Not without my mother

FAMILY TIES: You’ve just been offered a great job in another town, or your company is relocating. You’d love to accept the job offer, and you’d be willing to relocate. There’s just one problem: an elderly parent you can’t leave behind.

This is a dilemma that many baby boomers are facing, and the number of companies that offer help is increasing. According to a 2009 relocation study by the removal company Atlas Van Lines , about 21 per cent of US companies provide assistance to employees with ageing parents. This is up from 18 per cent in 2006.

Paula Rosput Reynolds moved her 93-year-old father by company plane from Atlanta, Georgia, to Seattle, Washington, when she became CEO of Safeco, an insurance company, in 2006. Her father, who suffered from congestive heart failure, was too weak to fly on a commercial airline. The company provided the plane as a benefit to its new executive.

"He died in his own bed," says Paula Rosput Reynolds.

Reynolds and her husband arranged private nursing care and bought a house with a lift so that her father could live with them. They did not want to put the elderly man into an institution, Reynolds told The Wall Street Journal. A year later, “he died in his own bed. You can’t put a price on that,” she says.

Catherine Wolfe is an American who works for the Dutch information services company Wolters Kluwer NV . Wolfe was offered a job as head of the company’s British unit in 2007, a position she accepted on the condition that her 83-year-old mother could come with her. Her salary negotiations included the cost of moving her mother and finding an apartment for her.

Chief executive Nancy McKinstry said it was the first time the company had paid to relocate an employee’s parent, but that she would consider approving similar plans in future. Making relocated families feel comfortable in their new homes “ultimately benefits the company”, McKinstry says.