Expensive band-aids aren't working

Labor Day has come and gone and for much of the country, the school year kicked off with a whimper, not a bang. Things aren’t looking great. From daycare centers to college campuses, schools are already shutting down. Wildfires have shuttered plans for outdoor schooling in California. Colder temperatures mean kids home with fevers. New cases among teachers are rising. New York announced another delay to the start of school. It’s getting messier even faster than people had predicted. 

This impacts everyone. Whether you’re a colleague, manager, parent, friend or concerned citizen, no matter where you’re coming from, you’re likely looking at what’s happening and thinking: shit. 

We’ve got problems. Employers don’t have answers. A new study this week looked at what the biggest companies are doing to support employees right now. They’re doubling down on what worked pre-covid, not looking for new solutions, and it’s not working. Many gave additional paid time off. In some cases, substantial amounts: up to 12 weeks and 14 weeks. That’s a generous and enormously expensive benefit that virtually no other company can afford. But, depending where you are, we’re already 26-28 weeks in. That 14 weeks was a blessing, but it’s long gone and used up and you’re back to square one. The other big benefit companies are increasing is back-up care. Some companies doubled and tripled their existing offerings, climbing up to 20 and 30 days of backup care. If that’s center based care, you might not be able to use it. If you’re fortunate enough to work from home, you may not want or be able to use it. If you do have to go to work and your kids have been out of schools and camps since March....well, 20 or 30 days is nice, but it’s not solving the day to day. 

The study also found that flexibility is the most common benefit employers are providing. Flexibility is crucial, but it’s not a panacea. Flexibility without training, coaching, guidelines, and other support structures can be a dangerous path towards essentially saying, if you need to work 24 hours, do it. I don’t need to tell you how unsustainable that is. If you give someone a tool but don’t teach them how to use it, they’re either going to hurt someone or ignore it altogether. It might be the most common benefit, but how often is it actually being used effectively?

The most interesting finding is that parents want to keep working. They’re not saying, ‘I want a break’ or ‘I want to leave’. They’re saying “How can I hack human biology to serve in three different jobs and never have to sleep?” Unfortunately, that’s not working either: 40% of working parents have already had to change their employment situation: 25% reduced hours and 15% quit. Of those who quit, 38% don’t expect to go rejoin the workforce. That data is from the first week of September. Back when people still had high hopes for school. Where do you think those numbers will be in another month?

Existing solutions are not working. This problem is not going away anytime soon. Why are we still looking at old solutions in a new era? Why are companies looking at expensive band-aids instead of more sustainable solutions? Just because you already have back-up care in place, doesn’t mean that extending more of it is the best answer. What worked pre-covid is not working today. In no scenario does 30 days of back-up care or 14 weeks of paid leave actually solve this problem for parents and employers. It’s also wildly expensive. Clearly employers willing to spend that money understand the financial argument for investing in their talent. If the rationale is there, why wouldn’t you look for long term answers to a long term challenge?

Do you know what’s far cheaper than more paid time off or a month of back-up care? Connecting employees with other working parents to share child care responsibilities. We’ve been hearing a lot about pods, but very little about employers enabling pods. It doesn’t matter what you call them, the idea of bringing together families to share childcare duties is one of the only sustainable solutions out there. It’s affordable for both employers and parents, provides kids with structures and socialization, and removes the burden solely from one family. Does it have challenges and drawbacks? You bet. But it also works, and we don’t have time or a lot of options at this point. The idea of communal support is the most basic form of support. It’s what your grandparents did. Maybe even your parents. Call it a neighborhood network if that feels better. The facts remain the same: we cannot do this alone and even the biggest companies aren’t putting a full time nanny in the home of every working parent. This is the best choice. Community, peers, and leveraging networks to provide support are at the core of Kunik. Connecting working parents to tackle this childcare crisis together is a natural extension. We’re currently working with employers to enable multi-firm pod matching programs - bringing together working parents from multiple employers to provide density, scale and more successful matches. It’s an experiment, as is everything related to COVID, but we’re working closely with employers and parents to continually improve this experiment and meet their needs. Collaboration, creativity and community are the only ways we are going to solve this challenge. Throwing money at it has been tried, it’s not working. Would you try shared care with other working parents this fall? Do you have thoughts on connecting working parents across employers? We’re learning as we go and we welcome your thoughts.