Combining work and informal care: the importance of caring organisations

• Author: Saskia Keuzenkamp,Marjolein I. Broese van Groenou,Inger Plaisier
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12048
• Published date: 01 April 2015
• Date: 01 April 2015

Combining work and informal care: the importance

of caring organisations

Inger Plaisier, Netherlands Institute for Social Research, The Hague

Marjolein I. Broese van Groenou, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social

Sciences, VU University Amsterdam

Saskia Keuzenkamp, Netherlands Centre for Social Developments, Utrecht

Human Resource Management Journal, Vol 25, no 2, 2015, pages 267–280

Population ageing and rising costs of long-term care mean that organisations will be confronted in the

future with a growing number of employees who combine paid work with providing informal care to a

relative or non-kin. Combining work and informal care successfully partly depends on job and

care-related features, but more information is needed on the importance of organisational aspects in this

regard. The impact of organisational support on work outcomes (work–care balance and perceived need

for job adaptations) was studied among 1,991 employed informal caregivers in 50 different organisations.

Multilevel logistic regression analyses revealed that a heavy care burden decreased the odds of combining

work and care successfully. Caregivers who felt supported by colleagues and supervisors, and who worked

in supportive organisations had higher odds of good work outcomes. The findings imply that

organisations should be explicit about their concern for informal caregivers and be particularly aware of

colleagues with heavy care responsibilities.

Contact: Dr Inger Plaisier, Netherlands Institute for Social Research, P.O. Box 16164, The Hague

2500 BD, The Netherlands. Email: i.plaisier@scp.nl

Keywords: informal care; work and family; job characteristics; organisation culture

INTRODUCTION

Population ageing means that Western societies face rapidly rising costs for long-term care

and the challenge of reforming the generous welfare state regime of the past decades

(Knickman and Snell, 2002; Carmichael and Charles, 2003; Organisation for Economic

Co-operation and Development, 2011). As in many other Western societies, the current reforms

of the Dutch long-term care system involve the cutting back of residential care and professional

home care and seeking to make increased use of informal caregivers. Citizens will need to take

more responsibility for their own care arrangements and will have to rely more on help from

relatives and non-kin before turning to publicly funded professional care (Da Roit, 2012). Help

from relatives and non-kin is defined as informal care when it involves assistance with

instrumental and personal activities of daily living (e.g. household chores and personal care),

it is unpaid and not formally organised, and the care recipient is socially related to the provider

of informal care, that is, a spouse, parent, neighbour or friend. Currently, one in eight Dutch

employees provides informal care (De Boer and Keuzenkamp, 2009). The highest rate of

informal caregiving is found among women aged 45 and over who provide informal care to

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-

NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly

cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

The copyright line for this article was changed on 13 October 2014 after original online

publication

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doi: 10.1111/1748-8583.12048

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 25 NO 2, 2015 267

© 2014 The Authors. Human Resource Management Journal Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Please cite this article in press as: Plaisier, I., Broese van Groenou, M.I. and Keuzenkamp, S. (2015) ‘Combining work and informal care: the

importance of caring organisations’. Human Resource Management Journal 25: 2, 267–280.