How HR Leaders Deliver Holistic Caregiving Support to the Sandwich Generation

August 29, 2025

One in four adults is a caregiver in the “Sandwich Generation,” caring for aging parents and growing children simultaneously while also trying to balance their careers.

This generation’s challenges took center stage at Lyra’s Breakthrough 2025 conference, where a panel of HR leaders discussed two colliding forces exacerbating the stress these caregivers are under: 

• The youth mental health crisis: One in 5 children experiences a mental, emotional, or behavioral disorder, and the depression rate among teens has doubled since 2010.
• The silver tsunami: By 2040, the population of people aged 85+ in the US will triple to 15M, many of whom will have complex care needs.

As a result, Sandwich Generation employees face increasing constraints on their time, with more than half reporting a sharp decline in their mental health as a result. 

If you’re looking to support these workers, offering a standalone hotline or hard-to-navigate therapy reimbursement perk isn’t enough. Your employees need a connected system of logistics assistance, financial guidance, mental health coaching, and flexible work arrangements that work in tandem to support their responsibilities. 

When all these systems connect, your employees can show up as their best selves at both work and home. 

At Breakthrough, Lyra’s Dr. Monica Wu and Dr. Jenson Reiser spoke with three remarkable leaders—all caregivers themselves—who are paving the way for more accessible, comprehensive mental health benefits: 

• Stephanie Hosig, Benefits Consultant at Northwestern Mutual
• Bernadette Long, Senior Director, Benefits & Global Mobility at Peraton
• Kate Fisher, Senior Director, Total Rewards & Wellness at Cummins

Here’s what they shared about where caregiving benefits fall short—and how successful HR leaders are addressing the issue with compassion and competence. 

Caregivers shouldn’t fly solo in moments of crisis

Traditional benefits structures create silos, leaving employees to connect the dots on their own. For example, a vendor specializing in elder care logistics might excel at sourcing assisted living facilities. However, they might lack the mental health resources, financial counseling, or flexible work guidance to fully support an employee caring for their aging parent. 

This disconnect forces employees to piece together solutions across multiple platforms. And when someone is spending their time caring for aging parents and young children, the last thing they need is to add “benefits manager” to their list of personal responsibilities. 

On the HR side, this fragmented benefits setup makes it hard to make decisions about what benefits will move the needle. Without visibility into where caregiver employees are struggling and which combination of benefits has the biggest impact, your team can’t intervene in a meaningful way. 

Dr. Monica Wu, lead clinical product manager at Lyra Health, highlights that one-third of Sandwich Generation caregivers leave the workforce altogether—a devastating blow to companies who lose experienced talent and institutional knowledge, not to mention the additional burden on remaining team members.  

Streamline benefits navigation via warm transfers

Innovative benefits leaders are tackling this problem by integrating their caregiving benefits and educating employees on complementary resources. 

This means preparing vendors to facilitate warm transfers—where one vendor connects an employee directly to another service provider—at critical moments. 

For example, when an employee contacts elder care services, the vendor should also be able to directly connect them with a mental health counselor, rather than providing the employee with a phone number to call. This makes it easier for employees to get the care they need when they need it.

Here’s how you can put less work on your caregiving employees, while connecting them with every resource they need. 

How to build a collaborative caregiving vendor network

1. Establish cross-vendor knowledge sharing and referral protocols

Train your vendors’ front-line staff on the specific services, eligibility requirements, and value propositions of complementary vendors. This includes referral protocols that dictate how a vendor should respond when an employee reveals interconnected needs.

Stephanie Hosig and the benefits team at Northwestern Mutual, a financial services company with thousands of employees, saw the value of Lyra and Wellthy’s integration firsthand. With Wellthy focused on navigating the logistics of family care and Lyra providing mental health support, the connection between the two solutions created a smoother path for employees to get the right help. 

Now, when a Northwestern Mutual employee mentions caregiving stress or burnout, their Wellthy care coordinator can highlight Lyra’s mental health resources and offer a warm transfer.

At national security tech company Peraton, Bernadette Long shares that the benefits team has created a “trio of key vendors” to support caregivers across behavioral health for children (Rethink), caregiver support (Torchlight), and mental health support (Lyra). Each member of the trio understands how the others support different aspects of employee and family needs, and makes referrals as needed. 

Pro tip: Identify keywords and themes that can clue in one vendor about where a complementary vendor may help. 

2. Build cross-vendor reporting systems

Integration isn’t the end of the story—you should also set up shared reporting to gain insight into how employees are navigating your benefits system.

This involves capturing referral volume, acceptance rates, and outcomes metrics across vendors.

For example, both Lyra and Wellthy provide Northwestern Mutual with reports that show which employees utilized the two services together, allowing Hosig’s team to understand how effective the integration is and identify the impact on employees receiving dual support. This data enables more strategic benefits planning and vendor relationship management. 

Pro tip: Use this data to identify internal influencers who may want to share their stories and encourage other employees to make the most of their benefits. (More on this in the next step.) 

3. Use community to help employees discover benefits 

Foster communities where employees can connect with others in similar situations and where they can openly share their stories about seeking help. This peer-to-peer sharing helps employees discover benefits through trusted colleagues who understand their unique challenges.

For example, Peraton’s most engaged employee community is its caregivers community, where members share how Lyra has helped them better themselves and better show up for their loved ones. 

At Cummins, a global power technology company, Kate Fisher and her team help employees discover benefits through ongoing mental health programming, such as Lyra-guided “Mindful Monday” meditation sessions and regular panels on mental wellness with Lyra VP of workforce transformation Dr. Joe Grasso. These touchpoints serve as a stepping stone for employees to learn about caregiver support. 

Pro tip: Invite employees to pitch new communities that could support their individual experiences, and identify how your benefits can play a role in the conversation. 

A safety net of support 

Connecting your benefits helps you go from offering one-off programs in a vacuum to weaving a true safety net that catches your employees when they need it the most. 

When vendors and peers can guide employees to the support resources they need, you prevent thinly-stretched employees from getting lost in the shuffle—or worse, leaving your company altogether due to burnout.

At the same time, you’ll gain powerful visibility into how employees actually use their caregiving benefits. Armed with the data you need to continuously refine your offering, you can maximize benefits utilization, and more importantly, genuinely support employee well-being at work and home alike.