Episode 6: Mom’s at Work: The ‘Panini’ generation — The hidden workforce struggle employers can’t ignore

These are the working parents juggling the care of kids while also supporting aging parents, and it’s a lot. Between the rising costs of childcare, senior care and just everyday life, the pressure is mounting, especially for women who still tend to shoulder most of the caregiving.

For the final episode in WorkLife’s podcast series Mom’s at Work, we speak with Naaz Nichols, chief customer experience officer at Care.com, about her own difficult journey juggling her dad’s health needs along with her two children as a single parent. She shares how she had to give up her job and sell her house so she could find the right care for them all.

Countless hours disappear into the black hole of researching, coordinating and worrying about adequate care for aging loved ones. Hotel group Hilton has sought to address this issue for its employees.

We speak with Lora Lawler, svp of total rewards and HR technology for Hilton, about how the company’s partnership with Wellthy provides an invaluable service to its employees in caregiving roles, shaving thousands of hours off their searches and giving them vital peace of mind by vetting caregivers and facilities on their behalf.

And we speak with Sarah Robb O’Hagan, an entrepreneur, author and former global president at Gatorade, who shares how her own parents’ diagnoses affected her mental health at a time when she had three young kids and was working full-time. She also talks about how more flexible structures within corporations can benefit both parents and businesses.

Sarah’s experiences around extreme burnout as a working mother, when she was working 90-hour weeks at corporate firms, later informed her work at EXOS, a human performance company that helps corporate clients and executives around the world to lead healthy, high-performing teams.

WorkLife Presents is hosted by Jessica Davies, founding editor of WorkLife. Sara Patterson is producer, and Tim Peterson is the executive editor of audio and video for Digiday Media.

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