The coalition government has made no secret of its desire to help parents by backing a scheme to provide tax-free childcare via a salary sacrifice voucher scheme. But what exactly are the benefits of giving your employees access to this system?
This article will briefly outline all of the reasons why your company can’t afford to ignore increasingly popular childcare voucher schemes.
Retention, retention, retention
Not to get too business-speaky here, but childcare vouchers are fantastic for retention – or in plain English, keeping your best and brightest employees working.
Why? Well if you’re facing the prospect of coming back part-time, but are finding that half of your earnings are going straight into the pockets of nurseries and daycare facilities, wouldn’t you just rather stay at home, have a few cups of tea and take care of your little one instead of toiling over a keyboard? Yeah, thought so!
So it’s important then that employers do all they can to reduce the burden of high costs for childcare. While some organisations choose to alleviate this pressure by having an in-house creche, this isn’t really an option for the vast majority of businesses and so the government’s voucher scheme is a much more attractive alternative (find out more here from one of the UK’s leading providers).
Increased engagement
Helping your employees to find a proper childcare solution will really help them to get back on task and concentrate after a potentially prolonged spell of maternity or paternity leave. While some members of staff will, quite naturally, find it difficult to leave their little one in the hands of a stranger, knowing that they are being cared for by approved specialists will ease their minds a fair amount .
But it’s important that employers still stay flexible because every parent will probably want to rush over to the nursery if even the slightest of symptoms of a cough or cold are seen in their baby – quite rightly too!
Although this might be a slightly difficult resourcing scenario to negotiate, any parents that are helped through this time will be substantially more loyal because of it and will repay you with years of good productivity. It’s a win-win scenario for all involved and will leave your staff members feeling positively glowing about being employed by such a considerate and understanding company.
It will add value to their total reward statement
While some bosses think the only way to make someone’s wage packet more attractive is through pay increases, this simply isn’t the case. It has been proven time and time again that employee benefits, including those provided by third party companies like You at Work, can add substantial value to your personnel’s remuneration statement.
But that’s not all, while a pay increase is a relatively vague way of giving a staff member a reward for their good work, many prefer to receive a direct prize or support and helping out an employee with their childcare is a great way to do this. Some companies like to pay for their returning parents’ nursery care for two or three months as a ‘golden welcome back’ deal – cementing their return to the office and this has been proven to – once again – improve retention.