There Are Two Aspects to Supporting the Balance Between Work and Caregiving

The revised Childcare and Caregiver Leave Act came into effect on April 1.

This section focuses on caregiving, and the main changes are as follows:

  • Relaxation of eligibility requirements for caregiving leave
    → Previously, employees with less than six months of continuous employment were not eligible for caregiving leave. This restriction has now been removed. From the moment of hiring, employees can take caregiving leave.
  • Workplace environment development to prevent employees from quitting due to caregiving
    → Employers are now required to provide training for employees about caregiving-related systems and to promote the use of such systems through awareness campaigns.
  • Individual notification and confirmation of intention to use caregiving systems
    → Employers must now individually inform employees facing caregiving responsibilities about the available systems and confirm their intention to use them.
    Additionally, employers must provide information to employees before they reach the age of 40 to deepen their understanding and awareness of caregiving systems before they actually face such responsibilities.
  • Encouragement (non-mandatory obligation) to introduce telework for caregiving purposes

 

Supporting employees in balancing work with parenting or caregiving responsibilities is a common scenario taught in career consultant training courses. With this legal revision, I believe such support will become significantly easier to provide.

However, the main objective of this amendment seems to be helping those who are already working and suddenly face caregiving responsibilities, showing them how to manage both. This is certainly a positive development, but there’s another side to supporting the balance between work and caregiving:

Working in order to continue caregiving.

 

I once had a counseling session with a person who was sharing caregiving duties for a parent with other family members. They felt mentally overwhelmed by the endless daily caregiving and the increasing severity of their parent's condition.
This person worked a few days a week.
Surprisingly, they said that the time spent working allowed them to forget about caregiving, even if just for a while—it served as a kind of “breather.”


To them, work was an essential time that they absolutely did not want to give up.
In other words, it was precisely because they were dealing with caregiving that having a job gave them motivation and purpose.

Of course, it's important and necessary to create systems that make it easier for people to take time off when facing caregiving challenges. But it's not as simple as just that.
We also need to think about how to support and make use of the motivation to work that exists because someone is facing caregiving challenges.


This perspective is important too. It’s not something that can be fixed through legislation alone—it needs to be addressed within each individual company and workplace.
Career consultants, through their role in promoting better environments, also have a responsibility to take this aspect into account.

 

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