Summary of the myths, realities and benefits of daycare in the workplace.
The myths and realities of day care
Few aspects of managing a business have developed as negative a mythology as child care. Critics say that it costs too much, is difficult to administer, and is fraught with liability problems. Some of the smartest companies around manage to provide some form of child-care assistance -- and they're boosting productivity and making recruiting and retaining easier. Let's take a look at what happens when you deal with this issue -- possibly the benefit of the '90s -- the way you would stock options, profit sharing, or any other incentive. -- E.W.
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Having a family, said comedian Martin Mull, is like "having a bowling alley installed in your brain." Nowhere do the pins clatter louder than at work, where the kids may be out of sight, but never out of their parents' worried minds. Are the little ones getting along OK? What if they are too sick for day care, or the sitter quits -- again?
For most employed parents, peace of mind comes with high-quality, dependable child care that they can afford. Unfortunately, given the long waiting lists, the high turnover rate among providers, and a weekly bill that tops $100 in major cities, parents are rolling more gutter balls than strikes in that game. Many families, in fact, aren't sure from one week to the next who will be taking care of the kids.
All these concerns affect the way a person works. Count the ways: the days that begin late and end early, the lack of concentration, the frequent phone calls home, the dubious sick days. What's more, it's no longer uncommon to see mothers and fathers turning down promotions when job and parental responsibilities clash. Lack of child care is a major culprit in perennial management problems such as retention, recruiting, and absenteeism.
Few companies are untouched by child-care difficulties. Those that feel they can ignore the problem may not be able to do so for long; tight labor markets predicted for the years ahead may stimulate many more companies to offer child care as part of their strategy to recruit and retain female employees. Already a tiny cadre of small companies is tackling the issue head-on. Among them:
Integrated Genetics Inc., with its associated venture, Gene-Trak Systems, a $12-million biotechnology business in Framingham, Mass., offers an information and referral service to employees in need of child care.
Group 243 Inc., an advertising agency based in Ann Arbor, Mich., administers a plan that enables employees to pay their child-care costs with pretax dollars. It also sponsors an on-site child-care center.
Perkins Geddis Eastman, an architecture firm in New York City, is liberal in its use of flexible work schedules and parental leaves.
Tempting as it may be, don't write these companies off as social crusaders or do-gooders. In reality, adding child-care assistance is a strategic decision, and companies make it for the same reason they might choose to offer stock options, profit-sharing plans, or other incentives: a significant payoff exists for the company. They are convinced that child-care assistance makes for more loyal, more reliable, and more productive employees.
That's not to say they didn't take a show-me attitude in the beginning: did their employees really need child-care assistance, or was the company merely being sucked into another fringe-benefit fad? Was child-care assistance affordable? Would it cause liability problems? Would it tangle the company in bureaucratic or internal red tape? And how would nonparents react to it?
These companies satisfied themselves that while little about child-care assistance comes easily or cheaply, most of the pitfalls associated with it are either exaggerations or outright myths.
How do companies make a decision like this one? "I guess you make it the same way you make any big decision," says Larry Taylor, vice-president of Taylor Corp., a company in the printing business that has had an on-site child-care center for nearly 10 years. "Is the problem costing us employees? Is it making it hard to get them? I mean, would it be good business? That's always going to be the bottom line, isn't it?"
Few aspects of managing a business have developed as negative a mythology as child-care assistance. But when you examine the myths one by one, you get a different picture.
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MYTH 1
We don't need it.
Chances are, you do -- now, or you will in the future.
Gone forever is the time when parental worries were left at home with the wife and children. Today, less than 10% of American households fit the Ozzie-and-Harriet, Ward-and-June image that many of us outdatedly consider a "normal" family. Increasingly common: two-thirds of married couples with children have two-paycheck households, and 25% of children live in single-parent households.
Indeed, women have filled some 60% of the new jobs created since the 1970s. In small business, the proportion of women in companies of fewer than 100 employees was at 44% in 1983. Sixty-seven percent of the jobs created from 1988 through 1995 will be filled by women. Demographers say that 80% of these women will become pregnant sometime in their working lives. In a sharp departure from past decades, when pregnancy ended careers, economic necessity will keep most of these women working. That's why the fastest-growing segment of the work force, now and for the foreseeable future, is mothers of young children. Already, two-thirds of women with children under three years old hold full-time jobs.
What's more, as the baby-bust generation comes of age, employers will face a shrinking labor pool and greater competition for workers. How to expand the pool? A 1982 Census Bureau survey revealed that 26% of nonworking mothers with young children say they would look for work if reasonably priced child care were available.
The overall aging of the U.S. work force is already creating tight hiring conditions in some regions and industries. Princeton University demographer Thomas Espenshade believes the worst is yet to come: "In the not-too-distant future, employers are going to find themselves in a zero-sum game, competing for the few good employees that will be out there. Many of them are going to have to increase their total benefits packages to attract and retain workers, and I think employer-sponsored child care is going to be particularly attractive."
