This episode covers the crucial topic of supporting working caregivers with guest Ashley Blackington, the CEO and founder of Dovetail.
In this conversation, she sheds light on the unique challenges caregivers face, whether they're juggling childcare, elder care, or both. We explore how caregiving impacts employees in the workplace, the importance of employer support, and innovative solutions like Ashley's care tech platform, Dovetail, that streamlines care logistics. Join us as we uncover how businesses can create more inclusive and supportive environments for their caregiving employees. You won't want to miss this conversation that bridges the gap between work and personal life in today's ever-evolving work culture.
Connect with today's guest:
Website: https://dovetaildesigns.co
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleyblackington/
Podcast: https://www.andbothpodcast.com
Be a guest on Ashley's podcast: https://airtable.com/appn6w6IWipJYIuA3/pagZys7UnECzM46iJ/form
Note - This transcript is automatically generated and has not been checked for errors.
Welcome to the NextGen Work Culture podcast, where leaders learn to support working parents, because being a family friendly business isn't just a nice to have anymore. It's essential for businesses that want to stay competitive, and it is critical for the next generation and those who are raising them. I'm your host, Courtney Ross, and I am so glad that you're here. Welcome back to the NextGen Work Culture podcast. Today I'm here with Ashley Blackington, the CEO and founder of Dovetail. Ashley, we're happy to have you here.
Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Yeah. So, Ashley, before we dive in, can you tell us a little bit more about you and who you are and what you do?
Sure. Yeah. So I am the founder and CEO of Dovetail. We are a caretech platform that is designers to streamline all of the logistics that come along with care. So that's my day to day. I also host a podcast called the and both podcast, and I am a mom of four. I don't know when that episode gets released, but it's currently August, and I am in the thick of trying to, like, manage my own self and get everyone ready for school. So right now, up is down and down is up.
Yeah, absolutely. So I'm in Tennessee, and school has already started here. Where are you, Athenae?
I'm in New Hampshire. So we have another two weeks before school. Yeah.
Yeah. So you're, like, right in the midst of the end of summer chaos. Everybody is, like, at each other's throat all the time, yet you're trying to get back to school, shopping done and all of that.
Right. And everyone's like, everyone's grown three inches and no one shoes fit, and it's just like, you know, it's a good. It's a good mix of chaos. And every time this comes around, this time of year, I'm always thankful that I. This is, like, for me, it's a plus of entrepreneurship because I have the ability to sort of flex my schedule to get into that and be able to have a little bit of breathing room. But, I mean, you always pay for it on the back end. So, like, the whole, like, you don't have free time. You just have flex time is how I like to look at it.
Yeah. If you take a week off in the summer, then that's a week later on, that's going to be twice as busy.
Yeah. Or you're just, like, shoehorning it into, like, you know, I always say, like, the nooks and crannies of, of your day. And that's where, that's where you make up all that time.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm very much working in the nooks and crannies myself right now. I've got a two year old and a four year old, and we only have, like, part time daycare, so I'm very much a nooks and cranny worker.
Yeah, it's, it is not for the faint of heart. So I'm like, I'm right there with you on. You're doing an amazing job. Like, it's, it's so hard. It's, no matter what it is.
And, I mean, we're entrepreneurs and can sort of set our own schedules, but what about people who, you know, don't necessarily have that sort of control or flexibility? So let's kind of dive into talking about employees or in the workplace. How can, how does caregiving, being a caregiver really impact somebody at work?
I think the biggest thing and one of the things that I'm trying to address is the fact that there is this general disconnect between employees and employers when it comes to caregiving. I think there's a lot of focus that's been, and rightfully so, and it's overdue on parents and as employees in the workforce. And I'm so excited to see, like, this is a topic of conversation that is coming on, like, in terms of, like, programming and workshops and options and all of that stuff. There's also the next level of it. And I think that that really sort of came to light more in the, after the pandemic or during the pandemic where people were taking loved ones out of, like, assisted living facilities or people were not able to transition into those facilities. And so people were put in this position of trying to care for an older adult. And that's not really something that's ever sort of been focused on when it comes to a workplace or an employee perspective. And I think what's really important about that is that this is a population that is growing, these caregivers and especially these sandwich caregivers, people that are looking after aging adults or people with long term disability or illness, and they're also raising children. But there's not really a lot of conversation that's happening around it. So I'm really encouraged by the fact that the parenting conversation is coming so strong at this point in time, and it's kind of everywhere. It's in the presidential debate of months ago, and it's in the news, and people are talking about programming and care and things like that. But there's this growing population of people that are caregivers that don't necessarily fit into the parenting tool and how things are marketed towards them. And I think that that creates an opportunity for them to be excluded out of the conversation, not on purpose. It's just not open. And that's one of the things that I really want to focus on is this idea of care is care, and it doesn't really matter who you're caring for. There's similar logistics when it comes to caring for an aging person and when it comes to parenting a young child. And so to try and open that conversation between employers and employees and then begin to think about ways that that is going to impact them in their day to day function in the office.
