On Tuesday 7 October, Employers for Carers hosted a collaborative and insightful webinar focused on Enabling and Supporting Carer Identification. It was a great session filled with powerful conversations sharing best practice. 

The session was opened and chaired by Helen Walker, Chief Executive of Carers UK, who welcomed attendees and introduced the topic. Helen highlighted how research suggests there are record numbers of carers in the UK, yet at the same time we know that it can take two years on average for carers to realise that label applies to them.  

Kathryn von Stegmann, from Carers UK, opened the presentations with an overview of the importance of carer identification including from an employee and employer perspective​, understanding your organisation’s carer population, providing direct support to employees, and capturing data and measuring impact. This was followed by highlighting a few key points to think about when incorporating carer identification into the workplace; particularly how organisations subsequently benefit from increased retention and productivity and signposting to helpful resources on EfC Digital and Carers UK’s website. 

We then heard from three EfC members about how they are encouraging carer identification in their own workplaces. The session concluded with a Q&A discussion, where participants raised questions about employees who are caring for someone outside of the UK, how to reduce some of the stigma about carer’s career development as well as highlighting the importance of driving fun and positive experiences via carers networks too.