Most US employers are running benefits programs without knowing how many of their employees are caregivers. A new Harvard Business Review article frames that blindspot as a measurable cost and a problem benefits brokers are positioned to help fix.
The piece, by W. Brad Johnson and David G. Smith of Johns Hopkins University, draws on existing workplace research and argues that 73% of US employees identify as caregivers for children, aging parents, or other family members, yet more than half of employers collect no data on those obligations. Benefits designed without that picture are benefits aimed at a workforce the employer cannot see.
The gap is not simply a data problem. Employees actively conceal caregiving responsibilities because disclosure carries career risk. Only 22% of working parents feel "very welcome" to express their caregiver identity at work, according to a Vivvi survey cited in the article.
Mothers with children are perceived as less committed and face lower starting salaries. Fathers who request parental leave can face professional backlash. The result is that the people most likely to need caregiving benefits are the least likely to flag that need at enrollment.
SHRM's 2025 research found that 42% of working caregivers reported career challenges tied to insufficient support and unpredictable work interruptions. A separate SHRM report found that 56% of working caregivers caring for adults said they lacked consistent support.
Harvard Business School professor Joseph Fuller's research, cited in the HBR article, produces a concrete figure: reduce caregiver turnover by 3%, apply a 50%-of-salary replacement cost, and the return on caregiving benefits exceeds 100%. The math does not require expensive programs. It requires knowing who the caregivers are.
SHRM, meanwhile, puts employee replacement cost at 50% to 200% of annual salary depending on role. For a benefits broker advising a mid-size employer, that range means caregiver attrition is one of the larger untracked cost items in the business. Clients focused on trimming premium spend may be overlooking a retention problem that costs more than the premiums they are cutting.
The HBR article's practical recommendation is an anonymized, recurring employee survey the authors call a "care census." It gives employers aggregate data on caregiving obligations: who has dependent care responsibilities, where support gaps are widest, and which existing benefits are being used.
Anonymization is central to making it work. Employees who conceal caregiving for career reasons will not self-disclose in a named survey. Nicole Jorwic, chief program officer at Caring Across Generations, told the HBR authors that many employees do not recognize the full scope of their own burden until asked. Asking, she said, begins normalizing the conversation at work.
For a broker, the care census is a diagnostic step rather than a product pitch. It gives a client visibility into a workforce segment they are almost certainly underserving. A broker who walks into a renewal meeting with a framework for measuring caregiver need, and connects that data to turnover cost, is having a different conversation than one built around premium comparison.
The HBR article, drawn from research for Johnson and Smith's book Fair Share: How Men and Women Can Create a More Equitable Workplace Together, does not specify which benefits to offer. Its argument is that measurement comes before design.
