Inclusion of Employee Carers: When Singularity Rhymes with Responsibility?

Abstract

While caregiving is a major societal issue, little research has been carried out into organizational policies aimed at employees who have to support their loved ones. Based on work that views inclusion as the perception that singularities are taken into account within a group, we seek to understand how companies take on the singularity associated with the caregiving situation. More specifically, when wishing to include employee carers, how is their singularity understood by companies through the prism of their responsible HRM systems?
To answer this question, 517 company agreements were collected and then analyzed in order to study the terminology used and the measures put in place to identify the elements that fall within the scope of companies’ legal framework alone or are part of a genuine voluntary and inclusive commitment by companies on this subject. The results enable us to put into perspective three models of HRM responsibility for assistance, associated with a differentiated characterization of singularity.
From a theoretical point of view, in addition to this typology, our research points to the difficulty of dealing with singularities associated with intimacy requiring employee disclosure. Methodologically, the choice to study company agreements enables us to develop an analysis based on objective organizational practices in terms of inclusiveness and consideration of singularities, and to go beyond potential formatted discourses. At the management level, this study provides an inventory of support policies and indicates an evolution in the appropriation of the subject of care over time, with models that may gain in inclusivity and recognition of singularities.