BASICS
Hilton is a hospitality company with 22 brands. They have more than 7,500 properties and nearly 1.2 million rooms in 126 countries and territories. Hilton has 178,000 employees. It is headquartered in McLean, Virginia.
Hilton has won numerous workplace awards, including #2 on Fortune’s Best Places to Work (U.S.) for 2023 and the #1 Best Workplace for Women for 2023.
While Hilton’s industry-leading commitment to support parents is evidence of support for caregivers (of children,) it does not appear that Hilton offers paid leave to an employee who must care for a non-child member of the family. Hilton offers flexible work policies that could help caregivers. Hilton does not offer much to help employees pay for caregiving.
Soft benefits like fellowship and learning vary at Hilton. While there is no evidence of structured support groups, Hilton’s Care For All program offers learning opportunities about caregiving, including caregiver self-care. We commend Hilton for training managers in how to effectively converse with employees about family caregiving.
Below, please read about specific benefits and ratings about Hilton.
LEAVE, FLEXIBILITY & DIRECT SUPPORT BENEFITS
Here at the Support For Caregivers Network we have taken to calling these HARD benefits because they are more tangible and somewhat easier to identify.
We found no benefit related to paid leave to care for a sick family member. Hilton offers 12 weeks of paid parental leave for new moms, 4 for new dads. We also found evidence that Hilton provides up to 35 days of paid time off “to ensure a healthy work-life balance.” That could possibly be construed as 5 weeks of paid leave for caregiving, assuming PTO needs no reason.
We found no information about unpaid leave for caregiving. So, if you took time off, you might not get your job back. Hilton offers sabbaticals to limited employees.
We found no evidence that Hilton offers returnships for employees returning from leave.
According to a 2022 Fortune article, Hilton has implemented flexible work policies in order to attract new workers. The company acknowledges that flexible workdays can be a challenge in an industry that requires frontline workers to be on site. However, Hilton is developing a program that allows for location and time flexibility that gives employees “the autonomy to choose where they want to work, when they want to work, and pick up shifts.” This is possible at a hospitality company that owns many different brands and locations. They even discussed how working frontline at Hilton could fit in with a nomadic lifestyle. The ability to choose when they want to work could be a major benefit for employee family caregivers.
Telecommute and work from home (WFH) options are understandably near impossible for most hospitality workers. Other than some executives and clerical support staff, most hotel team members are expected to be on site.
Hilton does not offer compensation for family caregivers to purchase care help, nor do they offer a back-up care program. There is a Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account that includes adult dependents who live with the employee.
Hilton provides support for family caregivers via Wellthy. This service will provide assistance to Team Members working through the often complicated logistical and administrative tasks related to care, such as finding the right in-home aide, contesting medical bills, evaluating care providers or find care for veterans.
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FELLOWSHIP, LEARNING, INCLUSION & WORK-LIFE CULTURE BENEFITS
These benefits are SOFT because they are often more difficult to quantify. We include the presence of support groups, learning programs and employee resource groups in this category. The survey results below may help indicate the effectiveness of these programs.
Hilton’s employee resource groups are called team member resource groups (TMRG). They have nine, including a TMRG focused on disabilities and one focused on women. The mission statement of the disabilitiesTMRG includes caregivers. Other than that, there are no resource groups specific to family caregivers. The full list of Hilton’s TMRG’s as of April 2024 includes “Asian and Pacific Islander, Black, Hispanic Latinx, Europe-Middle East-Africa, Women, Multi-Generational, Military Veterans, LGBTQ+, and People with Disabilities. Each TMRG is open to both Team Members who identify with these communities and their allies.”
Structured support groups are the gold standard for family caregiver employee benefits. They create a sense of belonging and identity for employees who are providing care to a family member. This is because they get to work together in a group to learn and grow. Although there is some evidence that caregivers of disabled people are part of a group, there is no evidence that any structured program exists to support caregivers.
Hilton’s employee assistance program includes free mental health counseling.
Hilton specifically trained managers in how to have conversations with employees about caregiving responsibilities at home.
Thrive at Hilton’s Care for All is a web-based program that offers mini courses about mental health self care, parenting, pet ownership, and family caregiving. For example, a link marked Family Caregiving sends you to an article on the website HelpGuide.org. Care for All appears to be an excellent resource for people who can read an article or two and feel helped. Here at Support for Caregivers Network we plan to dig a little into just how Hilton team members are using this resource.
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AWARDS
- #6 in Best Workplaces for Parents™ 2023 (Large)
- #1 in Fortune Best Workplaces for Women™ 2023 (Large)
- #36 in 2023 PEOPLE® Companies that Care
- #4 in Fortune Best Workplaces for Millennials™ 2023 (Large)
- #2 in Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For® 2023
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