Balancing an unpaid caring role with managing your business

Being an unpaid carer who also runs their own business is something of a taboo – there are over 500,000 doing it (and growing daily), but most don’t know how or where to talk about it.

In this Lunch and Learn, Adrian Ashton shares what research tells us about why it’s increasingly important to better recognise this group of business owners/carers.

He also shares strategies and approaches that others have adopted to better balance these competing roles in their respective enterprises and highlight hidden sources of support that people might not be aware of.

Topics covered in this session

• The fact there are more small business owners with unpaid caring responsibilities than we might think (over 500,000 and increasing daily)

• Why this is, the impact this creates on our businesses and why we struggle to balance these roles

• Proven tactics and strategies from other business owners/carers to approach balancing the competing tensions in holding these dual roles, and sources of support

• Ways in which business owners/carers can positively disclose their circumstances to clients to mitigate risks of losing work with them

About the speaker

Adrian is an award-winning enterprise adviser, working with organisations of all types, across multiple sectors. After unexpectedly becoming an unpaid carer several years ago, he’s subsequently worked to raise the profile of other business owners in the same circumstances.

This has led to him being invited to work with national and global networks to help them better understand our realities, and sector bodies to create public positions that can help better advocate for us with policymakers.

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