Yeah. So we talk a lot about, you mentioned logistics there. We talk about the logistics of parenting and summer camps in the summer and having to figure out childcare and all of that. What kind of, you know, logistical things are caregivers of, you know, elder or older people dealing with?
Yeah, there's, there's the logistics of, you know, doctor's appointments and trying to get insurance coverage and things like that. Like, there's a lot of, there's a lot of gaps that I don't think that anybody knows about when it comes to care for the, for the elderly and the, you know, in the long term disabled in this country that are historically filled by unpaid caregivers. And they're historically filled by unpaid caregivers. Because when it comes to trying to bring in somebody on a professional level, it's so expensive because there just aren't that many. There just aren't that many. There aren't enough people right now that are doing, that are able to train and provide care for aging people in this country to meet the needs of what is coming down the line. I mean, 10,000 people a day are hitting age 65 in this country every single day from now until 2030. So by the time. Yeah, by the time you get to the end of this decade, one in, I believe it's one in four. It's either one in four or one in five Americans is going to be over 65. We're going to be. Yeah. And end of, end of that lifespan heavy population, and we don't have the people that are coming up and moving into positions where they work in those industries. And it's frankly. Cause you don't make enough money to do that and survive.
Yeah. Yeah. People are realizing that the caregiving space isn't really a great way to make a living, I guess, you know, so we don't have enough people coming into that. So, I mean, that's a whole other issue is how could we, you know, get more caregivers? The same goes for, like, daycare employees or teachers or anything in care, I think, right now. But we'll save that for another day.
It's a long episode.
Yeah, exactly. There's a lot of logistics that go into taking care of somebody who's aging. And I know my mom is kind of the primary person to help out her mom right now because unfortunately, her brother passed away a while back. And so it's just her. She's the only sibling, she's the only one close enough. Cause me and my brother don't live close enough to help out. And so it's all on her, you know, and I can see that from the outside looking in, like, how much that's impacting her. She did actually quit her, like, full time job, and she has a store. She's an entrepreneur as well. So she could kind of set her goal, her hours, but she kind of is a little bit, I guess, stuck in that because there's very, very few full time roles that have the flexibility that she would need or that would allow her enough time off or whatever to take her mom to all the doctor's appointments and such.
Yeah, I mean, it's, there's so many, you're talking about conversations with insurance. You're talking about appointments and so many of the things, things that happen around, like the care management side, are things that happen Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 05:00 like, you can't make a call to your insurance company at 08:00 at night. And I think that's the part that if you're going to meet a caregiver, an employee caregiver, where they're at, there has to be some sort of acknowledgement and space around that because it really is, when they say, if you are the primary caregiver, like your mom, if she's the primary caregiver and she needs to make a call to an insurance company, she doesn't have the option. So she's stuck between a rock and a hard place. Right. And that's what happens is people get wedged into this position and they're like, okay, well, I have to, I have to either shift down the number of hours that I can work or I have to find another job, and then that not only impacts her, that opens up time. Right. For her to be able to do more to take care of her mom, but that also impacts her physically, it impacts her financially, impacts every other part of her world because she is now putting that space and that energy into that, into that care.
Yeah, that's a lot. So how can an employer help with this, other than kind of having some compassion and understanding? Is there anything that employers should be doing?
