Impact of a caregiver-friendly workplace policies intervention: a prospective economic evaluation

OBJECTIVE: We estimate the potential cost-benefit of a caregiver-friendly workplace policies (CFWPs) educational intervention to facilitate uptake of supports for carer-employees (CEs) at a post-secondary institution. METHODS: We identified CEs through a voluntary survey and estimated the economic burden of caregiving activities from the CEs' and employer's perspective. The latter is used as the baseline of comparison for evaluating the cost-benefit of the intervention. RESULTS: The economic cost of caregiving-related activities for the "no intervention" scenario was estimated at $33,841,789 ($32,922 per-case) and $8,916,342 ($8,674 per-case) from the CEs' and employer's perspectives, respectively. We find the educational intervention is a cost-beneficial program with the net benefit ranging from $48,010 to $676,657, based on six scenarios of effectiveness. CONCLUSION: This study provides practical information for human resources and operations management decision-making in terms of a CFWPs educational intervention.