When working parents are provided with
Eighty-five percent of Fortune 500 HR leaders say child care offerings
It's an area of high need — and stress — for employees: In a separate KinderCare report, 66% of Gen Z parents said
"We're moving into a world where the expectation is work-life integration," says Jessica Harrah, chief people officer at KinderCare. "Any of us who are parents can say it is hard to impossible to bring your best, most creative self — the person who's going to give discretionary energy to your employer — if you don't feel like your child is secure. We can play a part in that by giving child care options."
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Though 89% of HR leaders said they plan to expand their child care offerings, KinderCare's survey revealed that many struggle to sell this category to their C-suite: Nearly 80% of respondents said producing proof of the long-term return on investment is a challenge, largely because they lack clarity on what employees specifically need and budget constraints. Yet employees are considering the long-term benefits, with 64% of Gen Z ranking child care benefits as one of the top three reasons they are staying with their current company, as did 52% of millennials and Gen X.
Child care benefits are table stakes, Harrah stresses. This is especially true as more companies put forth or increase their return-to-work policies. Eight out of 10 leaders surveyed consider child care offerings a "critical" part of successfully bringing workers back, and 84% said they have already dealt with or anticipate dealing with increased employee demand for child care solutions.
"You are putting employees in a really challenging situation, especially people with young children who haven't had to make that choice," says Harrah. "The more you can tilt their choice toward sticking with you, the better your business outcomes and the better the retention, and one of the ways to do that is making access to child care easier for them. Just by offering a benefit, you are saying, 'We see the challenge we're asking of you, [and] we also understand that we are impacting your family.'"
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KinderCare partners with employers to offer various types of child care services as a benefit, including on-site learning centers, discounted space at off-site learning centers nationwide and backup care options. As employers contemplate their options, Harrah strongly recommends putting any potential facility through a vigorous vetting process before adding it to a benefits package.
"My biggest piece of advice to employers is to ask about accreditation," she says. "That is an external validation of quality, and it means that at a baseline, those individual centers are meeting their local licensing requirements. It's a really good, quick, external way to say, 'Am I offering my employees a quality benefit?'"
Other forms of employer child care support include subsidies toward daycare for younger children and before or aftercare for school-aged children, as well as flexible spending accounts. PTO and flexibility around schedules are also critical tools for working parents. Leaders can get an idea of what their individual workforce needs through surveys, team meetings and other forms of feedback, Harrah says.
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As HR leaders continue to push for the benefits they see as most impactful, and need the numbers to back it up, Harrah notes the added value of working with an established employer partner that can provide data and information to then present to the C-suite.
"We can help you build the business case as to [the] why, what are the options for good, better, best," she says. "How do you then pitch it in a way that ultimately starts showing the retention metrics and results."
