I went half-time in my job at Cranfield to look after my mum in her final years. Like many others, I hadn’t thought of myself as a ‘carer’ early on - just someone doing what they wanted to do for a parent who’d always cared for me. And I struggled. My social and professional circles narrowed, efforts at staying fit were abandoned.

Employers large and small need to take care! They are at risk of losing some of their most valued and valuable employees. They will not lose these employees to competitors or to self-employment but to the employees’ loved ones, for whom the employees have significant caring responsibilities.

Next week (July 11th), the publishers Emerald are releasing my latest book: Take Care - How to be a Great Employer for Working Carers. I have gone with a different publisher this time, as this is a rather different topic to my previous ones.

David Grayson explains why supporting carers in their places of work is a crucial, but often overlooked, part of diversity and inclusion policies. He outlines five practical steps employers can take to ensure that they operate as responsible organisations.

Long before ideas of “Shared Value,” David and his co-author Adrian Hodges were promoting the idea of corporate responsibility as a driver of new business opportunities, in their books “Everybody’s Business” (2001) and “Corporate Social Opportunity” (2004).