Big N.Y. Firms Offering Emergency Child Care to Workers : Employment: A growing number of companies are recognizing the need. So far, it is mostly an urban East Coast phenomenon.
Opening the small, silver door in the dim corridor of the Time & Life Building is like opening a door to Oz. Only the faintly lettered “Children’s Center” provides a clue to what’s inside.
Children’s paintings and crafts decorate the brightly colored year-old facility, packed with Time Warner Inc. books, videos, equipment and other children’s fare. Just a few feet from men and women bustling about in business suits, children romp and learn.
Parents who work for Time Warner Inc. can leave their children here if usual care arrangements break down. As an added benefit, they can lunch with their child, introduce them to colleagues and show them where mommy or daddy works.
Time Warner is among the growing number of companies recognizing the need for emergency child care, either in special facilities or at home. Many have established programs in response to employee surveys placing emergency care among the top three on any list of worker priorities.
Other companies opening facilities in the New York area over the past year include Goldman Sachs & Co., Chase Manhattan Corp. as well as a consortium of financial companies led by Bankers Trust Co. that includes J.P. Morgan & Co., Salomon Brothers Inc., C.S. First Boston Inc. and Swiss Bank Corp.
Emergency centers financed by employers now also exist in Washington, Philadelphia and Boston, in what experts in work and family issues say is so far mostly an urban East Coast trend.
For Time Warner and others, the concept is based not on altruism but on important business considerations, improving productivity and providing an important recruitment and retention tool.
“It represents an evolution of understanding on the part of employers about what most causes stress among their employees,” said Robin Hardman of the Families and Work Institute, a New York-based research concern.
A Bankers Trust survey of employees at its Jersey City, N.J., office found that about 80% called in sick when their regular child-care arrangements fell apart, said Molly Houghton, vice president for human resources.
“Productivity was the issue at hand,” she said. “That was the argument for senior management.”
In addition, the bank’s emergency child-care centers in Jersey City and most recently, at the company’s lower Manhattan offices across the Hudson River, “enhance our standing as an employer of choice,” she said.
To use any of the centers, parents must preregister and complete questionnaires concerning their child’s health. Once registered, a parent can call usually a week to five minutes before care is needed. Spaces are allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.
Centers are open Monday through Friday. Most limit each child to 20 days of center use a year, but make allowances for more time under exceptional circumstances.
Many companies provide the service free, although others like Bankers Trust charge a token $10 daily fee.
The facilities have evolved partly in response to changing demographics and the changing composition of the labor force. Women, historically the primary care givers in the family, are increasingly working outside the home.
Nationally, women make up 45% of the employed. Of all working women, 40.1% had children under 18 in 1993, Labor Department data shows.
Because of a child’s illness or a breakdown in child-care arrangements, parents are missing between one and two days of work every three months, says Charles Rodgers of the Boston consulting firm, Work-Family Directions Inc.
Moreover, grandparents are not there to stand in like they used to--they are more than likely to be employed. Most centers are in urban areas where there aren’t the extended families more often found in smaller communities.
Another factor helping to establish the new frontier in work-family programs has been the lagging economy. As companies have cut employees in corporate restructurings, surviving staffers must carry more weight.
“An employee’s absence has a greater impact on the general work force than it did 10 years ago,” said Judi Presser, also of Work-Family Directions.
In addition, surviving employees worry about losing days at work when colleagues are losing their jobs, said Houghton.
From the company’s vantage point, the environment of job austerity and pressure for more productivity has forced managers to look more closely at issues such as employee morale and stress levels, Presser said.
The concept of emergency child care began to get attention in corporate America in the late 1980s. The Washington law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering is credited with opening the first center in 1986. Cravath Swaine & Moore, a big New York City law firm, began its own program in 1989.
“Hours lost at a law firm are billable, so it was possible to really show the effect of lost days on a company’s bottom line and quantify the savings,” Presser said.
The Time Warner center occupies lobby space formerly used by a bank. It opened in September, 1992, at a cost of $400,000. Operating expenses run about $450,000 a year, said Nancy Platt, the company’s manager of work and family programs.
The facility, with a permanent staff of four and nine teachers on call, can accommodate 30 children from 6 months to 12 years and is open from 8:30 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. It has averaged about 10 children daily.
During the day, children follow a lesson plan that usually includes free play, singing and dancing, reading and special projects, said Patty Maltese, the center manager.
“It’s just a great place,” said Time Warner employee Alison Polton-Simon, visiting her 18-month-old daughter Ruth at the center.
Simon has taken her daughter to the facility three times since it has opened. On this particular occasion, her regular baby sitter was sick.
At Goldman Sachs, the bright, 1,800-square-foot center serves the company’s 4,500 employees and can accommodate as many as 48 children from 3 months to 12 years old. Operating hours are from 7 a.m. until 7.p.m.
Chase Manhattan had the emergency child-care center in mind when it designed its new technology center in Brooklyn, N.Y. The 8,000-square-foot facility cost the company $1 million to build and operating expenses run about $500,000 yearly, said Joy Bunson, a vice president in human resources at Chase.
That facility, also open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., can accommodate up to 70 children between 2 months and 12 years of age with a staff of nine, including seven teachers.