I think that the biggest problem is that because we don't talk about it as an employee, you don't want to bring it up to your employer because you might feel like it's the same thing that used to happen when women were pregnant, and they would, they didn't want to bring it up because then all of a sudden you get stuck in the track of, like, the mommy track, right, where you, it's like, well, you're going to be out of work. And there's this, like, assumption around, like, dedication and all of that stuff that's just frankly not true. I mean, people want to go to work and they want to do a good job and they want to do all that, but they also are people that existed outside of the regular workday. So I think the most crucial piece is for employers to figure out how many employees are actually in this position, because a lot of what is coming on to the market in terms of products that are designed for this space may not necessarily be getting picked up by employers as an offering for their employees because they don't think that they have that concern at work. So if you don't know about a problem, you can't start to address the problem. And employees, there has to be sort of a bridge between the two, right? So employers have to make it a possible, like a safe, constructive, collaborative conversation with these employees about acknowledging, like saying, this is my situation. This is what it means to me. Employers, like you're saying, having compassion, and also like employees speaking up and saying, yes, because I think a lot of times what we do is because of this inherent piece, especially, like, as women in employed women caregivers, like, women are, more than 70% of caregivers are women, employed caregivers are women. So if employed caregivers that already make less money on the dollar and there's all sorts of other, I mean, that's a whole episode all on its own. There's all sorts of other factors that pile into that. It's like you get farther and farther away from feeling like it's something that you can open up about and address with your employer. So there has to be a space where they can come together. And then employers need to look for options and benefits that are going to help them meet that employee's needs, because that's what's going to drive retention. That's what's going to, that's what's going to downshift the churn of employees. That's what's going to make it possible for people to hire and retain talent, because we don't live in the society where somebody graduates college or graduates high school and they get a job and they work in that job for, like, 40 years, and then they get a watch and a cake, and, like, there you go. Like, people, people switch jobs, like, every three to five years. And the reason people switch jobs is not because, like, they don't want to do that job anymore. It's because the job doesn't fit their life. So if an employer wants somebody who's in that job, who is the most talented, and they don't want to spend upwards of two times their salary trying to hire somebody to fill that space, they need to meet their employees where they're at, because that's, honestly, it's cheaper to just offer benefits than it is to try and replace that person.
Yeah, it is. It's so, so much easier and cheaper to just keep the employees you have keep around long enough to give them a watch and a cake at the end.
Yes. Yes. We're all just aiming for the watch and the cake.
I love that. So, speaking of benefits, what kind of benefits are out there for caregiving? You know, I know, you know, for childcare, we have, like, backup care options or on site care or childcare stipends or breastfeeding support, all kinds of benefits. And, like, the childcare side of things. What about the other end of life? What kind of benefit options even exist?
There are. I mean, there's. There's benefit options, thankfully, that are coming out, like, for all sort of different levels now, which is really nice. Like, there are some, there are some benefits that are basically a, it's basically private case management. So you have, you can call and say, my mom is living at home. I need to find somebody to help me with this, this and this. And they will help you find that. Like, there's. You have basically a private case manager that will, that will help with those services. You can also. There's respite. So people that say, you know, I need to. My background is clinical. I probably should have mentioned that in the beginning. My background is clinical, and I. So we would have people that would come in and they would be primary caregivers, and they would the person that they cared for would go into skilled nursing for, like, a week or two, and that person would, their caregiver would then have their knee surgery, or they would have whatever was happening, and then they would recuperate and get a go through the process that they needed to go through, and then they would go back to being the caregiver. So that it's kind of like a bridge to that. And so the option to have things like that are coming online more in terms of, like, having somebody be able to come and check on that person during the day. And then there's also things like. Like dovetail. I mean, let's throw it.
So tell us more. Tell us more about dovetail.
