Carers in focus: supporting and retaining workers with caring responsibilities

Blog posts

9 Jun 2025

Alison Carter, Principal Research Fellow
Arundhati Dave, Research Fellow

It’s Carers Week in the UK, an annual opportunity to recognise and celebrate the amazing contribution unpaid carers make to our communities. For those of us working in employment fields, Carers Week is also an opportunity to appreciate the extent to which caring for someone can have a significant impact on an individual’s own health, finances, employment and education opportunities.

Since 2006, IES has been researching what makes a difference in helping people with caring responsibilities to enter (or return to) the labour market and stay in work. Research consistently shows that caring compounds other inequalities: working carers are a vulnerable population who would benefit from support. Retaining working carers is increasingly important for employers too as 14% of the workforce are already juggling work with caring responsibilities, and unpaid carers are one of the fastest growing demographics within the UK working age population. It's also worth noting that the need to care for someone can arise at any point in life, often with no time to plan, and in the absence of alternative options.

The challenges of getting hired whilst caring

In general, carers are less likely to be in paid employment and less likely to work full-time than the rest of the population (Brimblecombe et al., 2018). It is also difficult for carers to re-enter the workforce after a period of caring has finished, an issue which worsens the longer carers are out of the workforce. Recently we led a study for the ReAct (Research into Employment, Empowerment and Active Citizenship) partnership which addressed these issues.

Through interviews and a review of evidence we found that carers face a mix of challenges entering and staying in work. Firstly, there is a lack of time and predictability, something not easily solved by offering part-time or “flexible” work. A job might offer flexibility, but if the carer cannot guarantee their availability week to week, that can be problematic for employers. Carers often feel they must take lower-paid or less demanding jobs, reduce hours, or leave work entirely. This highlights the need, where possible, for workplace flexibility to be delivered in a more tailored and responsive way to better reflect individual needs and circumstances.

Our research team analysed records from over 300,000 unemployed participants on the Restart scheme who were accessing support to look for work. Despite some important gaps in the data, we found poorer outcomes for carers on the programme compared to non-carers. Only 13% of carers on Restart entered work, compared to 43% overall. Just 5% of carers sustained their employment to reach a job outcome (when a participant reaches a cumulative level of earnings, earnings threshold or six months of gainful self-employment), compared to 29% on average. These outcomes are worse for women with caring responsibilities compared with men, suggesting that both gender and caring status combine to create deeper disadvantages. While we did not include parents in our analysis, this may be linked to broader caring responsibilities such as childcare, that women traditionally lead on.

What works in supporting carers

Our study found many examples of good practice that made a difference, often involving tailored, empathetic employment support for carers. These are detailed in a top tips document for advisers. However, beyond this, the need for carer-friendly workplaces was a common theme.

Evidence shows that a supportive workplace is often the difference between staying in work and leaving. Employers we interviewed do so by offering:

■   Flexible work arrangements, both informal and formal to accommodate unpredictability of care obligations.

■   Extra leave beyond the statutory minimum.

■   Ensuring recruiters and HR teams deliver consistent messages about carer support in both internal and external communications.

■   Publicising their carer-friendly policies, especially in job ads and during onboarding.

Best practice for employers is outlined in our top tips for employers document here.

However, we also found that many employers do not know how many of their employees have caring responsibilities or who they are. Unlike some other marginalised groups who benefit from legally protected characteristics, carers often go unrecognised, and their needs are not met. Also, there can be misapprehension that their responsibilities are similar to parental responsibilities of those caring for young children, whose needs are very different. To address this, a combination of staff surveys and open line manager discussions could help employers identify who their carers are and what would work to support them more effectively.

So, what have we learned from our research to inform supporting and retaining workers with caring responsibilities?

■   Policies on flexible working and additional leave are very welcome but not sufficient without tailored workplace support.

■   Employers should treat carers as they would a group with protected characteristics. That means taking steps to identify carers, engaging with them to identify individual support needs, and measuring outcomes for carers such as hiring, progression and pay metrics. 

■   Workplace cultures need to change, so carers feel understood and valued.

The government’s Get Britain Working white paper lays out an ambitious plan for helping boost employment and supporting individuals back to work who currently experience significant barriers. The challenges of the 2.1 million carers who are economically inactive due to caring are explicitly acknowledged. Encouragingly, there is a commitment to support carers to balance unpaid care with paid work where they can, through a review of carers’ leave and Carers Allowance entitlement. As a first step to responding to these findings they have launched the Job Help campaign site to support people who are both working and caring.

Although our study focused specifically on carers, there are broader lessons that apply to other potentially marginalised groups. Building a truly inclusive labour market will require not only future government action, but also meaningful efforts from employers, to better communicate with employees, understand their needs and ultimately help create a more human-centred workplace.