raytheon missile systems responds to the needs of extreme caregivers in the workplace

JOURNAL OF ORGANIZATIONAL EXCELLENCE / Summer 2006Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/joe.20101© 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

RAYTHEON MISSILE SYSTEMSRESPONDS TO THE NEEDS OF EXTREMECAREGIVERS IN THE WORKPLACE

EMPLOYEE ASSISTANCE

Extreme caregiving—for example, caring for a special needs child or a seri-ously ill spouse, partner, or elderly parent—is a daily reality for many employ-ees, extracting a high toll on their well-being and productivity, and a growingprospect among the aging U.S. workforce. One employer has effectively lever-aged existing benefits and worklife programs—and created some innovative so-lutions—to meet the greatest needs of the extreme caregivers in its workforce.© 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Anne Palmer

Anne Palmer is the manager of the award-winning WorkLife & Wellness program at Raytheon Missile Systems in Tucson, Arizona. She has 16years of experience in the worklife field.

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Rob Jessup, the head of a busy IT organization,was a key player in his company’s success, but

his career wasn’t Rob’s only responsibility.1 As thefather of two teens approaching their college years,he was also the primary caregiver for his wife, whohad struggled three years with metastatic breastcancer. One particular night, Rob lost his composureduring a seemingly trivial argument with his sonand left the house angry, determined to crash hiscar. His intent was not to kill himself, nor to involveanyone else in the accident, but to sustain enoughinjury to himself to require hospitalization for abouta month—enough time, he thought, to recover fromthe exhaustion and responsibility of trying to keepeverything together at home and at work.

Irrational thinking? Of course. Like so manyothers who are attempting to balance today’s rap-

idly increasing workloads with extraordinary care-giving responsibilities at home, Rob suffered fromdepression, feelings of hopelessness, and an in-ability to gain control of an all-consuming vortexof needs. Such feelings, if not addressed, can man-ifest in sleeplessness, accidents that cause injury,forgetfulness, poor judgment, illness, and evenleaving or losing a job.

Rob’s situation is an example of “extreme care-giving,” which is not uncommon in the UnitedStates and presents a host of challenges that dif-fer from “normal” caregiving. Normal caregivingthat we provide to loved ones—e.g., rearing chil-dren to adulthood, caring for a parent who is re-covering from a surgical procedure and will re-turn soon to normal independence—tends to bepredictable, not overly stressful for an inordinate

JOURNAL OF ORGANIZATIONAL EXCELLENCE / Summer 2006 DOI: 10.1002/joe

62 Anne Palmer

amount of time, and to diminish over time. Stress-ful periods do occur but do not last and are re-solved without a host of supportive resources, ap-pointments, court dates, or other atypicaloccurrences. While most employees have normalcaregiving responsibilities throughout much oftheir lives and careers, an increasing number arealso experiencing extreme caregiving—for amonth, a year, or even many years. Every com-pany, in small towns and in big cities, has em-ployees for whom extreme caregiving is a part ofthe fabric of their lives.

A COMMITMENT TO HELP

Although there are probably as many examplesof extreme caregiving as there are caregivers, atRaytheon Missile Systems (RMS), a multibil-lion-dollar defense division of Raytheon Com-pany headquartered in Tucson, Arizona, most ofthe extreme caregivers in our workforce of morethan 11,000 employees fall into the followingfive categories:

• Parents of children with specials needs• Immediate family with addictions or in-

volved in criminal behavior• Grandparents rearing grandchildren• Caregivers of elderly loved ones• People who care for a spouse or partner

with a chronic or life-threatening illness

Why should a company be concerned aboutthe extreme caregivers in its workforce? Theseemployees might work in any function and at anyorganizational level. The daily pressure they ex-perience in addition to their work and routine fam-ily responsibilities is a real threat to their pro-ductivity as well as their emotional and, in somecases, financial well being. Exhaustion, absen-teeism, stress-related illnesses, mental distractionthat compromises their safety on and off the job—these are just a few of the ways the accumulatedeffects of extreme caregiving can erode employ-ees’ job performance and quality of life.