So dovetail is a logistics management platform. So what it is designed to do is it is designed to be a space where you can put everything. You create your own private family network that includes the person that you're providing care for. So my background in occupational therapy is all about meeting the needs of that person and having that person being the driving force behind the decisions in their care. And I think that that is something that is not available right now on the market so much. And I think that part of the problem with this caregiving conversation between a caregiver and the person they're caring for is that somebody who requires care, and that can be something as simple as, like, can you pick up some stuff from the grocery store? For me, the fear that that person has around, once I ask somebody to help me with one thing, all of a sudden I'm going to lose my car keys, I'm going to lose my house, I'm going to lose my ability to make all of my decisions. And so what they do is they wait and wait and wait and wait and wait. And then where there could be a smooth transition and they could be functionally independent for as long as possible. Now keeps getting kicked down the road until there's some sort of event. And because my, because of my background, that's somebody falls, somebody has to have surgery, and there's some sort of event that happens, and then that person is no longer able to make all of the decisions in a way that they would have before. Somebody has to make those decisions for them. So their kid has to make decisions about what their home setup is going to look like now that they need equipment, their kid is going to be the one that jumps in and takes over the logistics of doctor's appointments and follow ups and therapies and things like that. So with dovetail, the idea is that that person and their family create their own network so that person can help, help be a part of the conversation about who is helping them. Because I don't know a single family. And I mean, if you're that family, like, call me, because I don't know a single family where someone is just like, we all just get along and, like, everyone is, you know, we hold hands and we all just, like, saying, like, someone drives somebody crazy and someone is like, I'm not comfortable with that person being a part of it or whatever. And so establishing that network means that you're acting on behalf of the care recipient and able to pull in people as needed. So, like, for you, for example, if your mom is like, I can't get to the grocery store, or I can't get to this, or I can't get to this, she's able to say, this is the stuff I need. She can include you in it, and you can say, okay, I can help with this thing, but that doesn't mean that your mom has to text you and all of this stuff. You're just a part of the care network. And so it happens in a very synced and non, you know, 50 million messages overlapping, which I think is what contributes to a lot of the overwhelm that happens with care logistics.
Yeah, absolutely. You know, that could be helping someone, even, like, across the country, be able to still be involved if they don't live close enough to help. Maybe they're in charge of ordering all of the supplies or something. My mom actually probably transitioned mostly into caregiver when her dad was sick. He had cancer and eventually went on home health and all of that. So I know that, like, just ordering all of the stuff, making sure he had a colonoscopy and had to have a bag. So making sure that all of that stuff was always in stock before he ran out. And, like, that was almost a full time job just staying on the phone with these places, and it was a lot.
Yeah.
So I could see where, you know, even a task like that could be offloaded to somebody who can't physically be there and help, but could help with other things. And it would be so much easier to just have it all in one place.
Yeah. Because it really is. Like, what happens is, you know, we all sort of chase a pile of sticky notes around or a notepad or, like, a back of an envelope or, like, a note on your phone or however you do it, but that doesn't have a way to interact with anything else. So you really can't just shut that off to another place. And like you're saying, like, families are not in this country, families are not as big as they used to be, and families are not geographically as close as they used to be. Like, it's. It's nothing. It's not abnormal to have kids, and one lives on the west coast and one lives on the east coast and one lives in Texas, and everyone comes together for the holidays. But when it comes to care for aging people, most of that historically has been done in a setup that is not really the norm anymore. Families live close together, and they were right down the road, or they could help with that. And so how do we make it possible for somebody to receive as much care in that regard, which saves time for the caregiver, which saves finances, which saves all of these pieces in a way that doesn't overwhelm everybody, because what happens in those situations, somebody ends up being the manager of all this. You end up being the case manager, and that's a full time job along with all of the other pieces underneath that.
Yeah. So it looked like I was kind of snooping around on your website. It looked like in the app, you have, like, you can add a shopping list and then send that straight to Amazon or target or a few other partners. Like, that's really cool. Tell us what else in the actual app, what would we find?
Yeah, so, yeah, you can shop directly from there. So right now there is Amazon, Target, Costco, and Whole Foods. And so what happens is it actually comes up within the app. So it's not like you switch from the app to another app, which is a feature that I, as a parent, really need. Because what happens is I'm like, oh, I'll make a list of all of the things that I need to do. And then it's hard to remember if you put it in this list or if you put it in this list. So this way, you can go around and it works for all of this. But you can go around and make a list of all the things you need. And then you can fill up these shopping carts as you, as you go through. And so you can, you can really check it off from inside the note. But if you get interrupted, like one of your kids needs something or the phone rings or whatever, you don't lose your place and you don't end up having to circle around and chase your tail on that. So that's one of the things that's really important. Another thing that I think is really important is there's sort of a, there's a track of communication. So when you share a note with somebody in that network, they get an email or they get a text message, you choose, but they get a notification that this has been shared with them. But on your end, you also have a note that you also have it inside your note that you shared it with them. So it's not that, like, did I send that thing to them? I'm not really sure. And then the third kind of big change in that is that you can within shared calendar, a shared calendar and a shared note, it's, you're able to track stuff, like, especially with medical appointments. It's really hard because we don't have like a universal medical record in this country. And so what happens is if you have multiple people that are taking somebody to a doctor's appointment or they're working in therapy or whatever it is, what ends up happening is you're trying to communicate what is going on there. And you say you're sitting in a doctor's appointment, for one thing, and they say, oh, you met with cardiology last week. What did they say? Now you've got to go through text messages or email or voicemail or all of that stuff. This way you can create your own record and say, okay, that appointment was on Wednesday. I'm going to look it up. And that person who took them to cardiology can take a picture of whatever the lab results were. They can take a picture of whatever the summary is, or they can write notes in there. And then going forward, if you're not going to be the one that takes somebody to that appointment, but you have questions, you can put those in. And so the person who's sitting in the office with the care recipient has all of the information literally at their fingertips that they need in order for the person that is receiving care to be, to have everything be as streamlined as possible.
