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BACKUP CARE RANKED AS FASTEST GROWING EMPLOYEE BENEFITColumbia University, White & Case LLP, Baptist Health South Florida, Rice University and other leading organizations partner with Work Options Group, the Backup Care Company, to offer innovative work-life solutionSUPERIOR, CO – JULY 17, 2007 – Backup care is one of the fastest growing employee benefits, according to survey results released in June 2007 by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), which estimate that 14% of employers offered some type of backup care assistance in 2006, up from just 6% of employers in 2005. Columbia University, White & Case LLP, Baptist Health South Florida and Rice University are among 15 organizations in Q2 2007 that committed to offering their employees Work Options Group’s backup dependent care program.
Work Options Group’s program, Backup Care Options, allows employees to continue working during breakdowns in caregiving arrangements (ex: mildly ill children or adults, school closures, sick or vacationing caregivers, parents/spouses recovering from illness or surgery) by providing trusted, affordable in-home or center-based care to dependents of any age, in any location, whether they are healthy or mildly ill.
Since January 2007, 33 additional organizations have started offering their employees Backup Care Options, making the program now available to 600,000 people in the U.S. and Canada. The latest employers to offer Backup Care Options include:
- Columbia University, one of the world’s top academic and research institutions, based in New York
- White & Case LLP, a New York-based global law firm with lawyers in the United States, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia
- Rice University, one of the nation’s best teaching and research institutions, based in Houston, TX
- Baylor College of Medicine, an internationally respected education, research, and patient care institution consistently ranked as one of the country's top medical schools and based in Houston, TX
- University of Denver, the oldest private university in the rocky mountain region
- Baptist Health South Florida, the Miami area’s largest not-for-profit healthcare organization
- Achievement First, a network of charter schools based in Connecticut and New York
- Harvey Mudd College, one of the nation’s premiere math, science and engineering colleges and a member of The Claremont Colleges, located in Claremont, CA
- Terumo CVS, which manufactures, distributes and markets high quality capital equipment and consumable medical devices, based in Ann Arbor, MI
Companies of all sizes and across various industries rely on backup care to reduce employee stress and unscheduled absenteeism. Nearly two of three HR professionals indicate that unscheduled absenteeism is a problem for their organization, according to the June 2007 SHRM survey. The rate of unscheduled absences is at its highest point since 1999 with 24% of unscheduled absences attributed to family issues, based on a study released in 2006 by CCH. To combat these issues in the workplace, a growing number of businesses offer Backup Care Options to provide employees with trusted, temporary care for a variety of situations; this solution enables employees to remain productive at work and balance their family caregiving concerns.
About Work Options Group - www.workoptionsgroup.com
Work Options Group's Backup Care Options program enables more than 600,000 employees throughout the U.S. and Canada to get to work when they experience temporary breakdowns in their child, adult and elder care arrangements. Backup Care Options offers temporary care in every location, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, for infants through the elderly, whether they are healthy or mildly ill. Work Options Group has offered nationwide backup care for more than 13 years and has scheduled more than 1 million hours of backup care – hours that would otherwise be counted as employee absenteeism. In 2006 alone, the company arranged more than 200,000 hours of temporary care, providing employees with trusted, affordable, temporary care and saving client employers millions of dollars in absenteeism and lost productivity costs.
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