Professor Laurie Barclay says employers need to build eldercare policies that are both consistent and personal
Laurie Barclay, professor and Lang Chair in Leadership at the University of Guelph, has spent much of her professional life studying how to create healthy, fair workplaces.
And then the professional became personal.
Barclay has spent two years as a caregiver for her father who has dementia and her caregiving experience has shaped how she views workplace performance.
“I've ended up caregiving 24/7, so now I’m experiencing the policies I used to only study and thinking about how they can be better,” she says.
“Given the caregiving experience, the best self looks kind of different on a daily basis. Some days we can come in fully present, and other days we just need to have some self-compassion.”
Her own workplace allowed her to move fully online to support her father. What’s missing from most organizations, she says, is a framework that supports employees beyond standard accommodations—and a recognition that eldercare support is not a one-off conversation.
“Caregiving needs fluctuate,” Barclay explains. “With dementia, what I’m dealing with today might be completely different than tomorrow. And that can be completely different than the next day; it has to be an ongoing dialogue.”
A recent Harvard Business Review article made the case for why companies need structured eldercare policies, warning those that fail to act risk losing top talent.
While parental leave and childcare support have received expanded legislative and corporate attention in recent years, eldercare remains a policy blind spot. As the workforce ages and more employees become caregivers to aging relatives, the lack of formal frameworks is no longer sustainable.
Unlike childcare, which is often planned, time-bound and widely acknowledged, eldercare is typically unpredictable, long-term and emotionally taxing. It can involve sudden emergencies, complex medical navigation and long stretches of anticipatory grief.
Despite its intensity, eldercare often flies under the radar, in part because it’s rarely discussed openly at work. Employees may feel pressure to downplay their responsibilities, and as a result, many navigate these demands in silence, with no clear policy, point of contact or system of support, according to the report.
Barclay believes that’s partly because eldercare is less visible. That silence, she warns, contributes to a lack of support structures.
“With kids, it feels like it’s more normalized,” she says. “Whereas with eldercare, people aren’t necessarily disclosing it or sharing it within the workplace.”
Barclay emphasized that policies should be structured with built-in discretion, allowing managers to tailor them based on individual circumstances.
For caregivers, a good week can look very different from the next. Relying solely on fixed, standardized policies ignores this reality and risks alienating employees who already feel stretched to their limit.
“When you don’t build in space for nuance, you force people to negotiate the legitimacy of their needs,” Barclay said.
“They feel like they have to prove that their grief is real enough, or their caregiving urgent enough, just to access support.”
Supporting caregivers means recognizing grief—and planning for the long haul. One area Barclay urges employers to focus on is grief.
“At first, I didn’t see eldercare as a grief experience. Now I absolutely do,” she says. “It’s anticipatory grief, it’s daily grief, it’s identity grief.”
For caregivers dealing with progressive conditions like dementia, that emotional toll can be profound and sustained. She recommends distinguishing between acute and chronic support phases. That includes recognizing the emotional and administrative load that caregivers carry, even when they're not physically absent.
“In the emergency moment, you need to be able to step away,” she says. “But in the long term, it’s about ongoing supports—flexible hours, check-ins and spaces for restoration.”
For HR leaders, the challenge is to move from informal flexibility to formalized policies that embed discretion into the system. That means appointing someone to co-design individual support plans, offering mental health resources without stigma, and making space for recovery.
Workplace fairness isn’t about identical treatment—it’s about consistent flexibility tailored to real needs. Barclay refers to this as the “justice paradox”: the simultaneous desire to be treated like everyone else and like no one else.
“Everyone wants to be treated consistently but uniquely,” she explains. “So, they want to make sure that the policy applies to everyone; but the way that it’s applied and personalizing it—that’s where it actually becomes fair.”
In practice, this means fairness isn’t achieved by enforcing rigid policies. Instead, it’s about using policies as a foundation and allowing room for adaptation. Formal policies are essential—they signal that the organization cares, but they can’t be the end of the conversation, Barclay says.
“We often think it’s a one-and-done type conversation—‘Oh, you’re caregiving, here’s the policy’—but in reality, caregiving needs fluctuate,” she says. “It has to be an ongoing dialogue.”
When it comes to formal policies, Barclay warns against rigidity disguised as fairness. In her research, she’s found that prescriptive leave entitlements often backfire.
“With bereavement, for example, you get two days if it’s this person, five if it’s that person,” she says. “But maybe you were closer to your cousin than your parent. Why should the policy decide that for you?”
The same thinking applies to eldercare. A good policy should show institutional support but also needs to be adaptable. This isn’t just a matter of compassion—it’s a matter of retention, morale and performance.
“It’s about having a clear umbrella policy,” she says, “and then having someone in the organization with the discretion to personalize it in the moment.”
Barclay outlines two key principles: policy justice (is the policy itself fair?) and procedural justice (is it applied fairly?). Problems arise when policies are too rigidly interpreted, which limits creative problem-solving.
“You get what we call ‘law without justice.’ People look at what the policy says instead of what its intent is,” she explains. “If the policy says you get two days, then people feel like they can’t ask for more, but what if they don’t need time off? What if they need something else—like help with administrative burdens, or just a mental break?”
Ultimately, eldercare policies must be structured around one key idea: support based on need, not sameness.
“That’s what fairness looks like,” Barclay says. “It might look different for everyone—and that’s okay.”