Out of necessity extreme caregivers often havevery good organizational skills. They are alsomore aware of other people’s problems and howto solve them because they have much experiencesolving their own problems, often under duress.Placed correctly within the organization, thesecaregivers can deploy these skills to the great ben-efit of their employers.

As a high-technology company that believesits employees are a key business asset, Raytheonknows it cannot afford to ignore the impact of ex-treme caregiving situations on individual and or-ganizational productivity and, ultimately, businesscompetitiveness. The company’s commitment tohelp its extreme caregivers deal with the challengesthey face has been a win-win for everyone—theemployees, their families, and the business.

Fortunately for Rob Jessup and his family, hehad second thoughts about his ill-conceived plan.But the experience was disturbing enough to con-vince him he needed help. He contacted theRaytheon HR department; met with a represen-tative to discuss his dilemma; received counseling,support, and other assistance with his caregivingresponsibilities; and got his life back on track. I toohave lived through periods during which I had tobalance prolonged extreme caregiving with a full-time career. But with the help of my company andmy community, I was able to keep my family, ca-reer, and sanity intact.

This article provides an overview of five typesof extreme caregiving and their implications foremployees and employers. It also discusses thestrategic set of resources Raytheon Missile Sys-tems (RMS) offers employees to help them dealwith these difficult and stressful situations, solu-tions available to many other organizations withemployees who face similar circumstances andresponsibilities.

WHAT DO EXTREME CAREGIVERS NEED?

During the 12 years I have managed RaytheonMissile Systems’WorkLife & Wellness Program,I have had a lot of interaction with employees andtheir families who are dealing with just aboutevery imaginable example of extreme caregiving.Sometimes they are so extreme I have wonderedhow some of these employees make it to workeach morning.

Every company, in small towns and in bigcities, has employees for whom extreme

caregiving is a part of the fabric of their lives.

Raytheon Missile Systems Responds

DOI: 10.1002/joe JOURNAL OF ORGANIZATIONAL EXCELLENCE / Summer 2006

63

cial equipment and/or special seating; require in-dividual education plans (IEPs); and depend onongoing, persistent advocacy by their parents toensure these children receive the support and ser-vices they need.

The family can bear a heavy financial burdenof day care costs and medical expenses not cov-ered by insurance. Too often one parent, unable tohandle this additional stressor, deserts the family,which increases the already large financial bur-den on the remaining parent.

Depending on the type of disability, the age ofthe child, and the place of residence, there maybe a wealth or a dearth of solid, community-basedresources available to the parents of special needschildren. Thus the challenge for the company mayrange from linking parents with the available re-sources to filling the gap with company-subsi-dized resources. In addition to making sure ouremployees know about such excellent local re-sources as the Arizona School for the Deaf andBlind and community-based programs for men-tally disabled adults, RMS provides employee par-ents with several forms of additional support.

Education and Networking. In 2005 RMShosted a three-part series of evening workshops forparents of children with special needs, sponsoredin part by a grant from Massachusetts GeneralHospital, MetLife, the Raytheon People with Dis-abilities Association (RPDA) (an employee aware-ness organization), and the RMS WorkLife &Wellness program. The free two-hour sessions,held over a three-week period at a popular hotelin central Tucson, included dinner and free in-home child care for any employee whose spousealso wanted to attend. Each workshop was open tofifty attendees, and all seats were filled.

Participants in the workshops learned about

• Relevant state programs and contacts• Special needs trusts and estate-planning

issues• The art of developing individual educa-

tion plans for their children

Over the years I have learned from these em-ployees and from my own personal experiencesthat people who provide this type of caregivingkeep coming to work because they enjoy it, andwork gives them an opportunity to accomplishsomething concrete. Employees also need healthysocial contact, and work is often more predictablethan home life. In the middle of chaos, pre-dictability and a sense of accomplishment aregreat antidotes to stress.

Although each type of extreme caregivingdiscussed here has issues peculiar to its nature,nearly all extreme caregivers have certain needsin common:

• External support• Information about and access to available

community resources• Flexibility in work schedules

Thus an employer may be able to leverage a com-mon set of tools and resources to meet these needs.RMS’s responses to needs unique to a particularform of extreme caregiving may also serve as ex-amples of how to leverage or develop programsand services to address these situations.

