When Home Becomes the Hospital: The Hidden Workforce Crisis Impacting Your Business

By Cynthia Iorio, CEO – Monarque Solutions

Not All Underperformance Is What It Seems.

In today’s hybrid and remote workplaces, it’s easy to dismiss lower productivity as disengagement or poor work ethic.

But the truth is more complicated.

A significant portion of employees who appear to be underperforming from home aren’t slacking—they’re desperate to come back to the office. They simply can’t.

Why? Because they’ve been left holding the burden of a healthcare system that isn’t supporting their loved ones—forcing them to choose between family survival and their career success.

The Unseen Healthcare Shift onto Employees

Consider this:

• 75% of all hands-on healthcare is being delivered by everyday people—your employees, your managers, your executives.

• For every 1 hour spent in a hospital, there are 3 hours of unpaid care delivered at home.
  

This isn’t because employees want to be healthcare providers. It’s because disjointed hospital discharges, poor coordination between healthcare systems, chronic underfunding, and massive support-service waitlists leave families on their own to figure it out.

Your company might have nothing to do with the healthcare system, but you’re feeling its crisis in your productivity, absenteeism, turnover, and engagement metrics.

Real Stories Playing Out in Workplaces Today

This crisis isn’t theoretical. It’s happening in your organization right now:

• The VP who wants to be in the senior leadership review meeting debating numbers but is instead driving his wife to the hospital for the first time in their marriage.

• The sales director whose brother’s alcoholism lands him in the ER overnight, leaving his kids at her door unexpectedly while she juggles urgent proposals.

• The dedicated workhorse who shows up early and never complains, working from her husband’s bedside during chemo, then caring for him through the night as he battles side effects no one prepared her to handle.

These employees didn’t receive training to do this.They didn’t plan for it.They didn’t sign up for it.

Yet they’re doing it because they have no choice.

These Are Not Your Slackers. They’re Your High Performers Forced Into a Corner.

We need to stop assuming that reduced output or increased absences signal disengagement or lack of loyalty.

More often than not, it’s a sign of your best people being crushed under an impossible load: trying to deliver exceptional work while serving as untrained, unpaid healthcare providers at home.

This is not just a personal problem. It’s a business risk.

Why Employers Must Pay Attention

Employers can’t fix the healthcare system on their own. But ignoring its failures is no longer an option.

Because the crisis is landing on your bottom line:

• Productivity loss

• Talent flight

• Burnout and disengagement

• Rising health claims and absenteeism

• Erosion of leadership pipelines

It’s time to wake up to this reality—and prepare your organization to respond.

How Monarque Solutions Helps

At Monarque Solutions, we help organizations face this challenge head-on.

We work with leaders to:

✅ Identify the hidden caregiving pressures in your workforce

✅ Build policies and supports that keep high performers engaged

✅ Train managers to respond with empathy and strategy

✅ Protect retention and productivity before crisis drives talent away

Your employees don’t expect you to solve the healthcare system. They need you to understand its impact on their work—and to lead accordingly.