Sneha SrinivasanThe Hard Impact Of Child Care On Today’s Salary
More than 22 million millennial parents live in the U.S., with about 9,000 generation Alpha babies born to them each day. According to the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies. Without question, childcare is often the second-largest monthly expense for these families after their mortgage or rent payment.
Most organizations fear the capital investment associated with starting a child care policy which includes an on-site child care center. But the number of companies offering child care for their employees is increasing, significantly.
More importantly, companies that want to successfully compete for millennial talent are improving their family-friendly benefits. Particularly, On-site child care centers are an excellent competitive advantage. Since millennial parents try to spend time with their children whenever possible and value work-life integration.
It’s important to realize that parents gain peace of mind knowing their children are in a nearby, quality program.
Therefore, Corporate child care centers:
- reduce absenteeism,
- help companies retain good workers, and
- employees can better focus on their work.
These 2 best-in-class organizations, Aflac and SAS, weigh in below on the formation of their child care policies and why they considered them critical to the success of their businesses:
Aflac
For nearly six decades, Fortune 500 company Aflac has provided financial protection to more than 50 million people worldwide. With nearly 70% of women representing Aflac’s workforce and more than one-third of their workforce being millennial professionals, offering on-site child care is one of their popular benefits in demand.
Aflac’s philosophy is to take care of its employees so that the employees can take care of the business.
- Their goal is to simplify employees’ work-life balance.
- They also have two on-site daycare centers for the children of Aflac employees only.
- Extended hours are available at one of the daycare centers to accommodate the multiple shifts of Aflac team members.
- Additionally, certified Pre-K programs are offered at both centers and are open to Aflac employees’ children and the public.
Indeed, not only are Aflac’s child care centers NAEYC accredited, the company has been recognized as an employer of choice by Fortune on four separate rankings.
SAS
As the global leader in analytics, SAS accredits its culture to the success of the organization. So, for nearly 40 years SAS has offered high-quality onsite daycare and preschool for 600 children, as well as a community and regional subsidy to help offset the cost of child care for their employees. Moreover, for the past 20 years, SAS has been named as Fortune’s Best Places to Work in the US and has been named as the best place to work for new dads, single parents, women, working parents, and millennials.
In addition to onsite child care, SAS offers multiple on-site camp options. As our population aged and more children became school-aged, our employees expressed a need for summer care options.
Furthermore, Mann suggests it begins with listening to your team and delivering on their specific requests.
In short, organizations should ask:
- How would implementing a child care policy make us more competitive?
- What is the worst-case scenario if we implement this?
Read more about the hard impact of child care on today’s salary.
