Internal Investments 

Work to communicate with and understand employee needs, through surveys, focus groups, or other structured means. As you consider what kind of child care support to offer, a key first step is understanding your employees’ needs. The Pennsylvania Early Learning Investment Commission created a survey that can be shared with your employees to determine what kind of support would be most beneficial to them: http://investmentsincaringpa.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/EmployeeNeeds-Survey.pdf. Creative Child Care Solutions helps employers identify and address the child care needs of their employees. Their team can help companies assess and understand child care needs as they relate to employee recruitment, retention, and engagement; and determine solutions to support employees. Learn more at https://www.berksiu.org/business-community/services/creative-childcare-solutions/.

Implement best practices, like enforced meeting times, flexible schedules, and teleworking opportunities. Offering flexibility - including telework opportunities and boundaries on when meetings can be scheduled - is a low-cost way to effect both an immediate and long-term impact for employees. Policies related to flexibility are a low-touch way to help employees balance family and work effectively. Learn more from the Society for Human Resources Management’s toolkit for Managing Flexible Workplace Arrangements: http://investmentsincaringpa.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/EmployeeNeeds-Survey.pdf.

Create flexible spending accounts for child care. ​ Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts are pre-tax benefit accounts that employees can use to help pay for child care, preschool, summer day camps, and before and after-school programs.

Provide subsidies or vouchers for child care. ​ When employers offer vouchers or subsidies for child care, they help their employees save money and access high-quality child care. Learn more at https://investmentsincaringpa.com/subsidies-and-vouchers/.

Offer back-up child care assistance. Child care situations can change unexpectedly and last-minute, impacting the ability for parents/guardians to get to work. Offering back-up child care is one way to decrease employee absenteeism in the short term.

Offer on-site or near-site child care. MORE TO COME