“Companies are going to have to step up more, says Rachael McCann, senior director, health and benefits at Willis Towers Watson. Employers that don’t offer any flexibility may force workers to either leave the company or find a new job, she says.

It’s something employers are keeping in mind, McCann says, especially because the cost of retraining, re-skilling and recruiting is so high. The question becomes does that greater flexibility actually prevent turnover? And the answer is usually yes.

But beyond the cost of finding new employees, companies lose out on productivity when their employees have to take time to handle child-care responsibilities. During a typical year, employers lose about $13 billion in potential earnings, productivity and revenue due to inadequate child-care resources, according to a 2019 report from the Council for a Strong America.

There’s an awareness at this point that there is not a “perfect answer,” McCann says, but that doesn’t mean that employers shouldn’t even attempt to come up with creative solutions. Companies are approaching benefits like paid time off, child-care support and workplace flexibility with two questions in mind: What’s affordable for the company to subsidize so that it’s widely available in a sustainable way? And second, how can the company continue to offer flexibility in a way that moves from a short-term accommodation to how employees work going forward?

Many companies rolled out emergency back-up care, for example, but some organizations are discovering that’s not a sustainable cost long-term, McCann says. While costs can vary widely by location and the type of child-care partner, the daily expense to employers generally ranges from $125 to $200 per child. “The costs quickly add up,” McCann says.

Instead, one of the fastest-growing solutions employers are embracing are concierge services like Cariloop and Wellthy, McCann says. More comprehensive than sites better known for their referral service like Care.com (which also offers some concierge services, according to their spokesperson) or UrbanSitter, these companies partner employees with a coordinator who finds a child-care provider that’s the right fit for each worker. McCann says major employers are looking to this as the next go-to benefit, providing employees with a membership to these types of services to make it easier to coordinate care. “We’ve absolutely seen more interest in those type solutions as a longer term answer,” McCann says.”