PARENTS OF CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS

Approximately 20 percent of U.S. households havechildren with special health care needs. These arechildren who have, or are at increased risk for, achronic physical, developmental, behavioral, oremotional condition and who also require healthand related services of a type or amount beyondthat required by children generally.2 These condi-tions can include but are not limited to mental in-capacity; emotional challenges such as autism,Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and As-perger’s Syndrome; and chronic/progressive phys-ical conditions such as cerebral palsy, cystic fi-brosis, cancer, blindness, or rare diseases that taketime to diagnose and treat.

Parents of children with special needs oftenmust have ongoing interactions with school offi-cials, teachers, community program directors andstaff, and medical specialists. Hospital and doctorvisits can become routine. These children also fre-quently have access issues that necessitate spe-

In the middle of chaos, predictability and a sense of accomplishment are

great antidotes to stress.


64 Anne Palmer

Judging from the overwhelmingly positive re-sponses to our feedback surveys, the series waswell received and much appreciated by employees.In addition, the workshops gave parents an op-portunity to meet and network with other parentsof children with similar needs. These friendshipsand informal mutual support networks outside ofwork have continued beyond the workshops.

Shortly after the series, RPDA organized amonthly discussion group in response to work-shop participants’ requests in the feedback sur-vey. The discussion group continues today, andeach meeting features speakers from various com-munity organizations. This effort, supported byour corporate Work/Life program, served as a pilotfor other Raytheon U.S. business units around thecountry who were interested in offering a similarseries for their employees.

Financial Planning. For a special needs childwho will survive his or her parents but will con-tinue to need support programs for life—a childwith Down’s Syndrome, for example—a specialneeds trust can help the child avoid the loss of el-igibility for government and community supportprograms after the parents’death. Counselors fromMetropolitan Life Insurance Company’s Divisionof Estate Planning for Special Kids (MetDESK)meet with RMS parents at no charge to educatethem about the importance of creating a specialneeds trust. The MetDESK counselors can thenrefer the parents to attorneys who specialize increating the actual trusts.

Paid Time Off. Catastrophic paid time off(PTO) is another benefit available to RMS em-ployees and may be helpful at times in this andother types of extreme caregiving. The amountprovided to an employee over and above their nor-mal PTO bank is dependent on the situation andthe judgment and approval of the employee’s man-agement. To be eligible, employees must have firstexhausted their own PTO bank for the year. Eli-gible events are limited to unexpected nonrecur-ring crises or tragic events and emergency hospi-talization of a family member.

In-Home Care. All Tucson employee parentscan utilize RMS’s Care@Home program, a con-tracted service with Choice Care Agency for in-home back-up child care or for overnight childcare if the employee is on company travel. Em-ployees can use this service up to ten times percalendar year, with a large portion of the cost sub-sidized by RMS. The service is especially helpfulfor parents of special needs children, who faceparticular challenges in finding back-up childcareon short notice. On average, our workforce of11,000 employees uses Care@Home 350 timesper year—a good indication to us that the benefitis used only when employee parents really need it.

IMMEDIATE FAMILY WITH ADDICTIONSOR INVOLVED IN CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR

Today’s parents face a daunting task ushering theirchildren successfully from childhood to adult-hood. Children are confronted with much greaterchallenges today than they were when I was grow-ing up. As an example, my son was approached tojoin the CRIPS gang in fifth grade. My daughterknew four teens who died violent deaths beforethey were able to graduate from high school. I hadmany discussions with my kids about drugs and al-cohol, violent music, video games, movies, andsurfing the Net—discussions my parents neverhad to have with me. Today’s parents must be onconstant alert.

Employees whose children or other member ofthe immediate family are involved in substanceabuse, eating disorders, Web-based pornography,binge drinking, or other destructive or illegal be-havior typically find themselves having to deal withlocal law enforcement, the court system, their schoolresource officers, or outpatient and inpatient reha-bilitation programs. This is yet one more type ofextreme caregiving in which the employer’s assis-tance can ease the employee’s burden and stress.

