Quality Child Care at Work

Quality Child Care at Work

This year's PBWC dinner was inspiring. As the Director of Development for Bright Horizons Children's Centers, the nation's leader in developing and managing work-site child care, I was thrilled to hear Anita Roddick speak of the critical need for quality child care, and the Body Shop's own work-site child care center in London. It is in my view a pressing social and economic issue of vital interest to us all. Today, every company must identify and remove the stumbling blocks preventing employees from working most productively.

We see three drivers of work-site child care:

• Workforce 2000 - Companies are responding to the needs of a workforce with differing faces and new needs. Women and minorities have entered the workforce in astounding numbers. Dual income families are the norm, and in our mobile society, few have extended families available to care for their children. Companies competing for limited talent must look at new ways of attracting and retaining that talent.

• Great Place to Work - Child care is often noted as one of the top benefits provided by employers of choice. Twenty-five Bright Horizons clients who have work-site child care made the "100 Best Companies for Working Mothers" list. A DuPont study identified a strong link between the companies' family-support programs and employee commitment to the company.

• Total Quality Management Approach - Companies are finding a strategic link between work/family programs and performance goals. For example, Motorola's work/family policies and programs play a critical role in achieving its goal...to be the employer of choice in its respective industries. Motorola has four child care centers and is developing six more in partnership with our group.

Take the Leap

By joining the resources of employers with early childhood and family support expertise, genuinely high quality, convenient and affordable child care and family support programs are made possible for working parents. This premise has been supported by the Cost, Quality & Child Outcomes in Child Care Centers study (1995) which brought to the forefront the dramatic need for better quality child care in this country. The study revealed that most centers were either harmful to children or just not contributors to their healthy development because the quality was poor. Centers with access to extra resources to improve quality, such as those affiliated with employers, provided the best overall quality and children in them had very positive overall development.

Here is how you can make this happen:

• Understand and communicate how child care issues of your workforce affect the company's bottom line. Talk about child care needs among other employees. Collect real life examples of how child care issues are affecting the bottom line. find or be a champion for work-family issues. Form a task force or even an informal parent "lunch bunch" to spark conversation.

• Bring in expertise. (It is helpful in collecting accurate data.) Conduct a feasibility analysis, a needs or interest survey, analyze your demographics, conduct focus groups. Position the issue in relation to your company's strategic goals. Understand the elements of a high quality child care center. Benchmark your company with your competition.

• Consider your options. Access the support of a professional child care management group to help you understand the many different ways to structure a center, e.g., financially, with joint or single corporate sponsorship, with either an arms-distanced or close relationship between the company and the center.

• Be a champion. One person in a company can be the driving force that makes it happen.

I invite you to visit one of our centers in the area to learn about the experience of other companies.

Karen Mittelstaedt is Director of Development for Bright Horizons Children's Centers which operates high quality work-site centers for 125 companies in 23 states for such clients as Pacific Gas & Electric Co., Good Samaritan Hospital, Warner Bros., Mattel, DuPont and Glaxo-Wellcome. Bright Horizons' consulting division, Burud & Associates, conducts feasibility studies and other work/life benefit consultation.

For more information about work-site child care please call (510) 658-7720. About Work/Life consultation call (818) 796-8258.

This page is preserved from the original PBWC website. It is part of News and Newsletters in the PBWC Website Archive 1996–2015.