Corporate childcare: the next big employee benefit

Work­ing par­ent Isabel Mohan and her hus­band have spent about £90,000 on child­care for their two chil­dren over the past five years, she esti­mates. Now, for the first time, Mohan is in a role that offers a £5,000 child­care allowance.

Mohan puts the mon­ey towards a child­min­der who col­lects both her three-year-old and six-year-old from pre-school and school then looks after them for the rest of the work­ing day. While the allowance is cur­rent­ly a one-off, it’s set to become an annu­al ben­e­fit, one that Mohan’s found valu­able. 

“I’ve been spend­ing the last five years jug­gling child­care and work. It’s been a huge cost, and it’s real­ly nice to work for a com­pa­ny where that’s pri­ori­tised, because it’s a lot of mon­ey,” she says. “It makes me feel more val­ued and pos­i­tive about my job. That makes me want to stay.”

Mohan is head of con­tent for Tiney, a start­up that recruits, trains and onboards home-based child­min­ders into its net­work. She pays her child­min­der in full, and Tiney reim­burs­es her.

The com­pa­ny has seen a grow­ing inter­est in such ben­e­fits on a wider scale. It’s about to launch its cor­po­rate offer­ing and is already hav­ing dis­cus­sions with large con­sumer tech com­pa­nies about employ­ee child­care pack­ages. 

Putting childcare first

Child­care ben­e­fits are in greater demand than oth­er employ­er offer­ings, such as gym mem­ber­ships, well­be­ing ben­e­fits, free com­pa­ny events and even enhanced parental leave pay, accord­ing to a sur­vey of 5,000 UK and US pro­fes­sion­als in Sep­tem­ber by recruit­ment plat­form Beam­ery. Despite the inter­est, just 11% of employ­ers pro­vide child­care as a ben­e­fit.

The same sur­vey found that 53% of peo­ple are con­sid­er­ing leav­ing their job in the next year, with 25% feel­ing their employ­er could have done more in the past 12 months to help with work-life bal­ance.

The results res­onate with Mohan, who’s become more dis­cern­ing over how employ­ers cater to work­ing par­ents.

“As much as I would love to ben­e­fit from free drinks and social events, that isn’t always pos­si­ble for a 40-year-old work­ing par­ent. That mon­ey could be bet­ter spent on sup­port­ing peo­ple in dif­fer­ent ways,” she says. “I’d feel more empow­ered now to ask in an inter­view, ‘what do you offer for work­ing par­ents?’ If I was­n’t able to get the child­care ben­e­fit else­where, then I’d want an extra £5,000 in my pay.”

Filling the gap

Cor­po­rate child­care pro­vi­sion isn’t just about reten­tion; it’s also a dri­ver of diver­si­ty and equal­i­ty. Expen­sive child­care is linked with neg­a­tive impacts on women in the work­force after hav­ing chil­dren. Accord­ing to data from women’s rights char­i­ty Preg­nant Then Screwed, around 62% of moth­ers who return to work either work few­er hours, change jobs or stop work­ing because of child­care costs. It’s call­ing for an inde­pen­dent gov­ern­ment review of child­care afford­abil­i­ty in the UK.

Founder and chief exec­u­tive Joeli Brear­ley believes the cor­po­rate sec­tor has a strong role to play to fill the gap.

“If employ­ers want to employ the best peo­ple, then they need to con­sid­er what those employ­ees need to be able to work to their full poten­tial,” she says. “I would love to see FTSE 500 com­pa­nies estab­lish on-site child­care and then doc­u­ment the impact on staff recruit­ment, reten­tion and well­be­ing. I think this will be the next pol­i­cy we start to see from com­pa­nies who lead the way on diver­si­ty and inclu­sion.”

Brear­ley points to out­door wear brand Patag­o­nia, which pro­vides on-site child­care for all employ­ees at its US head­quar­ters. At Patag­o­nia, 100% of new mums return to the com­pa­ny, she notes, com­pared to an aver­age of 79% across the US, while 50% of senior lead­ers are women.

For small­er com­pa­nies and those whose staff work in a remote or hybrid way, on-site child­care might not be fea­si­ble. But employ­ers could part­ner with child­care providers to offer oth­er means of sub­sidised child­care, Brear­ley sug­gests.

That’s why well-known nurs­ery chain Busy Bees has relaunched its cor­po­rate offer­ing. While it has oper­at­ed an on-site nurs­ery at Jaguar Land Rover’s Soli­hull site for over 10 years, it’s now extend­ing its pro­gramme, allow­ing com­pa­nies to buy places at Busy Bees nurs­eries or pro­vide cred­its to allow employ­ees to make book­ings them­selves. 

“It’s fos­ter­ing work­place equal­i­ty and enabling busi­ness­es to show they care about any type of par­ent return­ing to work. Child­care is invest­ing in employ­ees’ time — it’s right up there with med­ical care in my eyes,” says Busy Bees’ busi­ness sales direc­tor Antony Mor­ri­son.

Helping smaller companies

Child­care start­up Bub­ble spe­cialis­es in book­ing babysit­ters and nan­nies. It’s award­ing £50,000 in child­care ben­e­fits to eli­gi­ble star­tups, cit­ing stats that show one in five women leave the tech indus­try due to poor work-life bal­ance.

Bub­ble has also recent­ly launched its cor­po­rate offer­ing, with the invest­ment bank Numis an ear­ly adopter. Numis has tak­en out 50 staff sub­scrip­tions, each worth about half a day a month of ad hoc in-home child­care. 

Head of HR at Numis, Mica Ross, says she’s pre­pared to increase the num­ber of licences and the lev­el of sub­sidy if the demand is there. But what’s most appeal­ing is that a solu­tion now exists to allow a small­er com­pa­ny to com­pete in the ben­e­fits stakes with larg­er finan­cial insti­tu­tions like Gold­man Sachs, which pro­vides on-site child­care in some offices.

“Five years ago, I don’t know if I could have been think­ing about this kind of solu­tion. Find­ing some­thing that’s easy to man­age for a cor­po­rate that isn’t a huge machine is an impor­tant aspect of this,” argues Ross. “It’s the many small things you do that add up to you being a respon­si­ble employ­er that looks out for your peo­ple.”

Government support

Ross and Brear­ly agree that it isn’t whol­ly a company’s role to pro­vide full-time child­care.  

“The issue should rest at the door of gov­ern­ment. Child­care and ear­ly years edu­ca­tion should be avail­able to all chil­dren, not just the chil­dren whose par­ents work for a for­ward-think­ing com­pa­ny,” Brear­ley says. 

It’s an impor­tant gap to fill. When you con­sid­er the per­cent­age of moth­ers reduc­ing their pres­ence in the work­force or leav­ing it alto­geth­er, com­pa­nies like Patag­o­nia are paving the way for women to reach their full career poten­tial.