Counseling. Counseling is often the first lineof defense when a parent begins to address un-acceptable behavior in a child. RMS’s EmployeeAssistance Program (EAP), which is available toall employees, offers a number of free counselingsessions annually, through a contracted networkof providers, for each family member and evennonfamily members living in the household. TheRMS WorkLife & Wellness Program also helps

Today’s parents face a daunting task ushering their children successfully

from childhood to adulthood.



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Initially, employee grandparents at RMS beginat the bottom of the learning curve; whether it is un-derstanding their legal and financial responsibility,getting kids enrolled in day care or school if theyaren’t already, or finding pediatricians or specialists,they need help. So education and counseling are alarge part of the assistance we provide them.

Education and Counseling. LifeResources,which is the corporation’s integrated EAP and na-tional education, counseling, and referral pro-gram, puts employees in touch with master’s-levelcounselors who specialize in the needs of grand-parents raising grandchildren. Working with theemployees by phone or e-mail, these counselorshelp them find schools, educational services, fam-ily counseling if they need it, and assistance withlegal aspects of guardianship and custody.

Although we have offered on-site seminarsand a support group on the topic of grandparentsraising grandchildren, we found that employeeshesitated to attend the support group because ofembarrassment about their situation. Therefore,to offer these employees greater privacy, we havemade it possible for them to access more serviceson their own. For example, the RMS WorkLife &Wellness Program provides a Web page with linksto local community agencies that can support andeducate the employee grandparent about guardian-ship, custody, and adoption. If the grandparenteventually does adopt the grandchild, Raytheon’scompanywide adoption support program will pro-vide a generous reimbursement for eligible costsassociated with the process.

In-Home Care. Grandparents who havegrandchildren living in their home on a perma-nent basis are also eligible to participate in theCare@Home Program described earlier. Like theparents of children with special needs, workinggrandparents find this back-up child care orovernight child care when traveling for work tobe a great stress reliever that allows them to focuson their work responsibilities knowing that theirgrandchild is safe and in good care. Employee

parents identify other community resources, in-cluding specialized counselors, that can providevaluable assistance.

If more counseling sessions are needed be-yond the company-paid EAP sessions, the em-ployee’s health insurance provides additional coun-seling benefits for both employees and theirfamilies, including inpatient care, substance abusetreatment, and outpatient therapy.

Legal Assistance. If faced with a family prob-lem or concern that may have legal implications,RMS employees can speak with an attorney at nocharge. There are times when this is sufficient for theemployee, to simply explore a legal question or issuewithout hiring an attorney. But if further legal helpis needed, RMS employees have access to a net-work of attorneys who discount their hourly rate.

GRANDPARENTS RAISINGGRANDCHILDREN

Most of us probably know someone who hastaken primary parental responsibility for theirgrandchildren. According to the 2000 U.S. cen-sus, an estimated 2.4 million men and womenserve in this capacity, and the number continuesto grow.3 In general, employees find themselvesfully responsible for their grandchildren’s carebecause of the inability of the children’s biolog-ical parent(s) to properly and safely care for them.The crises that lead to this are many and varied,but the most common reasons are parental aban-donment, incarceration, or death, or removal ofthe children by Child Protective Services or asimilar government agency.

The need for this type of extreme caregivingcan happen in the blink of an eye. An employeewho has not had child care responsibility for yearsis suddenly caring for a teen, a young child, oreven a baby—and in many cases must extend careto multiple grandchildren. And the task can beoverwhelming. Committing to this extreme care-giving means new learning for the grandparents:the use of child care, school operations, schooland after-school activities, new doctors, and—toooften—how to budget for these new lives with-out any additional income stream. It is not un-usual for a grandparent who was planning retire-ment to postpone it indefinitely due to the financialconstraints of raising grandchildren.

It is not unusual for a grandparent who was planning retirement to postpone

it indefinitely due to the financial constraints of raising grandchildren.


66 Anne Palmer

grandparents continually tell me how valuable thisservice is to them.

