HR and Employment Law News
Category
Topic
Free Special Reports
Get Your FREE HR Management Special Report. Download Any One Of These FREE Special Reports, Instantly!
Featured Special Report
Claim Your Free Copy of
Top 10 Best Practices in HR Management
HR professionals have the opportunity to play a more strategic role in the business by keeping up to date with the latest HR innovations--technological, legal, and otherwise. This special report will discuss how HR managers can anticipate and address some of the most challenging HR issues this year.
Topics in this special report include:
- Healthcare in 2012
- FMLA Paid Leave Initiatives
- Ethics
- Social Media
- Environmental Responsibility
- Workplace Wellness
- Classifying Employees
- Retirement of Baby Boomers
- Identity Theft
- Communications
Make sure you have the information you need to know about these current HR challenges and how to most effectively manage them in your workplace.
Download Now!
July 25, 2001
The New Perk: 'Backup' Day Care
ForFor a Limited Time receive a
FREE HR Report "Top 10 Best Practices in HR Management." This comprehensive special report will give you the information you need to know about these current HR challenges and how to most effectively manage them in your workplace.
Download Now
Too often, the only option is to stay home with the child. But the Christian Science Monitor reports that for a growing number of employees, the solution comes in the form of "backup child care."
It's the fastest growing segment of the child-care business, according Rosemary Jordano, CEO and founder of the Boston-based ChildrenFirst Inc., which provides backup child care services to more than 250 companies in a dozen major cities across the U.S.
The Monitor notes that a recent survey by Hewitt Associates revealed that about 15 percent of corporations offer backup care as an employee benefit.
By contrast, about 10 percent of companies have full-time care, which experts say is "cost prohibitive" to all but the largest corporations.
Employees with backup care generally get 20 days a year and pay a nominal fee to use a facility when their regular arrangements go awry, according to the newspaper. The facility may be dedicated to one or a group of businesses.
Working families understand that they have to arrange their own full-time childcare, Ms. Jordano notes. "What [they] can't foresee are these urgent needs or the last-minute breakdowns."
It's no wonder, then, that backup child care tops the list of benefits most desired by respondents in a recent survey by Working Mother Magazine, Jordano notes.
Dynegy Inc., an international energy and communications company based in Houston, offers backup care in its effort to attract and retain workers.
The company - which employs about 2,000 people, many of whom have children under 13 years of age - first considered providing its own onsite child-care center, notes Andrea Lang, vice president of human resources. But corporate chiefs quickly realized that only 25 to 30 employees would be able to make use of the facility. So in January, the company turned to backup care and partnered with ChildrenFirst.
"It provides opportunities for all of our employees," Lang told the Monitor, noting that already more than 100 employees have used the service. Backup childcare "reduces absenteeism and increases productivity," she said.
A backup center in Houston allowed Cynthia Gonzales, manager of online banking services for Bank One, to stay on the job when devastating storms swept through the city recently. Floods sent three feet of water coursing through the home of her mother-in-law, where Ms. Gonzales' two children stay during the workday.
If it hadn't been for the backup childcare, offered free to bank employees, "I would have had to take some days off," she told the newspaper. With 17 days of care still available under the plan, Gonzales said her mind is at ease for the rest of the year. "I love it, it's right across the street from my building," she said. "I can use my vacation for Thanksgiving and Christmas."
To view the Christian Science Monitor story, click here.