Paurvi Bhatt, MPH, Healthcare Executive and Care Economy Leader: Retaining Employees By Supporting Their Role in Caring for Others

“It’s hard to bring what happens in the living room and the dining room into the boardroom,” says Paurvi Bhatt, board director of the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers and corporate executive. “I don’t think we can do that anymore.” Put another way, most of us are providing care to a loved one, and being open about that with colleagues, she thinks, can create a culture of understanding that will increase employee wellbeing. In fact, she believes that trend has already begun. “Leaders at all levels are starting to be much more vocal and vulnerable in sharing what’s happening with them. There isn’t a feeling that the only way to succeed is by hiding that these parts of your life exist,” she tells Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan. In addition, companies have access to new employee benefit options designed to relieve some of the administrative burden of caregiving. “A beautiful set of things are coming up for employers to take a look at. It’s a reimagining of what benefits can look like.” Despite this progress, daunting challenges remain to make caring for loved ones at home viable, which Bhatt analyzes with the keen eye of someone who built a career as a global health leader despite heavy family caregiving responsibilities of her own. Tune in for a wisdom drop on how to rebrand the role of caregivers, reinvigorate the home care workforce, provide ethnically adapted care and get the home truly ready for home care.

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Dr. Angela Jackson, Founder of Future Forward Strategies: Reimagining Employee Benefits for a More Equitable Future of Work

“One of the trends that we’ll see in 2023 is a reimagining of benefits. You’ll see more employers thinking about how they can meet an employee where they are so they feel valued,” says Dr. Angela Jackson, who is the embodiment of a future-focused leader in workforce development.
Employers would also be wise to understand the lived realities of employees in order to address what Jackson has dubbed the “social determinants of work” such as childcare and transportation. As founder of the labor market intelligence firm Future Forward Strategies, Jackson is plugged-in to shifting worker demands that are shaped by COVID’s influence on how people perceive work-life balance, and fueled by the upper hand a tight labor market is giving them. As she explains to Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan, for employers to succeed they need to be tuned into these new expectations. “During the pandemic, we saw more and more workers really enjoy having control over their time, even if they made the same amount or a little less. People are also looking for purpose.” Don’t miss this deeply informed look at what other trends will shape the labor market in 2023 including ‘talent as a service,’ women re-entering the workforce, VR-fueled innovations in training and other changes that may usher in a more equitable future of work.

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Robert Espinoza, Executive Vice President of Policy at PHI: The Direct Care Crisis Hits Home

Every day, nearly five million direct care workers support older adults and people with disabilities across the United States, and the critical need for this workforce is only increasing as the proportion of people over sixty-five continues to grow dramatically. Given an existing shortage of workers and a high turnover rate in the profession due to low pay, lack of training and poor management, the chances of meeting that need are low. Add in the unaffordability of these services and the difficulty many loved ones have navigating the system and it is a deeply troubling picture, according to our WorkforceRx guest Robert Espinoza, executive vice president for policy at PHI. “All of these barriers compound and create a system where it’s going quickly, I think, from crisis to catastrophe,” he tells Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan. But while the problems are many, so are the potential solutions. Espinoza sees particular promise in several state and local initiatives including wage pass-through laws to boost worker pay, stronger training requirements and tapping into the undocumented immigrant population, which he sees as a major part of the answer. Be sure to listen to the end to learn about an innovative training program in San Francisco on which Futuro Health and PHI are collaborating, and Espinoza’s ideas for leveraging the relationship between family caregivers and direct care workers.

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