benefits

onsite childcare

On-site child care is located at an employers’ workplace and can be full-time care or back-up care. Consortium sponsored child care is a partnership between employers to finance a child care program, often run by a contracted operator and located near both workplaces. For both on-site and consortium care, employers can subsidize the cost of care, or employers can ask employees to pay full cost for care.

Childcare White Paper:

A critical ingredient for Minneapolis-St. Paul

benefit to employers

Increases retention, reducing
turnover costs
Allows a federal tax credit of up to 25 percent of facility expenditures, plus 10 percent of any resource and referral expenditures, up to $150,000 in a calendar year; business expense tax deductions for remaining child care
facility expenses
Improves employee performance and reduces absenteeism compared to when using off-site child care

benefit to families

Improves family economic security
Saves employees time
Highly ranked as a benefit, even by employees who do not have children
Access to an on-site facility may increase breastfeeding duration, which offers health benefits for children and mothers

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Case Study

case study: Best Buy

High-quality onsite childcare
offers convenience and community
to parents and caregivers

Lucie Cregeur loves being able to take her child to lunch at the Best Buy headquarters. Cregeur’s 2-year-old daughter is one of 260 children at the company’s onsite childcare center, which is run by New Horizons Academy and serves children from six weeks old to kindergarten.

“I love the proximity to my daughter because it’s so convenient to have one commute,” said Cregeur, a senior marketing manager at Best Buy. “It’s fun to have her see what mom does, and she feels part of the Best Buy family. To have that workplace-childcare integration is wonderful, and I love seeing the level of engagement with the teachers. It feels like a community versus a place where I drop off and pick up my child.”

In addition to the community feel, Cregeur also likes that the daycare center’s schedule aligns with her work schedule. She has predictable care during retail workdays like Black Friday, when traditional daycare centers might be closed.

Another benefit to onsite childcare for Cregeur was the ability to have her baby onsite when she was a nursing mother. She says it lengthened the amount of time she was able to breastfeed her daughter.

Best Buy has had onsite childcare for 16 years. Even during the pandemic, people were choosing to drop off their children in the childcare center even if they could work at home.

Cregeur says that the onsite childcare option signals to her, her colleagues and prospective employees that Best Buy is making a commitment to families — and not just mothers, but fathers and other caregivers. At a recent ribbon-cutting for a new lactation suite, she saw as many fathers there as mothers.

She loves seeing dads taking their kids to lunch, too. Cregeur says that fathers need as much support in the workplace as mothers. She sees that inclusion in the company’s Employee Resource Group, “Families Focused Inclusion Network,” which includes diverse caregivers in the subgroups from siblings to dads who share resources and tips and support
each other.

Location: Minneapolis, Minn.