Supporting Carers at Work: Not All Caring Looks the Same
Caring looks different for everyone, and many carers quietly juggle it alongside their work. Drawing on my own experience as a carer, I help leaders build the skills and confidence to support the carers in their teams.
The Fair Work Ombudsman uses the definition in the Carer Recognition Act 2010. A carer is someone who provides personal care, support and assistance to another person who needs it because they:
have a disability
have a medical condition, including a terminal or chronic illness
have a mental illness, or
are frail and aged.
Caring can look very different from one person to the next:
Carers of ageing parents juggling appointments, care decisions and, often, a slow increase in responsibility over time.
Parents of children with disability or chronic illness may be caring for many years, with needs that change as their child grows.
Partners and spouses may become carers suddenly after an illness, injury or diagnosis.
Mental health carers supporting someone through needs that can be unpredictable and are often invisible to others.
"Sandwich" carers look after children and ageing parents at the same time.
Having been a carer myself, I know first-hand how hard it can be to keep a career going while caring for someone you love. In addition, I’ve seen how easily burnout sets in when caring isn’t recognised at work. It’s a big part of why I do this work.
I help leaders build the skills and confidence to have supportive conversations with carers, recognise what they need and find flexible ways of working. I also coach employees through the challenges that juggling a career and caring can bring.
If you'd like to talk about supporting the carers in your organisation, please get in touch.
Beyond the Labels: Helping Multigenerational Teams Work Better Together
Age-diverse teams bring a wealth of experience, but generational stereotypes can quietly get in the way. Here’s how unconscious bias shows up across generations, and practical ways to help your team work better together.
Today's workplaces can have four or even five generations working side by side. A graduate in their first role might sit next to someone who's been in the industry for 35 years. That mix brings a huge range of experience, perspective and capability. It can also bring friction, misunderstanding and quiet assumptions that hold a team back.
The biggest barrier usually isn't the age gap. It's the stories we tell ourselves about it.
Most of us have heard the stereotypes - Baby Boomers resist change, Gen X are cynical, Millennials want a trophy, and Gen Z are always on their phones.
These labels are tempting because they're simple, but research on generational differences at work shows they're much smaller than popular commentary suggests. What looks like a "generational" difference is often about career stage, life circumstances or personality. A 25-year-old and a 55-year-old may want different things from work, but the reason is usually where they are in life, not the year they were born.
When we lean on stereotypes, we stop seeing the person in front of us. That's where unconscious bias comes in. Bias is easier to deal with when people understand it as a normal part of human thinking, not a moral failing. When teams can name it without shame or blame, they get more curious and less defensive.
I work with organisations to help age-diverse teams understand each other better, reduce the impact of unconscious bias and build stronger, more inclusive ways of working.
Please reach out if you’d like to discuss how we can work together to support your team.
Workshops Deliver Content. I Deliver Change.
It All Begins Here
I’ve spent years working in learning and development, and I’ve watched the same pattern play out more times than I can count. People attend a workshop, feel genuinely energised, take notes, maybe even have a breakthrough moment in the room. Then a few weeks later, they’re right back to the same behaviours they walked in with. Nothing actually changed.
That pattern is exactly what pushed me to rethink how I work with clients. Content doesn’t build capability. Practicing under pressure does.
I run capability sprints: short, focused programs that combine simulations, assessments, and applied practice, so people aren’t just hearing about a skill, they’re using it in a realistic scenario, getting feedback, and adjusting in real time.
The difference shows up fast. Instead of walking away with slides, participants walk away having already changed how they think and act under pressure, which means results show up in weeks. More importantly, participants feel confident they can put in to practice what they’ve learned in their day-to-day roles.
If you’re evaluating leadership development options and want something that changes behaviour rather than just delivering content, let’s talk about what a capability sprint could look like for your team.
Coaching Isn’t Advice. It’s a Partnership.
It All Begins Here
One of the biggest misconceptions about coaching is that it’s about someone telling you what to do. It’s not. Coaching is goal-oriented, and it starts with chunking things down: uncovering the real problem underneath the surface issue, gaining clarity on what’s actually going on, and shaping a goal that’s specific enough to act on.
From there, my role isn’t to hand over a solution. It’s to help the person set their own goals and identify the steps that will get them there. The goals have to be theirs, because ownership is what drives follow-through.
That’s why I think of coaching as a partnership rather than a service I deliver. It’s an ongoing process of refining someone’s leadership approach, whether that’s self-leadership, or how they lead a team. The relationship keeps evolving as the person grows, and so do the goals.
If you’ve ever hesitated to work with a coach because you thought you’d be told what to do, that’s exactly the misconception I want to clear up. Coaching works because the answers come from you. I’m just there to help you find them faster.