While no one has been untouched by the pandemic, working parents have been among the hardest hit. As members of the ‘sandwich generation’, meaning people in their early thirties to late forties who often find themselves in the unique situation of caring for both their young children and their aging parents; the loss of childcare and respite care for dependent parents has taken a physical, mental, emotional and even financial toll.
Even before the pandemic hit, the United States had been teetering on the brink of a childcare crisis as parents scrambled to find safe, affordable, and high-quality care for their children. Pre-Covid, childcare facilities struggled to find and retain staff, due in large part to the low salaries and often far-from-glamorous work! However, with Covid restrictions and constantly shifting guidelines from state and federal public health officials, the staff shortages have intensified, and many daycare centers have been forced to scale back operations or even close altogether. In fact, in a Harvard Business Review survey, two-thirds of working parents reported not being able to find daycare, while a Center for Global Development study found that school closures (Pre- K-12) created a need for 672 billion hours of additional unpaid childcare in 2020 through October of 2021, with mothers shouldering the bulk of those hours.
In the HBR survey, nearly 20 percent of working parents reported having to leave work or reduce their work hours due to a lack of childcare. Moreover, when deciding which parent had to stay home with the kids, 40 percent said that it came down to who worked more hours and who had a less flexible schedule. One-third, meanwhile, said that it came down to “who was better at it.” Interestingly, only one-quarter of those surveyed indicated that salary factored into who stayed home with the kids.
Pre-pandemic, women took on the bulk of the household chores, but this increased exponentially during the outbreak, with women reporting significantly more time spent cooking, cleaning, assisting with schoolwork, and playing with their children. Single moms and women of color felt the most significant burden, while men saw only “marginal increases” in their at-home duties.
As the folks at Harvard note, the pandemic has forced the childcare crisis to a fever pitch, and it should be up to businesses to respond. Specifically, they noted that in the 1950s, the number of women in the labor force was just 30 percent, while in 2018 that figure had climbed to just shy of 63 percent but dipped to 57 percent last year as women left the workforce in droves to support their home front. That said, the types of benefits businesses offer have changed very little from the 1950s and do little to support the reality of the dual-worker parenting structure most families live in today.
So, what should you be offering to attract and retain your top talent, especially your female workforce? Read on to learn about our favorite benefit offerings to roll out now.
Flex scheduling and remote working:
In the HBR survey, women were less like to leave their jobs due to lack of childcare availability if they had other options. These options include being able to take paid family leave through their employer, the ability to work remotely, and working for a company that supported and understood the situation many families found themselves in once the pandemic hit. While the last item requires a culture shift that may take some time, the first two can be rolled out following some logistical tweaks. Where possible, offer employees the opportunity to make their own schedules so that they can work around school closures or child illness. This doesn’t mean reducing their hours, it means trusting your employees to get their jobs done on a schedule that works for them. One of the few benefits of the pandemic is that it gave most businesses a crash course in remote working. You can still require them to be available during certain times, but chopping off time spent commuting can lead to more hours spent being productive, which is a win-win for everyone.
Childcare subsidies:
Even if the parents in your workforce have school-aged children, the US school system has always included holidays and breaks, where parents were sometimes scrambling to find childcare. Now Covid-related closures make it almost impossible for parents to use the schools as their only means of childcare. For most companies, it won’t be feasible to offer on-site childcare, but there are still many ways that your company can contribute. One increasingly popular option is to provide subsidies to help employees offset the cost of childcare, such as starting a fund where employers can defer pre-tax dollars and you provide a percentage or maximum contribution. These contributions can appeal to a broad swath of your employee pool if you make sure that the contributions can be used for kids of all ages, as well as even to help offset the costs of caring for an elderly parent.
Emergency childcare:
Even in pre-pandemic times, school and daycare were far from reliable forms of childcare. From random teacher training days to celebrating all the holidays, and then those long summer stretches, parents have long been scrambling to find last-minute daycare. Employers can help by retaining emergency daycare through an agency so that employees can call on the agency for last-minute childcare if needed. Offering this perk helps to provide reassurance to employees that their workday or even work week won’t be entirely derailed by a childcare snafu and that you, as an employer, are taking steps to make sure your worker can be as productive as possible.
Paid parental leave:
Despite being one of the most advanced countries in the world, the US is the only country among the 41 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and European countries that doesn’t require companies to offer some form of paid parental leave. While the government debates what they can do to contribute, businesses have been taking matters into their own hands. In fact, in 2020, 21 percent of US workers had access to paid maternity and paternity leave, which isn’t exactly earth-shattering, until you learn that that figure is up from 14 percent just four years earlier. Adding this perk might be particularly attractive to your younger new hires who may be trying to find a good place to land before starting their own families.
Affordable health benefits:
Technically, this is a perk that benefits everyone, but when working parents are scoping out new jobs or deciding whether to leave their current job, the cost of providing health coverage to their entire family is certainly a consideration. For example, working parents will be very much put off by companies that don’t extend insurance offerings to dependents, so this will be something that you will not only want to fix but will also want to tout in your next candidate interview. If you’re a small business owner striking out on the market, consider partnering with a Professional Employer Organization such as Abel HR. These PEOs pool their combined client list to have greater negotiating power in the insurance market. In addition to procuring benefits at prices you could probably only previously hope for, PEOs can also offer benefits that an insurer wouldn’t typically offer to a smaller business owner, resulting in a more robust benefits package that will appeal to a greater swath of your employee population.
College savings assistance:
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle agree that the cost of a college education has gotten out of control in recent years. However, neither party is making significant headway in a crisis and even if they did, attending college will remain an expensive endeavor. As a small business owner, you can help offset this financial burden by offering your employees an opportunity to put pre-payroll tax dollars into a 529 college savings plan. If you really want to wow your workers, you could also go ahead and offer matching or other contributions to help further offset costs and even provide financial education sessions to help them better manage their money in general and better understand the various college savings plan options.
