Many working parents have been scrambling to juggle the pandemic, their jobs and their kids day in, day out for nearly two years. A new partnership is helping working parents at Major League Baseball get closer to batting 1,000.
Bright Horizons, one of the largest global providers of employer-sponsored child care, teamed up with the MLB to offer expanded family benefits to its 1,200 employees who returned to the office in the fall. These benefits include back-up child or elder care, which gives employees time away from the office and the resources to access caregivers last minute, as well as discounted private tutoring and test preparation.
MLB implemented the benefits to combat the impact many organizations are facing from the great resignation. One in five parents and caregivers have already quit their jobs this year or plan to in 2022, according to the Pediatric Behavioral Health Needs Survey by healthcare solutions company Brightline.
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“In order for many employees to come back to the workplace, especially after the pandemic, they’re going to need support from their employer,” says Maribeth Bearfield, chief human resources officer at Bright Horizons. “MLB realized that they have to find ways to really help these parents, or they will not come back.”
But MLB parents and caregivers aren’t alone in wanting that support: Bright Horizons’ latest Modern Family Index found that 46% of employees want some form of child care from their employers, be it through back-up care, flexibility and access to trusted caregivers, or through providing workplace child care centers, an increasingly popular benefit. Essentially, employers could empower parents to check in with their children throughout the day during breaks and lunch while at the office, rather than only seeing them at the end of their workday, explains Bearfield.
“We just live in a world where people want their families close,” he says. “Even if you’re in a big urban city and the child care center is only a mile away, that could be a 20-minute ride — providing child care right in the office space changes the whole way somebody comes to work.”
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These innovative solutions can help prevent even more women in particular from leaving the workforce. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that 3.5 million moms with school-aged children lost their jobs, took a leave of absence or left their employer indefinitely. Additionally, Bright Horizons reports that working moms are shouldering more household chores alongside child care and are more stressed about their children’s education and mental well-being, in comparison to fathers.
While the pandemic has exacerbated these stressors, these problems have plagued working parents for decades, Bearfield says.
“When Bright Horizons started 35 years ago, it was all about working with women who were having children and not able to come back to work,” he says. “Whether you’re working from an office or whether you are working from home, it’s not viable with young children.”
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To help ease the burden on their caregiving employees now and in the future, Bright Horizons will give MLB employees access to at-home child and elder care, local child care centers, and virtual tutoring and school break camps through its app, offering kids of all ages educational and social opportunities.
The benefits can help ease the stress parents are feeling, and prove to employees that they work for an employer who cares about them and their families, Bearfield says.
“I think a lot of companies are starting to see that employees need help, and employers should be supporting employees in every stage of their life,” says Bearfield. “It’s about creating cultures where employees truly believe that their employers are here for who they are.”
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