An HR director at a 2,500-person company told me she had discovered, during an annual review, that her top sales manager had been caring for her mother for two years as she slowly slipped into dependency. 1 to 2 hours on the phone every day. One weekend per month, 400 km away from home. She had never said a word.
This scene will repeat. Often. By 2030, one in four employees will be a #caregiver in France. Most will not say so.
The invisible #caregivers
The figures are well known to experts, still too often ignored by Executive Committees and HR directors.
8.6 hours per week on average spent on a dependent loved one. The equivalent of a full extra working day.
63% of employee-caregivers have said nothing to their employer. And among them, 46% would prefer it to stay that way.
44% feel their company supports them poorly. 98% think the company should provide concrete solutions.
Estimated cost for private-sector companies in France: €24 to €31 billion per year.
Sources: OCIRP - Engagés pour l'autonomie!, Club Landoy - groupe Bayard, Nathalie Chusseau - Les coûts cachés des aidants pour l'entreprise.
Why this silence?
HR tools inside companies are oriented toward parenthood, not caregiving. Parental leave, in-company daycare, adjusted hours for sick children: an entire system. For caregivers, little equivalent. Brochures exist. Industry agreements too. But on the ground, most employee-caregivers cannot see what their employer offers them that is actually useful.
Companies, for their part, do not see their caregiver employees. How can you offer something to a population that does not identify itself? Caregiving remains an invisible variable in HR dashboards, a grey zone in social negotiations, a blind spot in engagement surveys.
And this asymmetry costs both sides dearly.
The double penalty
Marie-Anne Montchamp, Director General of OCIRP, has framed this topic with surgical precision. Her founding thesis: « It (almost) all plays out before 63.5 », the average retirement age in France. Before that mark, four mechanisms shape a person's aging: occupational wear, primary prevention (or its absence), isolation, social and professional disengagement.
The employee-caregiver absorbs these four mechanisms twice. Their own aging trajectory. And the burden of the person they accompany. Their own health. And the physical and mental consequences of caregiving on it.
This is what OCIRP calls the double penalty. And this is what makes the topic strategic, not simply social. Caregiving is not only a question of corporate benevolence. It is a question of human capital, sustainable performance, intergenerational equity.
What caregivers expect from companies
Being recognised without having to declare oneself. A caregiver who declares themselves exposes themselves. They know it. So we must build systems employees can use without ticking an "I am a caregiver" box. Recognition comes through access, not through registration.
Getting concrete solutions, not brochures. Informational content is necessary, but not enough. Employee-caregivers need operational support: someone who takes a call, a medical appointment, a medication reminder, coordination with a home-care service. Work actually done, not work documented.
Measuring impact. Usage, adoption, effects on absenteeism, on engagement, on mental health. Social partners are asking for it. This is what turns a CSR policy into a performance lever, and a stated commitment into a commitment kept.
Concrete solution: this is what we are building at Agely. A voice-first AI platform that does not replace the caregiver's human work. That amplifies it. That takes care of the repetitive and time-consuming tasks (reminders, coordination, monitoring, stimulation, vigilance, social connection) so that the employee-caregiver gets some air and time back. And so that they let go of the guilt of not doing more.
It all plays out before 63.5, Marie-Anne Montchamp reminded us. It plays out inside companies, in your teams, every day. Now it is our turn.
Care is human. We amplify it.