Benefits of Child and Elder Care in Businesses - Term Paper Example

TABLE OF CONTENT OUTLINE…………………………………………………………………………… 2 LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL……………………………………………………... 3 INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………………….. 4 CHILD-CARE BENEFITS ………………………………………………………… 6 ELDER CARE BENEFITS ………………………………………………………… 8 REFERENCES ……………………………………………………………………... 10 CHILD CARE BENEFITS CHILD CARE CENTER TRANSPORTATION FOOD AND LUXURY AT AFFORDABLE PRICE ELDER CARE BENEFITS UNPAID LEAVE FINANCIAL INSENTIVES AND A LOT MORE December 5, 2011 Dear Sir: We are pleased to present you a plan regarding the child and elder care services that our business is offering. We gave all the necessary details regarding the financial costs for each benefit. We have also tried to cover the costs within our budgets, but we could also talk with certain governmental organizations for future help. Our child and elder care services will provide the employees with an easy and not-so-expensive way of caring for the children and the elders. This would help building and increasing the trust between the business and the employees. We hope you would accept our recommendations and provide an appropriate action to be taken for them. Sincerely, Talal Al-Mulla INTRODUCTION In this rapid and dynamic world, both parents are forced to work in order to provide their children with the best of everything, which has resulted in a decrease in the parental care for the children. Parents are now seeking jobs in organizations that provide child-care for their children. About half of the working families need child-care for their children. In the last decade, women have been working more than before. When employees are worried about their children, their productivity falls, and days of being absent can increase when their children feel ill, or if there is no one to take care of them while theworking day time. During the last decade, many things have changed. Before there was a concept of a traditional family, where the father was in charge of providing the family financially and the mother looked after the kids and the house. This is no longer possible now. Nowadays, nearly 65 percent of the women are expected to work and provide the family needs. With both of the parents working and spending the day time at work, their minds stay away from the work environment and they spend long time thinking about their children, how they feel, have they had their food and are they feeling safe without their parents near them. There has been lots of debates going on, whether employers should provide child care services for their workers or not. Studies have shown that employees, who have kids, can face lots of family problems, which could lead to more times being out of work and doing less work than expected. This is because employees, especially females, when not finding a suitable option for their children, chose to drop off the work force. When employees quit, the company suffers and could face a big loss. Eventually, all these problems cost the company more because of the time that the person spent training before actually doing the job. Employers have now started to think broadly about the long term effects of providing child-care for their employees. The companies now know and believe that the brain and skills of its work force are its most important assets, and they should be cared about properly. The other most important aspect that is affecting the work force is the elders-care. Many workers have old parents to care about. This takes up most of the employees’ energy and financial resources. Most importantly workers don’t want to accept the fact that caring for elders is very important, and don’t realize that they need help. They want to handle their eldercare issues themselves and don’t want to accept help from people (Askew 1). It is commonly understood that elder care can interrupt work apart from the time and money it consumes. Employees tend to use vacations and days-off caring for their elders, when they could have taken that time for themselves. Companies also suffer when their employees are not happy. Elder care can cost a lot to businesses indirectly. According to the AARP statistic, business can be forced to spend nearly $6.6 billion to replace employees, because 9 percent of the employees take an early retirement or just quit. Approximately nearly $ 7 billion can be used up on workday interruptions, where employees either come late or leave early; and sometimes also spend the work hours on eldercare issues. When employees fail to show up at work, could also cost the company nearly $ 4.3 billion(NCPC 1). Employees caring for their elder, also show signs of negative health consequences; such as depression, stress, headaches, physical pain, loss of energy and sleep. CHILD CARE BENEFITS Our business have learned that adopting policies that provide the employees with child-care benefits can, in the long run, benefit the company in terms of less turnover rate, less days being absent, which can lead to increased productivity, and can improve employee commitment and morale. These child-friendly policies can also attract the well skilled workers and reveal the effectiveness of the workplace. Many employees, especially mothers feel happier when they know that their children are with them at the company. On-site center providing child-care services is seen as more appropriate by most employees, and makes them feel confident while working (Baucom 30-36). So we are starting to operate our on-site child-care center. Our child-care center would serve infants, which can be aged from three weeks and up to a year old. This center would be available for the employees on weekends and during summer, and any other holidays. We have equipped our center with many arts facilities. We have also trained staff of teachers to do the job, and we do not appreciate large groups. So you can be sure that your child is receiving the best of what we can offer. The teacher to child ratio is very low and we take great care that every child gets individual attention, which will benefit the child more than any other child-care center. We have designed the interior in a way that children would love to spend time there. There are different activities that would help them get started such as; toys and attractive 3D books that would develop their interest in education. This center also welcomes pre-school and school-going children. Transportation is also available