on Aging (CLSA) to close the gaps of research around carer-employees. Project 10 uses data from the Statistics Canada General Social Survey (GSS) and the Canadian Social Survey (CSS) to examine the health of carer-employees. Project 11 uses the Carer Well-Being Index to conduct a 12-country comparison of CFW supports across the globe. Project 12 examined the impacts of Double-Duty Caregiving (DDC) for those employed in the healthcare sector and providing unpaid care. Project 13 aims to examine carer-friendly organizational dynamics and support services for care-employees in Canada. Project 14 aims to examine the Caregiver Tax Credit uptake in Canada and its impact on carer-employees. Project 15 works towards developing a set of core competencies for HR Professionals in supporting and accommodating carer-employees. Project 16 aims to examine the intersection of work-life balance, employee health, and eldercare using various national Canadian datasets from the Conference Board of Canada and the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging. Project 17 works towards evaluating the uptake of the CSA B701:17 (R2021) Carer-inclusive and accommodating organizations Standard.