Well, that is really awesome that everything is organized in one place. I imagine even if you're the only person taking a mom or dad or uncle or whoever to the doctor, it's really nice to have everything organized in one app instead of having to schlep the papers around with you or go scrolling back through your pictures trying to find, oh, I think I took a picture of that paper or whatever. So that's really cool. Is the app already available or when is this launching?
Yeah, so the app is, there's a waitlist up right now for the consumer edition of it in the late fall, winter, we're launching our corporate pilot. And so this is first and foremost designed to be a product that companies will offer as part of a benefits package to their employees. And a big driver of that is so that this conversation around caregiving starts to take place. And so that will launch in the fall and winter, and once that pilot launches, then the individual consumer app will be available on the app store.
Yeah, that's awesome. I think this will be such a great benefit for employers to be able to offer. But also, like you said, it's just, you know, starting the conversation like, this is something your people might need because you have a lot more caregivers on your staff than you probably realize.
Ashley00:25:16 - 00:27:21Exclude
Yeah. And I also think too, like, when it was, this did start out as a, as a parent, nuclear family kind of space, because, you know, we only, we only create solutions to our own problems. And for me, it was like, there's too many things, and the other part, too is like, there's too many things that I am fundamentally responsible for that I don't need to be. Like, I'm the person that's, like, that's, that's managing all of this, whereas I have a partner who is able to, you know, he's a fully functioning adult human and he can do this stuff. But the thing that kept, that kept, like, cutting that process short was that the amount of information that I held and the amount of information that he needed was always a mismatch in order for things to happen. But the only way to do that is for me to, you can't really ever fundamentally pass something off. And so dovetail is designed to be kind of like, I talk about it as like a virtual coffee table. Like, I take the information and I put it on the coffee table, and then he can pick up the information and pull it from there. And that's the idea is like, when you have, like, a care network of things and you have somebody that's still doing the administrative management piece, it's not actually a relief for them. But if you have a care network where all of the information lives outside of one person, then that provides that relief to overwhelm, that helps take that person down from being the one who has to, like, oversee everything and gives them the opportunity to free up the bandwidth so that they can do stuff like work when they are at work, so that they can, they can truly pass off these tasks so they can close the tab, whatever, you know, whatever reference you want to make. It's like, you can work with 30 tabs open, but if you have 60 open, like, your computer is running slow, so it's just trying to alleviate the overwhelm on behalf of the administrator and also create the opportunity for that equity and caregiving piece that really makes everything better for everybody.
Yeah. Well, that's awesome. Ashley, thank you so much for coming on today. This was such an insightful conversation and I can't wait to see dovetail in the future.
Thank you. Yeah, I'm excited. There's the waitlist is up, so if anyone is interested in it, it is on Dovetaildesigns Co. And you can sign up and you'll get an email when it launches.
All right, cool. And I'll be sure that there's a link for that in the show notes as well.
Thank you.
Kortney00:27:46 - 00:28:140:03 - 28:14
Thank you. Ashley. If you enjoyed this episode, I know you'll love the future ready work culture framework. Head over to courtneyross.com framework to download your copy and start building a family friendly, future ready workplace today. Don't forget to subscribe to the Nextgen work culture so you never miss an episode. I'd love it if you'd also take a moment to leave a review. Until next time, take care.