Bright Horizons Early Education and Preschool in Boston’s Seaport District has a sign in the window stating that the child care center will close on April 2, 2020. Getty Images/David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe As workplaces reopen, companies are remembering the lessons learned during the Covid epidemic, such as the need of addressing workers’ needs by providing benefits that go farther than before in terms of child care. Companies took notice as working parents juggled their careers and caregiving during the health crisis. As a result, many companies are trying to give advantages such as backup child care or on-site day-care facilities. Benefits are being expanded for companies who currently provide similar services, such as reasonable tutoring, as a method to retain skilled workers. These benefits, coupled with reduced hours or work-from-home days, are being designed to help employees combine their work and caregiving responsibilities, which is keeping some parents out of the workforce. These benefits are especially essential for women, who continue to shoulder the burden of family caregiving tasks, a fact that was highlighted during the pandemic. Despite the fact that women make up less than half of the workforce in the United States, they were responsible for the majority of the reduction in the labor force during the first year of the pandemic. According to Pew Research Center data, 2.4 million women quit the workforce between February 2020 and February 2021, compared to 1.8 million men. Lack of inexpensive child care is one of the most significant obstacles for working parents. Only 39% of respondents with earnings under $50,000 and children at home stated they could afford child care in McKinsey’s American Opportunity Survey. Between March 9 and April 8, an online survey of 25,109 people over the age of 18 was conducted across the United States. While the shortage of inexpensive child care had been a hurdle for many parents prior to the pandemic, the crisis added to their stress. Some had to deal with closed facilities, reduced services, or concerns about the spread of Covid-19 in child-care institutions. Companies are attempting to reintegrate women into the workforce, which hasn’t happened in a long time, as the number of Covid cases has dropped drastically from its peak and vaccination rates have risen. “The last time we saw child care — and attempts by businesses to bend over backwards to enhance women’s involvement in the job market — was in the late 1990s,” said Diane Swonk, Grant Thornton’s chief economist. “There’s no muscle memory in terms of what we’re going through in terms of labor market pressure,” she said. “There’s something unusual about us all attempting to open up at the same time.” “Consumers are spending, and businesses are scrambling to ramp up quicker than workers are able or willing to return,” says the report. The use of backup care is on the rise. Bright Horizons Family Solutions, which organizes and coordinates employer-based child care and educational benefits, is witnessing an increase in demand for its services. General Motors, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook are among its clients. Last year, more than a hundred of Bright Horizon’s new clients acquired backup care coverage. Employees can use this service to drop their children off at a Bright Horizons daycare center at the last minute if their child care plans fall through. According to Maribeth Bearfield, chief human resources officer at Bright Horizons, backup care consumption was nearly 20 times higher during the first three months of the pandemic than pre-pandemic levels. She added that it had continued to rise throughout Covid. “People recognize that they required child care to be able to come to work, especially for vital workers,” she said. Bright Horizons learnt from its clients that without backup care during the pandemic, 50% of employees would have had to reduce their work hours, 33% would have missed crucial deadlines, and 20% would have had to take a leave of absence or quit their job, according to Bearfield. Companies that already provide backup services are expanding their offerings, she said. According to Bearfield, the number of employees covered by Bright Horizons increased by about 20% last year. “As an employer, ten, fifteen years ago, we wanted to do everything we could to help our employees,” Bearfield said, “but we didn’t delve as deep into family support as we do today.” “An employer would never have imagined that their employees would require tutoring or nanny networks.” Child care may be funded or discounted as a result of the benefits. “Who would have guessed that your boss would pay for your babysitter?” said Bearfield. “Forward-thinking businesses realized that if they could assist working women in coming to work and alleviating some of the burden and emotional load of child care, they would have more productive employees.” Other employers might think about transforming office space into day-care centers and hiring a company to run them. “It saves their employees a lot of money on child care,” said Cindy Lehnhoff, director of the National Child Care Association. At Mercedes-Benz and Carnival, Lehnhoff oversaw employer-based child-care centers. The cost of renting space can account for between 25% and 35% of a typical child-care center’s operating costs, but if employers cover that cost, parents can pay a lower rate. Taking care of the whole person According to a McKinsey survey done from June to August 2020, about half of organizations began offering or expanded access to parenting and home-schooling options for employees. Last year, Carter’s, a children’s clothes company and a Bright Horizon client, conducted numerous meetings to hear about the challenges faced by working parents. That discussion demonstrated how crucial family support had become. “Both our employees and their children were asking for mental and emotional health help,” said Jill Wilson, Carter’s senior vice president of human interest and talent management. “They were looking for ways to keep their children entertained, educated, and occupied at home rather than at school or day care. They required alternatives for attempting to work while juggling child-care obligations.” Following those discussions, Carter’s benefits website created a resource list containing tools, services, and organizations that can help parents, organized by child age group. The corporation also improved the bundle it provided through Bright Horizons. Tutoring for school-aged youngsters, preferred enrollment and discounts in Bright Horizons’ network of child-care providers, and discounts to enrichment programs and camps were all included as new advantages. These family-oriented benefits were introduced, as well as additional support for mental and emotional health and sleep suggestions. “We’ll keep working to support people’s whole well-being, whether it’s physical, emotional, social, or financial. We saw the genuine value in having a benefit like Bright Horizons’ backup care when schools and day cares closed, and we continue to see appreciated use of it as employees return to more of a routine “Wilson remarked. Elderly and older children’s services Companies’ increased attention on family-oriented benefits is not confined to assisting workers with small children. Benefits are also being expanded to meet the requirements of older children and even the parents of employees. Employers are looking to help parents fill in the gaps left by remote learning by providing tutoring services or access to test prep, as well as assistance in navigating college admissions or writing applications. “Those kinds of resources were no longer exclusive to high school pupils during Covid. So I believe that’s where businesses are headed: ‘we have to do everything we can to keep our people,’ they say “Bearfield remarked. “I believe the main truth is that firms who aren’t adaptable risk losing employees.” Best Buy, which uses Care.com to provide backup child care for its employees, has started providing $100 monthly reimbursements for tutors for children aged 5 to 18, as well as expanding its paid leave program, which now allows employees to take up to six weeks off. Best Buy also became more accommodating to employees, allowing them to work fewer hours or split a full-time role with another employee. Siblings, in-laws, grandchildren, grandparents, and children 18 and older are now covered by the company’s caregiver pay benefit, which gives employees with four weeks of full pay to care for family members. Previously, the benefit was limited to a husband or domestic partner, a parent, and children under the age of 18. The electronics giant also launched Wellthy, a care concierge that helps people find nannies or child care for family members with complex, chronic, or continuing care needs. With an aging population in the United States, it is critical for businesses to provide assistance to elder parents. “We have an economy that requires all hands on deck due to aging demographics, and this is true throughout the developed world,” Swonk explained. It’s still too early to determine whether their efforts to re-enter the workforce are successful. It will most likely become more apparent around the same time as schools return, making it difficult to separate the two, according to Swonk. “One of the things that the pandemic has done is… [force businesses to regard workers as human people with needs, rather than commodities that can be swapped out and readily replaced,” Swonk added. “That’s a big change, and it’s giving workers a chance to bargain like they’ve never had before, especially women who have previously gotten the short end of the stick.” It’s possible that the shift is here to stay. Both the government and customers are emphasizing the importance of the importance of the importance of the importance of the importance of the importance of the importance of the importance of the importance of the importance of the importance/n
Read More