for children to pick them from school and bring them to the center, so that the valuable time of our employees is saved. We believe that the first few years are the most important time in a child’s life, as they are the building blocks on which the future personality of the child will be. We have a complete program on which teachers would enact, to provide the basis of how to learn not only for school,but also through the life. Moreover, On-site centers provide the parents with the opportunity of visiting their children during lunch breaks and whenever they are free and want to see their kids. This reduces the stress on parents, which they might experience when their children are away from the. This policy would benefit the business in a way that, it would be a focus for job seeking skilled employees and would reduce turnover rate. In addition; the absenteeism rate of the employees would reduce. It would create a sense of trust and help increase confidence, and create a better relationship between the employer and the employees. We could subcontract the operation of this center to some child-care operator. This would reduce the employer’s liability. The operations would be better taken care by a qualified child-care operator, which would monitor the safety and health issues. We could even ask the government’s support increating and improving this center in future. The financial costs would require the construction costs per square inch. Space requirements should be meet according to each child. This would include the playground area, the indoor area, and the green space. Then there is a big cost involved in terms of equipments, which would be different according to each child age group. The teachers and the other staff required at the center would also involve money, in terms of salaries and if any training is required to any of the staff member. The other costs would also include the insurance and marketing coat. We could reduce the marketing costs, as this center would be only for our employees; and we don’t have to spend money on newsletters or other promotional activities. On the other hand; there are still the licensing and other documentation costs. An appropriate system of in-house cooking is also important. It is less costly to prepare meals in-house but would require a fully operational kitchen and a cook, and maybe a food-nutrition expert. We would need to calculate the exact amount of losses incurred in order to find out the percentage of investment that could be made by the employee to support this center. ELDER CARE BENEFITS People are living longer today, due to the improvement in medicines and surgeries. Many employees find themselves in a situation, where they have to take care of their parents that are now relying on them. Nowadays; nearly 39 percent of the firms offer elder care services to their employees. However; things are now changing. Employers are trying to provide the employees the kind of help they need in caring for their elders, or as we can say, their parents. Companies that have provided some sort of elder care benefits to their employees have seen a certain change in the savings amount. This is the cost that is saved, when employees do not take a day off, and they do not have to be replaced. This savings cost does not include the productivity losses that have been avoided (Crain Communications 1). The most important challenge faced in elder care is to make sure that this benefit is circulated between all employees and that they know all about it. It is different from child-care, because many people do not like to share the fact that they are caring for their elders. One way of providing elder care benefits is to help employees by offering flexible work arrangements. Flexible work life is an important asset in elder care and it does not cost the company much. This also has to be part of the culture, so that more people can benefit from it. Employers can also provide useful information to their employees regarding; elder care services, nursing services, hospitals and other needed things. This information can be given through presentations and other brochures and newsletters. It is also cost-effective, as it doesn’t cost much, but can provide greater peace of mind and as a result, greater productivity. Offering elder care benefits can prove to be very costly for the employers. We can pick a more low cost method; that is providing unpaid leave, to employees to care for the elder and family issues. However; this leave should depends on what the cause is, and how many number of employees there are in the organization (Senior Journal 1). We could also provide the employees with financial assistance in case of a major issue regarding the elders of the employees. To cover this financial cost we could provide the employees with their own accounts, which a small amount would be deposited from their salaries; and which would make lessload of providing for their parent’s serious operations and medications. The company could also include its share in the account. By doing this, it wouldn’t be a problem for the employee or the employer. Furthermore; we could also hire nurses or a social worker, who would help locate the nursing facilities, nursing homes, and researches the availability of these by the costs and quality of these alternative place facilities. As a result; this would help to save the time and energy of our valuable workers, and they would be able to deal with the workplace and their elder caring responsibilities in a better way. Works cited Askew, Katherine Employees Dont Use Eldercare Benefits 2010. Web.7th December 2011. Retrieved from http://www.thenewelder.com/the-new-elders-blog-0/bid/40967/Employees-Don-t-Use-Eldercare-Benefits-Because NCPC . Employer Support for Care Giving Employees.2010. Web.7th December 2011. Retrieved fromhttp://www.longtermcarelink.net/article-2010-3-8.htm Crain Communications. Elder Care Programs Take Center Stage as Baby Boomers Age. 2008.Web.7th December 2011. Retrieved from http://www.workforce.com/article/20080827/NEWS02/308279993 Senior Journal. Elder Care by Employees is “Silent Productivity Killer”.2009 .Web.7th December 2011. Retrieved from http://seniorjournal.com/NEWS/Eldercare/3-12-09workers.htm Baucom, Abby et. al. Horning.Employer Options for Child Care: Effective Strategies for Recruitment and Retention. Manhattan, Kan: Kansas State University Agricultural Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension Service, 1999. Print Read More