Portrait of three generations of women look at camera posing for family picture, cute little girl ... [+]
82% of working parents say spending more time at home with their children over the past year has made employer-provided child care benefits even more vital. Yet, less than 6% of U.S. companies offer significant child care benefits.
Related, one of the potential challenges of using child care benefits provided by an employer is that employees must clearly understand the terms. For example, when employers offer reimbursement, they may require parents to choose from an approved list of providers or ones with specific credentials.
Even before The Great Resignation, some daycares had wait lists that were months or years long, and sending a child to them in an emergency was out of the question. However, New York startup Vivvi has created a product that provides child care for families while simultaneously serving as a recruitment, retention, and productivity tool for employers.
Vivvi’s Care Cash allows employees needing emergency child care to receive a subsidy from their employer to help offset costs. The startup manages the administration and disbursement of subsidies based on the rules that Vivvi and the employer set. Julia Steele, Senior Director of Marketing at Vivvi, elaborates:
“Care Cash means access to care for children in any location and is available immediately by employees hiring their provider or paying a relative for care. We consider Care Cash our double bottom line product: it supports the employee who needs child care to work and the caregiver at home who is often invisible or unpaid.”
Half (47%) of working parents rely on relatives for child care. With Care Cash, they can flexibly secure their emergency child care through local systems and support, including those relatives, whenever needed. “Employees receive a direct wire that they can use to pay for the care of their choice—even if it's grandma, who is probably delighted to come and help but is still paying tolls and gas to get there, or who may need to take a day off work herself,” says co-founder and CEO of Vivvi Charles Bonello.
Care Cash is currently implemented by media company The Skimm. Below their Chief People Officer Lisa Dallenbach explains how Vivvi allows women and parents to thrive in their workplace:
“What Vivvi is allowing us to offer is not necessarily just child care. This allows us to come out and say to our employees that wherever you are in your journey as a parent and as a caregiver, whatever your needs are, we have a benefit offering for you.”
