8 Common Reasons Working Parents Need Back-Up Care
- Children who are home sick
- Nanny cancellations or sick days
- School holidays and summer vacation
- Weather emergencies
- Schools closed for teacher development
- Lack of child care options while on a daycare waiting list
- Relocated employee without family nearby to call in a pinch
- Before- and after-school gaps in care time for parents with long hours
The need for back-up child care
For working professionals, caring for young children while advancing their careers can feel overwhelming at times. Workers are often forced to skip meetings, miss deadlines, or sacrifice billable hours to deal with child care emergencies.
Balancing an elementary school schedule with a professional work week is not easy, but it’s essential for parents of children who are still too young to be on their own. According to research, nearly half of all working mothers have had to dial back their careers to accommodate their child’s needs. Implementing back-up daycare programs is an effective way for employers to make their workplace more family-friendly and to recruit top talent, while enabling productive and sustained careers for employees.
Back-up care with Bright Horizons
As a premier provider of corporate daycare centers, Bright Horizons provides back-up child care that can help employees solve child care gaps and enable employers to better support their workers with families.
When employees experience a disruption in their normal care routine, they can contact our 24-hour call centers staffed with experienced consultants who can help to arrange the best care for their children. The employee’s time is limited to the phone call – Bright Horizons staff takes care of the rest, preventing the stress and distraction of child care gaps from affecting business productivity.
Back-up child care with Bright Horizons includes:
- Center-based care at any one of our 3,500+ child care locations, providing convenient emergency care in a location operated or directly contracted with Bright Horizons.
- In-home care for more individualized care at critical moments, provided by experienced caregivers from Bright Horizons or other top-rated providers.
The business impact of a back-up child care program
Lost productivity due to child care gaps is costing businesses billions of dollars. With back-up child care, companies can keep disruptions from impacting productivity and continuity, minimizing unplanned time off and keeping employees focused on their work.Back-up child care has long-term advantages as well, saving employees from the burnout that comes from managing both a career and a family as well as the conflicts that arise from negotiating time off. Accommodating the needs of family schedules is a priority for many workers, and providing backup child care is one of the best ways that organizations can retain and reward employees.
Another back-up care advantage is the ability to recruit highly talented candidates who have children or are who planning to become parents. Offering back-up child care as a benefit can be a highly effective recruitment tool, attracting top talent required to move the business forward.