Emergency Childcare

We all seem to agree on one thing here: it's tough to work and take care of kids, especially sick ones, at exactly the same time.

What we disagree about on this blog, and in this country, are the best solutions, and the degree to which companies should help employees balance work and childcare.

In a bit of good news on the childcare front, last month The Portland Oregonian ran an encouraging article about firms who offer emergency childcare.

"We're just hearing more and more interest about backup offerings," Sheila Niehaus said in the article. Niehaus is vice president for Knowledge Learning, one of the country's largest childcare providers with over 2,000 centers nationwide, based in Portland, Oregon. Employers need workers at work, regardless of whether their kids are sick or their childcare has fallen through. To offer solutions, Knowledge Learning has teamed up with Westport, Conn.-based LifeCare Inc. to dedicate space at its centers, most of which are operated as KinderCare Learning Centers, to employers willing to provide emergency child care when normal arrangements fall through. Companies subsidize the backup care, charging employees a daily or hourly fee.

The article cites a growing demand by employers -- particularly law, finance and accounting firms -- to provide childcare services that allow employees to keep working no matter what's going on at home. According to a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, 14% of 373 employers offered emergency or sick-child care services in 2006, up from 6% the year before. Offering backup care makes sense for the childcare providers, too, because they can charge more for backup care than regular childcare.

One of the backup care clients, KPMG, says that employees list emergency care as one of their favorites, according to Barbara Wankoff, the firm's national director of workplace solutions. "While the care of their children is important, they feel they can't let down their obligations or responsibilities at work," Wankoff said. "This solves a very real problem for our employees."

According to the article, KPMG offers up to 20 days of free backup child and elder care a year to each of its 20,000 U.S. employees, Wankoff said. The program has grown so popular with some workers that last year KPMG began offering what it calls "backup sharing," allowing employees to donate unused backup "usages" to others who had exceeded their 20-day limit.

Another national childcare company, Bright Horizons Family Solutions, (the company which ran the Johnson & Johnson center my kids used in the late 1990s), launched a backup child- and elder-care program in July 2006 that it says boasts more than 40 corporate clients, including Merrill Lynch and Freddie Mac.

Does your company offer backup care? Have you used it? Done well, this is a great benefit to parents with young children. How can we get more companies -- large and small -- to consider this employee benefit? And what are the downsides, in terms of creating resentment among employees without kids, or other opportunity costs?

By Leslie Morgan Steiner |  April 4, 2007; 6:00 AM ET  | Category:  Childcare
Previous: Childless at Work | Next: Staying Anonymous in the Balance Battles

Name:

Comments: