Businesses interested in providing flexible scheduling to support families, survey finds

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According to a survey conducted by the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, the Pennsylvania Early Learning Investment Commission, and the Center for Rural Pennsylvania, businesses support providing childcare assistance, from flexible scheduling to remote work arrangements and more, as a way to support their employees and their employees’ families.

Providing working families with childcare needs is a way to improve retention, recruitment, productivity, and reputation, the survey found.

“Families have long strived to balance work and raising children. This tension was made all the more obvious throughout the pandemic when business closures threw many Pennsylvania families’ childcare arrangements into chaos,” Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry President and CEO Gene Barr said in a statement. “As part of our ‘Bringing PA Back’ initiative, we teamed up with the PA ELIC and the Center for Rural PA to determine what employers across the Commonwealth are doing today to support families and their workforce and how we can help them in the future. The findings in this report include best practices for businesses and program administrators and, we hope, will help inform lawmakers developing public policy that strengthens childcare and the workforce.”

According to the report, Pennsylvania experiences an estimated $3.47 billion impact because of childcare issues. The figure, the report said, represents losses in direct employer costs and tax revenue correlated with employee turnover and absences. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated childcare challenges for working families, the report said.

Many employers (38 percent) said their workforce has high to moderate childcare needs, but at the same time, many (75 percent) said they lack a formal way to gauge workers’ childcare needs. Additionally, 54 percent believed childcare was the reason they lost workers during the pandemic.

While most employers offered some childcare support during the pandemic, the majority (58 percent) said they were planning to end or were unsure if they would continue childcare supports after the pandemic ends. However, 66 percent of employers said they had a strong interest in exploring ways to help employees with their childcare needs.