Why Businesses Must Seize the Initiative to Improve Policies on Childcare

It's hardly a secret that many companies are still failing to recruit and retain diverse teams from top to bottom, especially relative to women. While the pandemic was a challenge for everyone in the workforce, it truly laid bare the inequities that women face in trying to maintain a career. In September 2020,?1.1 million people of ages 20 and over exited the work force; staggeringly, over 800,000 of them were women. While the wage gap, inequality of opportunity, and the collapse of female-dominated industries contributed to this, one reason stood out among the rest: the national failure to provide adequate childcare or caregiving.

The shortcomings of U.S. childcare policies are nothing new; the pandemic only exacerbated the issue with the burden falling largely upon women. Thus, it is a critical moment for companies to take the lead on improving childcare policies, and enable working parents (especially women) to be active participants in the economy.

An Overview of Global Childcare vs. U.S. Childcare

Childcare is a fraught issue across the globe, with many of the world's developed countries taking different approaches. The Scandinavian nations (Sweden, Norway, Denmark) all offer extensive paid maternity leave and available childcare enrollment on a national level, for example. Many other countries offer this on a far more scaled back level, with the U.S. being the only country in one UNICEF survey that?offers zero paid maternity leave and zero national childcare availability. We are far from the only country with insufficient policies; however, many other governments did a far better job of providing quick and needed support when the pandemic hit. This is where businesses enter the picture.

While multinational businesses are a widely mixed bag when it comes to childcare policy, there exists a key opportunity for them to step in where government has not. In another UNICEF survey, results indicated that childcare support is the least implemented policy, with only?24% of businesses providing such support. With no national support structure in place, this makes it nearly impossible for both parents to be able to work without private childcare. And so, this is where women and other minorities are unfairly penalized.

An Inequitable Impact on Women and Other Minorities

As previously mentioned, women and other minorities (especially poor working parents) paid the price for lacking childcare policies in the pandemic. An HBR survey showed?26% of women who became unemployed?was due to lack of childcare. Poor workers who could not afford childcare had to step away from their jobs. Likewise, black workers were more likely to have their hours reduced than non-black issues. While this is problematic from an equity standpoint, it also underlines that companies are not truly committed to diversity if they don't have a comprehensive childcare policy.

Why is this an issue? Having a diverse workforce provides for diversity of thought, innovation, and high performance. Companies that have high gender and racial diversity are significantly?more likely to outperform their planned goals?than companies that do not. Likewise,?economies that empower women flourish?and experience greater growth, statistically speaking.

Businesses Need to Seize the Initiative

The evidence is clear; businesses must take the helm where the government has not. According to McKinsey and LeanIn's Women in the Workplace 2020 study, up to 2 million women are considering leaving the workforce. Thus, executives and other business leaders in U.S. companies must continuously work to shift the status quo.

To start, companies MUST get women into leadership roles, and engage them on how to employ more equitable policies. Foundationally, this starts with childcare; however, it should also extend to wage gap and opportunity issues (as these informally influence the inability of working parents to afford childcare). Women add necessary diversity of thought as well as offering insight on implementation of policies that work from top to bottom.

Companies must also take a hard look at what childcare actually means. This means reviewing their paid maternity and paternity leave policies, providing stipends for childcare, and even opportunities for on-site childcare, among others things. And again, this must be applicable for employees at all levels of the business. Just because your VP can afford to pay for a nanny does not mean that your hourly worker will be able to get the support that they need.

Finally, companies need to be introspective. They need to continuously review what is and isn't working. They need to be consistently cognizant of the needs of their working parents, and they must continue to engage these individuals to help support them. Furthermore, they must consider contingencies. The pandemic showed many companies what their blind spots were; now is a great time to leverage this fresh data to improve.

Conclusion?

Lack of childcare should not be a detriment to a career for women, other minority groups, and working parents in general. The benefits of a diverse and engaged workplace are clear, and a necessity to the health of our economy and society. Curious about ways in which your company can improve and bring women back to work? Contact us at Bonfire Consulting LLC for more information on how we can help your business solve these problems and more.