Employers Need To Think About Childcare

Many articles have already been written and published about the immense pressures working parents were under during the lockdowns. Besides the obvious benefits of spending time together as a family, cooking and eating meals together and saving thousands of hours of commuting, the prolonged confinement meant that parents had to educate and care for their children while also delivering on their work commitments. One of the latest such articles blankly stated, that during a pandemic, one can either have a job, or a kid, but not both. The New York Times article by Deb Perelman is a heart-wrenching read. It reflects the close-to-burnout sentiment of parents worldwide. One only has to enter a few conversations in moms’ and parenting groups on Facebook to tap into the sentiment of exhaustion and hopelessness as there doesn’t seem to be a respite in the foreseeable future.

Working parents on the brink of collapse

The confusion around the spread and severity of the virus among children, and the contradictory articles and statements even by the very virologists that should know means, that even if schools would open after the summer holidays, many parents are very worried, or outright adamant to keep their children home. A brilliant friend, who is not only a very well reputed academic, but the busiest person I know, recently decided to start homeschooling her two teenage sons, and so now on top of everything she has to find resources and become a home-school teacher herself. Even though it seems to be a herculean task, she is still one of the better-off ones. A great article by EJ Dickson explores the intersection of class, income and gender, and argues that when these three factors are compounded, many women working lower-wage jobs or in essential jobs are heading for a disaster.

It is therefore time for not only policy-makers, women’s rights advocates and organisations defending the interests of working parents, but also employers to reckon with the inevitable, that if they want their employees to remain healthy and productive, they need to find a way to ease the homeschooling and childcare burden.

Employer-supported childcare is not new!

The outdoor clothing company Patagonia has been offering onsite childcare to employees since 1983. Adidas, at their German headquarters opened their third childcare facility in 2018, as the demand grew and they had to keep up the offer, to attract and retain their employees, who incidentally also happen to have children. Many hospitals around the world have been improvising or maintaining childcare to support their front-line workers.

If the pandemic has exposed one thing, it’s that the notion of work-life balance, or the artificial separation of the spheres of “life” and “work” does not help during a global pandemic. Many people have started writing and referring to “work-life integration”, a term I prefer also, to characterise and describe what has been going on in peoples’ lives in the past half a year. The notion implies, that if work and life are inseparable, then employees must be able to bring their whole selves to work, and in the current situation, bring their work home. And that in situations like these, employers will inevitably become aware of what is going on in the lives of their employees, as we could clearly see also during these two fabulous BBC and Sky News interviews with two women experts, who were both interrupted by their kids on live television.

So what can and should employers do now?

It is certainly not too late to start:

Find out about the needs and worries of your employees

As always, if employers haven’t done so yet, then they must map the needs and wants of their employees. We know from experience working with organisations, that assuming what employees need is not the right approach, as the individual circumstances and preferences can greatly vary. So a quick survey to assess how many employees have kids that are not going to go to childcare or school full-time come September should give an idea of the size of the challenge.

Set-up interviews or a Focus Group to discuss preferred options

Tapping into the creativity and the network of employees always yields surprising results. Perhaps one of the employees may know a local childcare provider that could be mobilised for the company, or a suitable facility or an au-pair. If the company can chip in to 1 or even 2 days per week for a suitable, quality care solution for smaller children, or a parent-child office, and a study-group with a tutor for older, school-aged children, this is already a huge additional help for parents.

Address the health worries

There is good practice already. Maintaining the contact bubbles (let’s say groups of 5 children who are always in the daycare on the same day), testing at the first symptoms and isolating are the key strategies for the time being to address the health implications of the pandemic. Taking about individual responsibility and how to communicate are also important. If parents are overly worried, then maybe consider hiring a qualified, vetted educator who takes the children to the nearby park or playground, and by being outdoors further reduces the risk of contamination.

Consider the benefits, not only the costs

Employers that have taken the road to investing in on-site childcare or after-school care or emergency childcare solutions rarely look at the euros or dollars spent per child or per employee. They are seeing this as a strategic initiative and consider this as an investment, in the attraction, retention, mental and physical health of the employee, contributing to employee engagement and performance. You want your employees to be able to focus on work, be productive, be creative and be available. With the children around, we know this is very hard to do.

If not childcare, explore what else can help

In our practice supporting employers with work-life issues of employees, we encounter the reluctance to venture into the childcare domain very frequently. They are afraid of the implications on the finances, the huge responsibility looking after or organising care for children or they simply don’t have the resources or the right person in place to manage all this. They organisations still can find ways to alleviate the burden on the shoulder of working parents for the next 1-2 years, while the we are living alongside the virus. They may consider home-delivery of lunch-boxes for the employee and their families. Or laundry service. Or a clown, tutor or volunteer to support parents with the home-schooling by zoom sessions with the children. Many of these options may not even be expensive.

Caring makes business sense

Any help, no matter how small, if it is offered in consultation with the beneficiaries, the parents at your organization, will be very welcome. Not only for the help itself, but in survey after survey, respondents said, that what they were most looking for receiving from their employers’ during the lockdown was understanding and empathy. Just by asking your staff about their struggles and worries and putting heads together to think of options will lift the weight they are carrying, and ensure that they will do whatever they can to do what is expected of them at work, and beyond.