Case study - Princeton University

Princeton University discovered in the spring of 2004 that many graduate students, faculty members and other staff believed there was a gap in the educational institution’s benefits coverage.  There was no university benefit to provide a solution for pre-school and older children when primary care arrangements fell through because of holidays, school closures or other unplanned events.

By the summer of 2005, Princeton created a child care working group to make recommendations about this problem among others.  The university began by looking within higher education, but could not find a program that completely fit its needs.  It was in the corporate sector that Princeton found what it was looking for in the backup care program from Work Options Group.  Princeton began offering the plan to its professors, other professional staff and graduate students in March 2006.

“We felt that this product would show that we’re hearing the concerns of our faculty and staff and want to make work a productive environment free of the stresses of parenting,” said Alison Nelson, Director of Benefits for Princeton University.  “Moreover, I have to balance providing benefits for families versus single employees.  It is an added benefit that Work Options Group covers all ages, from infants through the elderly, on a national basis.” 

Like many of the nation’s top universities, Princeton has an extremely diverse population of faculty and staff members who left their families and personal networks to be at the university.  Work Options Group’s backup care program fills the gap in their caregiver networks. 

“We think it’s working terrifically well,” said Joan Girgus, Chair of the Child Care Working Group, a professor in the Department of Psychology and a special assistant to the Dean of Faculty on women’s issues. “Backup care has been extraordinary for us.  We really like that Work Options Group provides services across the age spectrum for everyone who works and studies at Princeton.  Also, we’re pleased about the co-pay. It is an affordable benefit for our professors, staff members and graduate students.”

Princeton officials also realized that backup care filled an unforeseen need.  “There are a lot of employees at Princeton worrying about their parents,” noted Girgus.  “We didn’t anticipate how great the need was for elder care.  It was clear that people who are responsible for their parents didn’t have a lot of options when things went wrong.  There was a hole in the fabric that we didn’t know was there.”

Work Options Group has provided Princeton with 267 separate instances of backup care totaling 2,418 hours in the first six months of the plan.  Each person in the plan is allotted 100 hours, and
30 percent of the hours used in the backup care program have been for elder care, according to Nelson. 

Typical is the experience of Toni Turano, Associate Dean of the Faculty, who relied on backup care to assist her 89-year-old father when her 83- year-old mother needed time to recover from a broken hip.  “Work Options Group took a lot of the responsibility of finding an agency and a caregiver off my shoulders,” said Turano.  “When you’re dealing with your mom in surgery and you have doctors to talk to, siblings to notify and decisions about medical care to make, finding the time to identify a reputable agency and an appropriate caregiver is an enormous burden. I just called Work Options Group and said, ‘I need a person to help,’ and they had somebody there exactly when I wanted.”

For Princeton, the relatively low cost of backup care is worth the expense because it provides peace of mind for the university’s workforce.  “If employees don’t have peace of mind because of concerns about a child or parent, then they can’t focus on their work,” said Girgus.  “We don’t calculate the value of backup care benefits in monetary terms because we’re a nonprofit, but we count it in work done…and backup care helps to keep the whole enterprise going in a top-notch way.”

Work Options Group’s backup care program has worked so well for Princeton that the school has recommended the benefit to other Ivy League institutions.  “We’ve told them, ‘You’ve got to look at this product; it’s amazing,’” said Nelson.