Offering Child Care Support to Your Employees
Benefits
Supporting your employee's child care can help them retain talent and keep your staff's morale high. Recognizing and supporting employees who use child care is a smart business decision. Child care benefits can provide scheduling relief to employees which adds workplace satisfaction and reduces stress for parents in the workplace.
Evaluate which benefits will be most beneficial to your employees and cost-efficient for your business. Are your employees happy with their current child care program and would benefit most from child care subsidy? Or would they prefer to have their children at an on-site child care?
You can also collect data on what child care options are available in your community. There may be a shortage of certain types of care such as swing shift, infant care, or early morning hours.
Every family has different care needs, however, every parent wants safe and reliable care for their child. Providing well-rounded child care benefits helps all parents. By asking for employee feedback before you provide support, you show your employees that you care about their family's wellbeing and you value their ideas.
Support Options
Predictable Employee Schedules
An unpredictable work schedule can make it difficult for working parents to schedule for their child care needs. Rotating schedules make it difficult for families to access consistent and quality child care because most programs cannot accommodate those family's schedules.
Parent and Caregiver Employee Resource Group (ERGS)
These resource groups build communities, connections, and resources for employees with caregiving responsibilities for children, family members, and loved ones. ERGs can help ensure parents at your organization can find the support they need. These groups can meet online or during lunch. They may be for parents, or you can plan events for both parents and children.
Offer Paid Family Leave for All Caregivers
Data from the Department of Labor shows that 70% of fathers who take parental leave for the birth of a child take less than 10 days. New fathers want to take time with their child but we haven't create that corporate culture where this important leave is accepted.
Child Care Subsidies
Child care is expensive, even if a parent only has one child in care. In some cases, a family's child care can cost as much as college tuition. Employers can help reduce the cost by simply subsidizing. You may offer direct payments to your employees with children and they can spend the money on what child care works best for their family, or businesses can partially subsidize the child care cost by paying child care programs directly.
On-Site Child Care
On-site child care is a highly effective but costly benefit for businesses. On-site child care means that parents can visit their child on lunch break and during commutes, rather than only see their child when they drop off or pick them up from child care.
Companies have options on how to open an on-site child care. You may want to connect with an outside company that specializes in running child care programs. There are national organizations you can explore, or a local child care program may be willing to expand and open a site for your company. You may also consider running a family child care network where you collaborate with small in-home licensed child care programs to provide care to your employees.
Some well known companies that have found success utilizing on-site child care include Google, Patagonia, Home Depot, Cisco, and Intermountain Health Care.
Information on current employer child care start up grant
Flexible Employee Schedules
Providing flexible schedules is an effective and inexpensive way to support your employees. This allows working parents the chance to work without missing their children's activities and obligations. Flexible schedules work for all employees and give an opportunity for parents to meet family responsibilities including caring for elderly family members or a loved one with a disability or illness.
Capacity and Vacancies Data
Capacity and vacancies of licensed care in Cache and Box Elder Counties by city. Also listed is the population of each area for reference. For cities having less the 10% vacancy rate we are defining those as Child Care Deserts. A child care desert is an area where demand for space in licensed child care programs far outpaces local capacity. Capacity and vacancies data was pulled from the CAC database in March 2023. Since March of 2023 the number of child care program has changed. Please contact Leah at leah.schilling@usu.edu if you would like current data on the child care programs in your city.
|
City |
Center |
Family |
Capacity |
Vacancies |
Infant Vacancies |
Vacancy Rate |
Population |
|
Amalga |
0 |
1 |
16 |
8 |
1 |
50% |
|
|
Brigham City |
2 |
11 |
248 |
28 |
9 |
11% |
19,404 |
|
Corinne |
0 |
1 |
11 |
0 |
0 |
0% |
727 |
|
Honeyville |
0 |
1 |
16 |
7 |
2 |
44% |
1684 |
|
Garland |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0% |
2548 |
|
Hyde Park |
0 |
0 |
16 |
2 |
1 |
13% |
4700 |
|
Hyrum |
0 |
8 |
120 |
8 |
4 |
7% |
8403 |
|
Lewiston |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0% |
1811 |
|
Logan |
6 |
27 |
886 |
65 |
30 |
14% |
51,619 |
|
Nibley |
1 |
3 |
242 |
15 |
9 |
6% |
7087 |
|
North Logan |
0 |
9 |
120 |
9 |
0 |
8% |
11,176 |
|
Perry |
0 |
1 |
16 |
2 |
0 |
13% |
5094 |
|
Plymouth |
0 |
1 |
8 |
0 |
0 |
0% |
432 |
|
Providence |
0 |
4 |
63 |
6 |
4 |
10% |
7595 |
|
Richmond |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0% |
2730 |
|
River Heights |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0% |
1982 |
|
Smithfield |
2 |
8 |
400 |
21 |
3 |
5% |
11,811 |
|
Tremonton |
1 |
6 |
145 |
2 |
2 |
1% |
8,882 |
|
Wellsville |
0 |
3 |
40 |
3 |
2 |
8% |
3849 |
|
Willard |
0 |
2 |
24 |
8 |
2 |
33% |
1914 |