'Anyone can offer a child care benefit': Why KinderCare wants child care for all

Working parents will always be a valuable part of your organization. Providing child care benefits is a critical tool in attracting, retaining and engaging them for the long-term. 

Working families will spend nearly a fifth of their annual salary on child care, with an average spend of $325 per week, according to a survey from LendingTree. As such, 70% of working mothers would prioritize a job that provides child care benefits, and of those who are working part-time, 60% would return to work full-time if they had access to this kind of support, data from Bright Horizons found. 

It's clear that parents prioritize these workplace benefits, and benefit managers shouldn't feel intimidated by the logistics of offering it, says Dan Figurski, president of KinderCare for Employers and Champions. 

"Anybody can participate in a child care benefit," he says. "It runs the gamut of what it looks like —  everything from onsite child care to emergency backup care to just helping subsidize tuition for families. Whether you have 10 employees or 30 employees, or you have 300-1000 employees, there are solutions in child care for almost any employer to take advantage of." 

Read more: How Kindercare supports working parents

Kindercare currently has 1,400 community centers and 1,000 after school care programs available across the U.S. Figurski partners with employers to create customized child care solutions — not just for the organization as a whole, but for individual parents, too. 

"Their employees run a huge spectrum of needs," Figurski says. "We start surveying families and people who would take advantage of the benefit. We even see this at KinderCare: Our people who take advantage of our child care benefits are highly engaged, and for good reason. We're taking care of their greatest asset, their children, and there's a duty in that to us, so we pride ourselves on it." 

Whether an employer is interested in implementing an on-site center, or has no idea how to even start, Figurski shares some considerations for crafting a customized solution that's right for any team. 

Consider why you want to offer child care benefits

"There's a lot of variety out there for people to access high quality child care. Everybody has a different need or purpose. In manufacturing, for example, they're struggling to retain, recruit, engage those frontline workers. Sometimes it's cashiers, potentially in remote locations. We go to an employer and really dig into what they're trying to address. 

Read more: What does it take to be a great workplace for working parents?

The landscape is highly competitive for talented people today. [Benefit leaders] are looking for that competitive edge, without taking up the hourly rate or taking up the salary. What are you trying to drive from this benefit? What are the results you hope to see? Child care definitely pays for itself in the investment employers make." 

Think beyond working parents

"I can't tell you how many people who don't take advantage of these benefits [themselves] who say, 'Hey, I'm a grandparent. I love that you have this benefit. I wish my daughter or my son had this benefit at their employer. I'm going to tell them to go ask about this benefit.' So I would tell you, culturally, our people are proud of the fact that we offer child care as a benefit. And I think you'd find that with most of the companies who take child care on as a benefit." 

Read more: Working moms share their favorite employee benefits

Do your research

"Figure out location — you want to make sure you're matching where your employees are coming from. So if your employees are coming from the south suburbs of Atlanta and there's no child care accessible to them, then that's a real challenge for families. You have to discuss in depth things like quality of the curriculum or quality of the experience. 

The accreditation piece is very big. You need some outside, third-party company validating the work you're doing. I would encourage every HR executive, whether it's a Kindercare or another center in your community, I would never just take the word for it. I'd ask to visit it. I would actually show up as a [benefit manager]. It's that meaningful of a benefit that if it wasn't on site, I'd want to visit the inside of the center and feel what happens in there. If that center is a place you'd walk into as an HR executive and say, Boy, I'd send my child here, then you probably have the right company you're working with, because that's how you want to feel when you walk in. 

Recognize benefits for the whole family

We feel an obligation to our employees to take care of the total family. That's just not from the time [an employee] decides she's going to start a family, and that we have a great return to work policy for her, and a great maternity policy for it. How are we making sure that she feels like we are supporting her and her and her family through their raising of a child? So that does start at infant, but it also does include school-aged [care] through college tuition [benefits]. 

Do the research. There are working families out there that are making tough, tough decisions of whether I come to work today or do I have access to child care, and we don't want that to have to be a tough decision for any family. That has to change. We should solve this for them."