The pandemic has had a devastating impact on women in the workforce, forcing millions to choose child care needs over their careers. What can employers do now to bring them back?
The Skimm media company has added the Vivvi child care program to its suite of benefit offerings as a way to tackle this problem among their own workforce. All 150 of The Skimm’s employees will have access to this benefit beginning in January, which provides physical and remote education opportunities, child care facilities, backup in-home child care, and an employer paid care subsidy.
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“What Vivvi is allowing us to offer is not necessarily just child care,” says Lisa Dallenbach, chief people officer at The Skimm. “This is really allowing us to come out and say to our employees that wherever you are in your journey as a parent and as a caregiver, whatever your needs are, we have a benefit offering that is there for you.”
Whether an employee is working from home or going into the office, it can be extremely challenging to focus on getting the job done without proper child care. Yet another challenge to finding quality care? Paying for it, which was another attractive feature of the Vivvi benefit for The Skimm.
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Vivvi offers what it calls “Care Cash,” which allows employers to set a stipend — typically around $100 per use — for the employee to use on emergency backup care — even if that care is grandma.
“It's meant to be a flexible solution for families to secure care on their own,” says Charlie Bonello, CEO and cofounder of Vivvi. “We wire money into their accounts so that they can use it to pay grandma, who is probably delighted to come and help, but is still paying tolls and gas to get there.”
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While it’s always prudent to support working parents and caregivers, both Dallenbach and Bonello agree that child care benefits are not only a great way to show you care and value employees, but can be a great attraction and retention tool — especially for women.
“This is the reality for a majority of the workforce and women are an incredibly critical factor and component of our workforce,” Dallenbach says. “My job is to enable the success of our employees, whatever that looks like. Part of that is supporting them and giving them the freedom to make the choices they want, and not having an economic factor, or a structural factor be the reason they choose not to pursue their career, or choose not to come to a certain organization.”
