Customize Your Company Benefits

You’ve already done your research and you know what your employees need to make child care more accessible. You have a good idea of what your potential options are, and you’ve spoken with a regional CCRC office to assist you with your process and data collection. The next step is to pitch the plan to your company’s executives and finalize your plan. Then, you need to communicate your plan with your employees—both existing and incoming.
Determine your capacity. Consider whether your organization has the financial resources, time, internal staff, technology infrastructure, and leadership support to implement each of the ideas on your list. Also consider any compliance or legal ramifications to each idea. Decide if you will launch a comprehensive program all at once or take a tiered approach over time.
Present your recommendations to your organization’s leadership. In your presentation to leadership, you’ll want to include costs and benefits. You’ll want to include the tax incentives associated with many of the ideas on your list, and what those potential tax savings would be for your business and employees. Don’t forget to address the high cost of taking no action, as well. Consider the fact that you may already have some helpful benefits in place that you’ll wish to include.
Decide which benefits you’ll adopt. Finalize your benefits plan. Your plan may include a phased approach, with some “Quick Wins” and some benefits that may take more long-range planning. Make plans to communicate the new and existing child care benefits to your employees with a well thought-out launch.
Launch your plan. You can host educational sessions for your employees about the child care benefit options available to them. You can create new fliers, use pre-existing flyers available through the OCFS. Update new employee onboarding documents and update your existing Employee Handbook Manual. You can share the news of your new benefit in newsletters, intranet announcements, email, and social media communications. Don’t forget to include the added benefits in future recruiting ads.