On-site/Company Sponsored Daycare

[Guest AnnaH]

I've been asked to research this potential employee benefit? Where do I start?

Any, and I mean, any information would be greatly appreciated!

[Sheila K]

Anna:

Call some of your local childcare sites (chains especially) and ask about discounts. Many will request information regarding your company (# of anticipated users, etc) before quoting a discount. You may also be able to contract with one of these chains to provide on-site care at your location.

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Good Luck!!!

Sheila K 8^)

602 683-1013

[jeanine]

If you have a large enough company and expect a high enough demand, you may want to set it up and run it in-house. For example, I work at a place where the employees are about 80% female, and quite a few are childbearing age. We have a constant demand for child care because of the nature of our company and the characteristics of our employees. Our center is on-site and the child care employees are company employees. The center is limited to children of employees. Child care tuition is well below current market prices in this area. Tuition is payroll deducted and may come out of an employee's FSA if they have elected into this benefit. Check with your state and local officials for state mandated staffing levels and other health and safety requirements. It has been our experience that in-house care is terrific and can be cost controlled better by the company instead of outsourcing. As an added benefit, parents are nearby and can drop in whenever they want, although access to the building is controlled by key cards.

[Guest nac]

First of all, you need to determine if on-site or near-site child care is right for your population.

We have a center run by Bright Horizons on our largest office campus. I'd strongly recommend that you look into having an outside organization run a center for you; liability is enormous.

Center-based daycare, at least in the northeast region, can be prohibitively expensive for lower-income families. As an example, our on-site center is open both to our employees and the community (we don't have enough employee participation to use it exclusively). Full-time rate per month for an infant is $975. That's the going rate for most of the centers in our area. The caveat: if you have a significant number of entry-level or lower-skilled workers (and thus lower-paid), on-site daycare is no real benefit unless you subsidize heavily. We subsidize on a sliding scale, but that same infant rate for families whose income is <$45,000 is still $650 per month.

One of your options may be to partner with other businesses in your area to sponsor a day care center. Again, call one of the large chains (Bright Horizons, La Petite Academy, Kindercare come to mind); they'll usually be happy to come in and discuss what it takes to get one started.

Another option, one we used up in the Albany area, was to partner with an intergenerational (child and elder) day care center. We provided seed money for its founding and as a result get priority placement for both children and elders.

It really depends on your demographics. Another option, which doesn't require a tremendous cash outlay but has high visibility, is a childcare resource and referral service. You can use either a local vendor (usually it's a non-profit organization) that charges the employer a set fee per case; or you can work with a work/life vendor that has national scope and can provide other R&R services besides child care. This second is what I use; e-mail me if you're interested and I'll tell you more about them.