KinderCare breaks it down: What working parents want from their child care benefits

Dan Figurski, president of KinderCare for Employers and Champions, has been with the child care provider for more than a decade, and sees every day how working parents' needs have continued to evolve. 

"Our scale and our ability to provide services to an employer across a wide spectrum is really important to organizations," Figurski says. "[Parents] are looking for more flexibility and [benefits that are] meeting them where they're at." 

Child care benefits are becoming table stakes for benefit managers: In fact, KinderCare data reveals that 85% of Fortune 500 leaders say child care offerings reduce turnover, and 86% point to these benefits as a differentiator for attracting top talent. 

Read more: Benefits to help working parents survive the summer 

But like all other employee benefits, child care needs are not one-size-fits-all, Figurski says. The more flexible you can be with your benefits, the more impact they'll have on employees, and on your business.  

"Part-time, flexible models, where you have available hours for families to drop in as they need to for care, is a big, big trend," he says. "Parents say, 'I don't need it every single day, but when I need it, I need it.'"  

With employees clocking into hybrid, remote and in-person work arrangements, child care support needs to mirror the schedules working parents have, too. While 78% of working parents still need child care five days a week, according to data from the Society of Human Resource Management, agile and personalized benefits are a critical area for investment. The pay off is often immediate: Child care benefits provide a 425% ROI for companies, based on recruiting, retention and productivity costs, data from Boston Consulting Group found. 

"You're looking anywhere from $10-15,000 to train an employee, so the economic advantage to providing child care and getting someone just to stay a year longer definitely pays for itself in that investment," Figurski says. "Even in our business, we see a decline of nearly 40% in turnover of people who take advantage of a child care benefit." 

Read more: How KinderCare supports working parents 

Quality care matters

While flexibility is key, quality is still an imperative part of the experience for working parents. That should be top of mind for benefit managers, too, Figurski says. Researching a child care vendor, whether KinderCare or another option, requires researching accreditation, understanding the culture of the center itself, and getting a feel for the experience parents and their children will have there. 

"You have to discuss things like the quality of the curriculum or quality of the experience. Do they use tools to measure engagement of teachers?" he says. "Ultimately, as a father, I really want to make sure that that teacher or caregiver is coming in and feels really good about their job each day." 

In order to maximize the impact of any child care offering you add to your benefits portfolio, hearing directly from employees about their needs and challenges will smooth a path for how best to proceed, Figurski says. When employees feel valued and heard, it pays off for everyone. 

"You'll dig in and you'll see just how many people this matters for, and even though it may be a small percentage, it is a very important benefit to those families," Figurski says. "You will slowly hear stories and challenges that you did not know existed for working families, and whatever that benefit looks like for each company, that's meaningful."