Almost three-quarters of working parents have stated that they require more childcare support from employers or that they need their existing childcare to be more flexible.
New research by Bubble, a child-care app, shows that a main priority for parents is that they receive more childcare support from their employers. 73 per cent stated that they either needed more support in this area or that the existing support that they did receive for childcare needed to be more flexible as a long-term result of COVID-19.
A quarter of employees (25 per cent) stated that the effects of the pandemic meant that their need for childcare support had increased. Moreover, just under half of working parents (48 per cent) stated that their requirements had remained the same but needed to be adapted to become more flexible on an ad hoc basis.
It is evident that employees heavily rely on their employers to provide help. Around 94 per cent of working parents surveyed said that they believed it was ‘important’ or ‘vital’ for their employer to offer childcare support.
This has clear talent retention benefits as over eight in 10 (85 per cent) said it would increase their loyalty to the business and over three-quarters (76 per cent) expressed that this would improve their productivity too.
However, this is an area that many HR teams fail to tackle. Almost three-quarters (73 per cent) of working parents – the equivalent of 27 million people in the UK- state that their employer does not provide them with financial support for childcare.
Ari Last, founder of Bubble, said:
The pandemic has accelerated an already growing trend of employees with children needing more flexibility and convenience when it comes to childcare.
We’re working more flexibly, we’re working ad-hoc hours and we’re working differently all round. We also face ongoing uncertainty in terms of when our kids will be in schools and nursery settings, with hundreds of thousands of school children being sent home from school since they re-opened in September. For some parents this may mean they need more hours from a childcare provider, some may need less and for many – this may change week to week.
For employers, the business case is clear. Supporting parents in their workforce will improve their mental health, their productivity and their all-round commitment to their business. It will help foster diversity and gender equality too – something under further attack since the onset of the pandemic.
*To collate these results, Bubble surveyed 1000 working parents.
Monica Sharma is an English Literature graduate from the University of Warwick. As Editor for HRreview, her particular interests in HR include issues concerning diversity, employment law and wellbeing in the workplace. Alongside this, she has written for student publications in both England and Canada. Monica has also presented her academic work concerning the relationship between legal systems, sexual harassment and racism at a university conference at the University of Western Ontario, Canada.
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