Let's face it: most companies would love to offer some sort of child care assistance to their employees. But many employers and human resource professionals struggle to build the business case to pitch the benefit to their C-Suite.
To help you along (and in the spirit of tax season), here are five reasons why child care is good for your business.
How Child Care Assistance Helps Your Business
Tax benefits
The federal government has several tax credits available to businesses that offer child care assistance. Certain states may also provide tax credits for child care expenses. What exactly that means to your organization will depend on your individual circumstances (employers should make their own tax department or tax advisor aware of the particular facts). But the key thing to note is that the support is clearly recognized as an important part of doing business, making tax credits a viable selling point for those looking to make the case.
Productivity
In our study of several thousand working parents, employees reported that without a clear and dependable child care resource, they use time at work to search for a solution. With the child care question solved, on the other hand, employees told us they're free to focus. And in another study, almost every employee - 99% of them - say back-up care helped them to complete their work.
Retention
Great employees are more likely to stay with an employer that assists them with finding quality child care ; in most cases, their most pressing work/life balance challenge. On the flipside, employers that don't offer child care assistance can lose their high performing employees to organizations that do. In our research, more than one-in-seven employees told us they've actually turned down job offers just so they can keep access to their employer's day care center.
Business Continuity
How much time do your employees lose driving to and from far-away child care centers? How many days do they take off because there's no school (in addition to snow days, by the way, the average school calendar has about 30 days off from school). Those kinds of delays and absences add up, affecting the parent, their colleagues and direct reports, their supervisors, and your bottom line.
Employer of Choice
Child care has significant psychic benefits - it makes your employees like you...even brag about you. I can speak to this personally. With Bright Horizons child care assistance, I was able to have all three of my children at my workplace center from infancy through preschool, and then on school vacations, holidays, and summer camp. When I started traveling for work, I was able to bring my children with me and use back-up care in local Bright Horizons centers near where I was going.
Those last benefits - the psychic ones - simply can't be overstated.I've been at Bright Horizons more than 20 years. And child care is no small reason why.