CARING FOR ELDERLY LOVED ONES

At any given time in the United States, nearly sixin ten caregivers of elderly loved ones are em-ployed.4 Many of those caregiving situations arein the early stages where the contact is still occa-sional, and the loved ones, typically parents, stilllive independently or in retirement communitiesor assisted living facilities. Their need for some as-sistance is typically periodic and slowly evolvingfor the employee. But it is common for a normalcaregiving situation to move to an extreme ex-ample very quickly, where the situation requiresdaily multifaceted coordination of care. In theseextreme cases, care is often provided in the em-ployee’s home but may also occur in the home ofthe loved one, where safety is frequently the majorissue. The elderly parent may live in an unsafeolder neighborhood and be fearful of leaving homefor appointments, to shop, etc., and therefore can-not care appropriately for himself or herself. Mem-ory loss may affect their ability to take medicineproperly, eat on a regular basis, drive safely, orfind their way back home. Forgetting to turn off astovetop burner, the oven, or water running froma faucet are common unsafe situations that canproduce high levels of stress, periodic crises, oreven death for the elderly parent.

Independence is highly valued by all of us, in-cluding the seniors in our lives. Where the parentshould live is a common source of conflict whenadult children have safety concerns and their par-ents refuse to consider other arrangements. It is noeasy task for anyone to leave a residence that mayhave been home for 40 years and be forced tochoose what to keep and what to discard or giveaway from among thousands of possessions ac-cumulated over a lifetime. Continuing care in thehome with the help of aides can be an answer, butit is not without its own set of challenges, espe-cially financial.

Many caregivers invite their parents to livewith them. Space, cost, and just the daily ritualsof living together as an extended family can strainrelationships. Throw into the mix a progressivedisease such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes, or Parkin-son’s—and possibly some baggage from emo-tional scars that were formed decades ago—andthe situation can become explosive.

Most caregivers of the elderly are middle-agedthemselves, are often in the midst of a career, andmany still have children at home. Additionally,they may have unfolding health issues of their own.

Education and Counseling. RMS has offeredelder care education since 1994, in part becausethe average age of our employee population is ap-proximately 43 years old, and the early forties isthe typical age for beginning to assume such care-giving responsibilities. The WorkLife & WellnessProgram offers

• Educational seminars throughout the year• Elder care resource fairs in two locations

annually (which cost no more than the ad-vertising costs to promote them)

• Extensive Web-based information, alwaysavailable on the company’s intranet

RMS employees and family members can alsouse the corporate LifeResources program to lo-cate services and programs for their loved onesall over the United States, as well as take advan-tage of EAP counseling services in the local Tuc-son behavioral services network.

Assessments. The most recent addition to ourelder care toolkit is Raytheon’s Enhanced ElderCare Program, which provides in-home assess-ments by care-management nurses for qualifyingsituations. These comprehensive evaluations re-view many factors and are done with the permis-sion of the elders being evaluated. The care-man-agement nurse then develops an individualizedcare plan and shares it with the family, and a careadvocate works with the family to implement theplan. The family pays nothing for this program,which is invaluable in terms of the time, energy,and stress it saves the employee.

The Enhanced Elder Care Program is avail-able to all employees. Corporate LifeResourcesstaff evaluates a request for services using a pre-screen process to determine if the employee can

Most caregivers of the elderly are middle-agedthemselves, are often in the midst of a career,

and many still have children at home.



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hint of the results that she was about to give me. Wehad just begun our vacation on the day she calledwith bad news. I had to decide whether or not to lethim know it was his doctor on the phone. I chose toallow him to have a good vacation and waited untilwe returned home to give him the news that his can-cer was back. The whole time away I just wantedto scream and cry my eyes out, but I couldn’t dothat. It was hard, but time was a gift to him—theonly one I could give at that moment.

This is but a glimpse into one story among themany thousands that occur every day in our work-places, and as the Baby Boomer generation ages,the number of these stories and trials will escalate.Time off for medical appointments, surgeries, re-coveries, and the attendant activities will presentgrowing challenges to workplace stability and pro-ductivity that no employer can afford to ignore.

When a spouse, partner, or any other familymember is seriously ill, the benefit employeesmost highly value is time with that family mem-ber. Paid time off (the employee’s normal PTObank) may be all that is needed to get through thecrisis, but when PTO is not enough, flexible workschedules can be of great help to the employee.

