You track your absenteeism rate, turnover, and engagement metrics.
But do you really measure the impact of your employees’ personal lives on their performance?

Today, approximately 1 in 5 employees is a caregiver. Yet this impact does not appear in any standard HR metrics. Not because it is insignificant—but because it is not identified as such.

In other words: you’re already assessing the consequences, without ever identifying the cause.

The challenge, then, is not to collect new data. The challenge is to learn to interpret the data you already have in a different way.

In a nutshell (30 seconds)

• 20% of your employees are caregivers
• The impact is already evident in your HR metrics (absenteeism, engagement, turnover)
• Presenteeism is the key indicator… but an invisible one
• A reliable measurement relies on cross-referencing data, not on individual self-reports
• Without a dedicated metric, you’re only managing part of your HR performance

What your metrics show… and what they don’t tell you

In most organizations, HR management relies on three key metrics: absenteeism, turnover, and employee engagement surveys.

These indicators are useful, but they have a structural limitation: they describe outcomes, not causes.

However, an increasing proportion of the imbalances observed in teams stem from factors outside of work. 

• family obligations
• caregiving for a loved one
• non-work-related mental strain

These factors are now recognized as major determinants of psychosocial risks, which are themselves a major factor in sick leave.

There’s a name for these situations: caregiving.

It affects about 20% of employees, but remains largely invisible in HR systems. In most cases, it goes unreported. For fear of being perceived as less committed, many employees prefer to deal with it on their own—until the impact becomes apparent.

That is precisely when the indicators begin to deteriorate.

Three levels of impact to identify

To measure the actual impact of support, it is helpful to consider three levels.

The first is the most obvious: absenteeism. When personal circumstances become difficult to balance with a full-time job, absences increase. This phenomenon is often seen in certain age groups, particularly among those aged 35 to 55, where previously stable employees begin to fall behind.

The second level is more subtle, but often more costly: presenteeism. This refers to employees who are physically present but whose attention is partially focused elsewhere. They may be dealing with medical appointments, family emergencies, or accumulated fatigue. Their performance declines, yet no standard metric directly captures this. It is, however, often the first sign.

The third stage emerges later: employee turnover. When the pressure becomes too much, some employees leave the company. In the vast majority of cases, workplace bullying is not cited as the reason for leaving. It operates in the background, acting as a silent trigger.

The Method for Measuring Actual Impact (in 4 Steps)

Measuring social support does not involve identifying every individual case. Rather, it involves approaching a broader phenomenon based on converging indicators.

1. Assess your exposure

The first step is to estimate the exposure. A simple and reliable rule of thumb is to assume that approximately 20% of your workforce is affected. In a company with 500 employees, that amounts to about 100 people.

2. Identify at-risk populations

Next, it is necessary to identify the most vulnerable groups. Certain groups are particularly affected, notably employees between the ages of 35 and 55, as well as managers, who are often caught between the dual pressures of professional and personal responsibilities.

3. Cross-reference your HR data

The core of the approach then relies on cross-referencing existing data. By analyzing absenteeism, age groups, performance trends, and QWL survey results together, correlations become apparent. For example, an increase in absenteeism coupled with a decline in engagement among a given group is a strong indicator.

4. Introduce a dedicated indicator

Finally, to move from occasional monitoring to effective management, it becomes necessary to introduce a dedicated indicator: 

Option 1 — Work-Life Balance Survey

Add a question:

“Do you regularly help a dependent family member?”

Option 2 — Voluntary declaration

• anonymous
• with no HR impact

Option 3 — Statistical estimation

• demographic method
• cross-referencing of internal data

In practice, the most effective approaches combine these three strategies.

Key performance indicators to track over time

Once this impact has been measured, it can be converted into a cost—and thus factored into your budget decisions.

What Mature Companies Do

The companies that are most advanced in the area of caregiving no longer seek to prove that the problem exists.

They believe that:

• support is structural
• its impact is already being felt
• The question is the level of control

Their approach is therefore shifting. They are moving from asking, “How many caregivers do we have?” to asking, “How does this issue affect our costs, performance, and engagement?”

This development is pivotal. It marks the shift from a reactive approach to a proactive one.

The Limits of Measurement (and How to Deal with Them)

Measuring caregiving inevitably involves a degree of uncertainty. Underreporting remains a significant issue, and it is rarely possible to definitively attribute an absence or a decline in performance to a personal situation.

However, these limitations should not prevent us from taking action. As is often the case in HR, the goal is not to achieve perfect accuracy, but to work with reliable trends.

A statistical approach, based on sets of indicators, provides a sufficiently robust picture to guide decision-making. The key is to recognize that we are dealing with a structural phenomenon, not a collection of individual cases.