Childcare benefits are workplace infrastructure, not perks: CEO

Every September, the same disruption ripples through Canadian workplaces. School schedules reset overnight, summer care arrangements expire, and working parents scramble to plug gaps that employers too often treat as someone else's problem.

The data, however, suggests that attitude is costing companies more than they realize as booking data from UrbanSitter illustrates how acute the back-to-school period is for working families.

Overall demand for childcare benefits on the platform rises by 30 per cent during August and September, after-school care requests double, while searches for an ongoing caregiver spike 90 per cent above the platform's low period.

Why back-to-school season is ‘most disruptive’

Lynn Perkins, CEO and co-founder of UrbanSitter calls the back-to-school season “an overnight schedule shift,” adding it’s one of the most disruptive periods in the workplace because the schedule change is sudden and universal. Unlike a vacation or a project deadline, the start date is non-negotiable as it arrives whether the employer's quarter is busy or not.

“Everyone in the office is having the same back-to-school start date, and it feels chaotic. And it's a little bit jarring because you have to get back into the schedule so in a very short period of time, you're forced to look at your plans,” said Perkins.

Making matters worse, after-school care is nearly impossible to arrange far in advance, she added. The people who typically fill those roles — college students or other parents with compatible schedules — often don't know their own availability until the school year begins. That leaves a narrow window to find, vet, and lock in a caregiver once the child's schedule is finalized, Perkins said.

“If you're an employer, your employees are looking for help between the start of school and this after-school care gap, which becomes a very acute pain point this time of year,” said Perkins, noting these are tasks that, left unresolved, fracture a parent's focus during the workday.

“Sometimes families will also use college students to help out with after-school care, but those kids aren't back yet. So it can be a really stressful time for families,” she added.

The case for childcare benefits at work

Despite recent reports of large employers trimming discretionary benefits, Perkins said the childcare category has moved in the opposite direction. The data suggests those investments are paying off as she highlighted additional UrbanSitter data that found parents with a care benefit are 74 per cent less likely to leave the workforce, 77 per cent less likely to turn down a promotion and 62 per cent are less likely to reduce their work hours.

"It's a time of year when everything's in flux," Perkins said. "If you don't have access to caregivers, you probably are taking time off of work because I don't know what else you would do. Benefits can help because they can either fill those gaps before school starts, but they can also help in terms of finding the care for after school too.”

When asked whether HR leaders connect childcare gaps to retention, Perkins said the first metric they reach for is absenteeism because it's visible and immediate, while retention remains harder to pin down.

She pointed to data suggesting that parents without a corporate childcare benefit missed roughly 21 days of work in 2024 to cover care gaps, a figure that drops to approximately four once a benefit is in place. UrbanSitter's own survey data from last year also showed that employees were more likely to stay at or accept a job where the employer offered a care benefit.

Retention data strengthens the case further, Perkins said, noting that employees with access to a care benefit tend to stay roughly 15 months longer than those without one. Moreover, whether employees feel their employer recognizes they have responsibilities outside of work and that sense of being understood, she said, is the other way the presence or absence of childcare support registers across an organization.

How childcare benefits have progressed over past decade

According to Perkins, the design of employer-sponsored childcare benefits has gone through three distinct phases over the past decade. Before the pandemic, programs were rigid where a fixed number of backup care days were locked to a single provider. When COVID hit and care needs exploded, employers swung to the opposite extreme, reimbursing almost anything, which in some cases invited abuse, she suggests.

Now, the current generation of programs has settled into a sort of middle ground.

"Companies have said, ‘We want to have some structure and control over what employees are using the benefit for, but we want to make sure they have choice once they're in those categories’," Perkins said, adding employers are now defining eligible categories, from backup care, elder companion care, tutoring and daycare, while letting workers select their own vetted providers within those lanes, including caregivers they already know and trust.

She described the approach as controlled flexibility, where companies concentrate spending on the care categories with the clearest impact on attendance and productivity.

"As an employer, I'm focusing my dollars on the categories where it means it makes the biggest impact on my business," she said. "But I'm giving them the flexibility within that to have a little more choice," she said.

Are childcare benefits ultimately worth it?

Perkins outlined a tiered approach for employers weighing their options. At the most basic level, companies can give employees access to a platform or database of vetted care providers, including in-home childcare, daycares, preschools, and after-school programs.

The next step up is offering a handful of subsidized or fully paid backup care days through a care partner. Beyond that, employers can broaden eligible categories, covering needs such as in-home therapy for a child with special needs and increase the number of funded days. At the top end, programs let employees choose their own provider and reimburse across a wider set of care situations.

Moreover, Perkins underscored how employers need to treat childcare support as a year-round communication strategy rather than just a one-time enrollment talking point around the back-to-school season. She urged companies to send timely reminders ahead of known disruptions, particularly around spring break, long weekends and holidays that don't align with the work calendar so employees can plan rather than scramble. Even employers that don't subsidize care can compile local resources such as camps or caregiver databases and share them in advance, she said.

The payoff is an employee who plans ahead is more likely to show up and Perkins argued the same logic applies to the entire benefits package.

"I think what happens is that oftentimes employers have benefit fairs or sessions and it's like that one time a year and everybody learns about all the benefits and then sometimes there's a void and you don't hear anything," she said. "Oftentimes the employer has already fully paid for these benefits. So why not remind your employees that they have it? Because that one day is probably not enough.”