Raytheon provides salaried employees with flex-ible work schedules on a case-by-case basis. De-pending on the nature of the person’s job and whetherit can be accomplished without supervision, flexi-bility in work times as well as work location can givethe employee enough options to fulfill both workand extreme caregiving responsibilities.

An employee may be able to work two extrahours early in the week in order to take off two hourson Thursday for a doctor’s appointment. Likewise,allowing the employee to work from home, the hos-pital, or another location can provide the companywith continuity of task while allowing the employeeto be present for the spouse or partner. Workingaway from the office is not intended for situationswhere lots of hands-on caregiving is required, butwhen the employee just needs to be close by, this op-tion is valued and appreciated.

be assisted by the program. If the LifeResourcesstaff believes that an in-home assessment isneeded, they will find an appropriate geriatric spe-cialist to conduct the comprehensive evaluation.

Feedback has been extremely positive and em-ployee satisfaction with the program high, espe-cially with having a professional service help themunderstand their loved ones’ situation and theircare options. One employee had this to say aboutthe program:

My parents live on the East Coast. My living inTucson and trying to figure out what I needed to doto help them—much less what was even going onto begin with—was mind boggling. This elder careservice was tremendous. It really helped to have anexpert involved and working with us. What a relief!

Our leadership also has been pleasantly surprisedat the number of employees who have used theEnhanced Elder Care Program since its imple-mentation in 2004—more than three dozen during2004 at RMS alone.

EMPLOYEES WHO CARE FOR A SPOUSEOR PARTNER WITH A CHRONIC OR LIFE-THREATENING ILLNESS

A spouse’s or partner’s need for extreme caregiv-ing can develop slowly over time or arise quickly,as in the case of a spouse suddenly diagnosed witha life-threatening disease. The family is seeminglythrown overnight onto an interminable obstaclecourse—tests, treatments, more tests, waiting, ap-pointments with specialists, hospital stays, andrehabilitation are all part of the typical drill. Oncea spouse or partner is fortunate enough to havegotten through the gauntlet and recovered, theremay be the possibility of recurrence; for some,the only realistic goal is slowing the progressionof the disease.

The ill spouse is certainly dealing with a largeset of stressors—including the possibility ofdying—but the caregiving spouse suffers with hisor her own stressors as well. One employee de-scribed this personal experience:

When my husband’s oncologist would call me afterhis quarterly CT scans, I would search even heropening words, ‘Hi, Sandy, this is Dr. Logan,’for any

. . . flexibility in work times as well as work location can give the employee

enough options to fulfill both work and extreme caregiving responsibilities.


68 Anne Palmer

For example, when one employee’s wife wasscheduled for surgery, the company providedhim with a laptop computer and the ability toaccess his e-mail and company intranet remotely.During the many hours first spent in the waitingroom, then in the ICU, and later in his wife’shospital room while she was recovering, he waspresent to reassure her and hear firsthand howshe was doing and—in the “downtimes”—continue to work with his project team, albeitfrom a distance.

KEYS TO EFFECTIVENESS

At RMS we have found that the assistance we pro-vide to extreme caregivers can be very cost-effective when

• It is designed to leverage existing re-sources and programs, both company-provided and community-based

• Recipients do their part• Our staff and employees use their re-

sourcefulness and creativity to find thebest solution

The company’s commitment to helping easeemployees’ burden and stress in extreme care-giving situations has not meant adopting a largenumber of new programs or incurring substantialadditional costs. In most instances, the informa-tion, counseling, support services, and benefitsare already available through broader programsoffered to the workforce as part of their em-ployment benefits package. We make certain ex-treme caregivers understand such programs andthe value the services could have for them intheir circumstances.

Flexible work schedules, for example, arehelpful in all of the situations mentioned in thisarticle, but their value is certainly not limited tocases of extreme caregiving. In fact, employeescite flextime as the single benefit most mean-ingful to their job satisfaction.5 For employeeswho are extreme caregivers, it may simply be a

matter of helping them think through how best tostructure this benefit to meet their needs, andensuring that their manager understands the na-ture of the family’s situation and the employee’sresponsibilities.

