HopSkipDrive recently joined the
TIME’S UP Care Economy Business Council as a founding partner. A coalition of nearly 200 businesses, the Council seeks to reimagine our nation’s caregiving infrastructure to get people back to work and build a more robust, more resilient economy.
Comprised of Fortune 500 companies to small businesses to entrepreneurs, the Care Economy Business Council is committed to improving workplace practices and cultural norms to better support workers who are also caregivers. It will additionally use the Council’s collective voice to develop support for investment in the care economy.
Caregivers are a critical part of our nation’s economy. However, many workplaces are not designed to support them:
nearly one-third of the workforce has left a job throughout their career to manage a caregiving responsibility. Almost 50% of companies report a lack of childcare as an impediment to hiring or calling back workers during the pandemic.
The past year hit working women with caregiving responsibilities especially hard. Concentrated in sectors which experienced, and continue to experience, the most significant job loss, women also struggled with increased caregiving demands due to school closures.
HopSkipDrive Co-founder and CEO Joanna McFarland says, “We were excited to partner with TIME’S UP Care Economy Business Council because our mission is to create opportunity for all through mobility, and helping caregivers is a large part of that. We are passionate about empowering and supporting caregivers: Not only does our platform ease caregivers’ transportation burdens, one criterion to drive on the HopSkipDrive platform is caregiving experience, making it a natural fit for caregivers to earn extra income in a flexible, safe way.
“Societally, however, we have more work to do through policy change and equitable workplace practices, to empower and support caregivers. The TIME’S UP Care Economy Business Council is an innovative and impactful coalition of businesses, and I’m excited to see the change we make together.”
HopSkipDrive will work with the TIME’S UP Care Economy Business Council to:
- Shift the cultural narrative around who is responsible for care;
- Encourage and enforce equitable practices to support caregivers in their own workplaces and the private sector;
- Rally investment in innovative solutions to fix the caregiving crisis; and
- Advocate for critical public policy interventions to move us towards more fair and equitable workplaces for all.