"Child Care Crisis a Hot Topic for Public Companies and Workforce" from Intelligize shares examples of companies' recent public disclosures in earnings calls and other forums on assisting employees with family-related challenges triggered by COVID-19 impacts, including child-care assistance needs prompted by predominantly online schooling.
Examples include:
- Bank of America: "We continue to provide ongoing access to comprehensive benefits and resources such as enhanced backup child care and adult care services, among the many other supplements and incentives for frontline associates, and all those costs are in the numbers you're seeing this quarter."
- Citigroup: "How do we keep our people safe? How do we make the right decisions? We chose around about 60,000 of our people to send them an incremental stipend. We sent them an extra $1,000 to help them with child care or spouses out of work or whatever that may be."
- Northrop Grumman: "And now as we see new outbreaks of coronavirus in our community, we continue to prioritize the safety and well-being of our team. This includes flexible work schedules, teleworking, child care assistance and stringent operating protocols aligned with CDC guidelines to help protect our employees and their loved ones."
- Target: "We also invested hundreds of million dollars in extra pay and benefits for our team, adding $2 to their hourly wage, investing in enhanced backup daycare options across the country and offering enhanced paid leave for team members with vulnerable health conditions."
For those many companies with employees who care for children under the age of 15, the results of the post's referenced surveys of working parents is particularly enlightening as to how child care concerns may be impacting their current behavior and views about their future prospects - with measurable percentages indicating they may need to look for another job or leave the workforce entirely.
This post first appeared in the weekly Society Alert!