Ability to access company and community re-sources—a key need of extreme caregivers—isalso a need shared by other employees. Throughone of the company’s foundational worklife pro-grams, any employee can use the toll-free numberor Web site of our contracted provider to locatehealth and wellness services, housing, counsel-ing, and a myriad of helpful programs. Assistingextreme caregivers includes ensuring they knowwhich resources helpful to their situation can beaccessed through this existing program.

Special education events we organize for ex-treme caregivers also leverage outside resourcesso that these events entail little or no cost to thecompany. Speakers from community agencies,national educational and advocacy organizations,and service providers participate at no cost, andgrants help defray other incidental costs.

The cost of the Care@Home program, whichis available to all RMS parent employees, is man-aged by limiting the number of times a year anemployee can use the program and having the em-ployee bear part of the cost. The company-subsi-dized portion is charged back to the employee’shome department, which most directly benefitsfrom fewer absences and more focused, produc-tive employees and is also in a good position tomonitor utilization.

Frequent promotion of all of Raytheon’s ben-efits in creative and varied ways is key to uti-lization. We want these services to be so famil-iar to employees that even in an extremecaregiving crisis, they remember the programsare there for use. Our Web site is rich with suchinformation, so that even if an employee cannotrecall a specific program, he or she can find iton the Web site.

As a gerontologist and head of the Work-Life & Wellness program, I am especially at-tuned to the growing special needs of an olderworkforce. My training has enabled me to dealwith many of the issues facing employees whomust care for elderly parents, grandchildren, orailing spouses and partners. I can help pointthem to the right resources, discuss options, and

Ability to access company and communityresources—a key need of extreme caregivers—

is also a need shared by other employees.



69

CONCLUSION

During our careers, many of us will experiencean episode or period of extreme caregiving, whenour personal resources and those of our familyare simply not enough to get us through it. Farfrom trivial, these are life-altering experiences.

To the extent its resources allow, a companycan help its employees deal with the toughest chal-lenges life presents by marshalling existing exter-nal services and developing or adapting internalservices when necessary or advantageous. It maytake as little as someone on the HR staff pointingan employee to the right community agency. Or itmay require tapping into assistance in severalforms—professional, educational, legal, medical,financial, or other services, many of which mayalready be available through existing worklife andwellness programs—to meet the extraordinaryneeds of a loved one in an employee’s care.Raytheon leadership wholeheartedly supports suchprograms as integral to the attraction, retention,loyalty, and productivity of the company’s talent,and other companies can expect similar rich re-turns for a modest investment in their employees’health, well being, and peace of mind. �

provide a caring face for the company. Someemployees find it much easier to discuss theirchallenges with someone they know rather thanan external person who is a stranger to them. Agrowing number of companies are making suchcommitments through full-time, part-time, orexternal contracted professionals, includinggerontologists.

Effectiveness of the services depends in parton the employee caregivers taking responsibil-ity for educating themselves on their companybenefits. Additionally, they must show a will-ingness not only to accept help but also to part-ner with their management to construct work-able solutions.

The creativity and resourcefulness of theHuman Resources staff, frontline management,and even coworkers can increase the effectivenessof company- and community-based services andeven avoid unnecessary utilization by finding lesscostly means of assistance for the extreme care-giver. Pulling together as a team and pitching into help a coworker in need cements positive rela-tionships and provides a source of intrinsic satis-faction, which enhances the workplace experienceand culture for many people.

NOTES

1. All persons’ names used in this article have been changed to protect their privacy.

2. Prevalence of children with special health care needs, The national survey of children with special health care needs (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health

and Human Services, 2001).

3. T. Simmons & J. L. Dye, Grandparents living with grandchildren: 2000, Census 2000 Brief (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Economics and Statistics

Administration, U.S. Census Bureau, 2003).

4. S. Pandya, Caregiving in the United States: Research report (Washington, D.C.: AARP Public Policy Institute, 2005).

5. Survey shows schedule flexibility linked to job satisfaction, AWLP Newsline, Alliance of WorkLife Progress, 2003 (available on-line to subscribers at www.awlp.org).

raytheon missile systems responds to the needs of extreme caregivers in the workplace

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