CASE STUDY - Children's

Children’s Hospital and Health System Determines Backup Care is an Affordable and Effective Solution for Employees Working 24/7 in Various Locations

Children’s Hospital and Health System
Children's Hospital and Health System is an independent health care system dedicated solely to the health and well-being of children. The health system has more than 4,500 employees that serve children throughout Wisconsin, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, northern Illinois and beyond through medical care, advocacy, education and pediatric medical research.

Challenge
In response to employee requests for help with childcare and eldercare, the Children’s Hospital and Health System (CHHS) Human Resources’ team researched various programs to determine the most affordable and cost effective solution.  CHHS wanted to address the needs of their over 3,800 benefit-eligible employees who worked different shifts at several locations in Wisconsin and Northern Illinois and cared for loved ones of various ages. Eighty-seven percent of CHHS employees are female and the average age for all employees is 43, representing a significant “sandwich generation” of employees whose care goes beyond the customers the hospital serves.  Many employees also juggle personal responsibilities for children and/or aging parents, many of whom live in other parts of the country. CHHS decided that a full-service backup care program would help address employee demands for caregiving support and address workplace issues like unscheduled absenteeism and stress.

Solution
CHHS outlined the following requirements for a backup care solution: flexibility and 24/7 availability to address the needs of shift workers, geographic coverage to help with local and long-distance caregiving, credibility with screened and qualified caregivers to make employees feel comfortable using the program, and responsiveness and professionalism to ease any administrative burdens of offering a new benefit.  CHHS discovered those elements during discussions with other children’s hospitals that belong to the same membership organization.  “Another member had already been using the backup care benefit through Work Options Group and had a positive experience, so that was our first exposure,” says Staci Benz, Benefits Manager at CHHS. “We did explore other options to make sure Work Options Group was the best fit for us.  At that time – and we still feel this way – it was the best backup care solution because of the flexibility to meet all shift needs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, the opportunity to service employees with family members who lived locally and out of state through a nationwide network, and the credibility in terms of how they screen providers and childcare centers was very important given the business we are in.”

Results:
Offering the Backup Care Options program helped CHHS achieve several key objectives:

• Provide a valued and well utilized employee benefit
  • “It has been wonderful to hear stories of how people have used this benefit,” says Benz. “One of our employees described it as a blessing. Another employee wrote a raving review about how she appreciated the benefit and it really was above and beyond her expectations.  Her mother in-law was recovering from surgery and had come to live with the family for a month while she recovered and required constant care.  The employee was able to use the backup care program when she really needed to get back to work.”
• Reduce absenteeism
  • Utilization of the backup care benefit continues to grow – resulting in reduced absenteeism. Employees used 2,163 hours of backup care in 2006 and 2,477 hours in 2007.  Since the program started in September 2005, backup care has provided CHHS with an estimated savings of $220,000 in reduced absenteeism alone.
• Make a cost-effective benefits investment
  • When compared to the cost of providing other employee benefits, the investment in backup care is very affordable. “This benefit delivers a lot of value and it’s very cost-effective to offer,” says Benz.
• Continue employer of choice recognition to boost recruitment and retention
  • CHHS has been recognized as a top area employer by the Milwaukee Business Journal and commended for offering a comprehensive benefit package.  “We want to provide cutting edge benefits that are appreciated by our employees,” says Benz. “It helps distinguish us in the competitive recruiting market. As a “best in class” employer, our ability to offer a backup care benefit plays into that and compliments other benefits we offer.”
  • Additionally, CHHS has experienced improvements in recruitment and retention efforts. “We’ve definitely received great feedback from candidates when we are recruiting them, from new hires during orientation, and from our existing employees,” says Benz. “Some comments have been ‘I can’t believe my employer offers me this benefit’ and ‘I feel very fortunate to work for an employer that cares about me and offers this.’”