Northern Michigan University & Gretchen’s House
President Tessman and Gretchen Preston forged a unique partnership to bring to Marquette the only NAEYC-certified child care center, Gretchen’s House, subsidized by NMU. This offers other businesses in the community a model to support parents paying for high-quality childcare. Both NMU and Gretchen’s House participate in Michigan Tri-Share which covers two-thirds of childcare costs for eligible families through a state subsidy. Provost Dale Kapla helped facilitate the founding of the Tri-Share hub in the Upper Peninsula which has inspired many other local businesses across the Upper Peninsula to invest in the Tri-Share program for their employees. NMU and Gretchen’s House responded to the parent voices and data from the NMU Early Childhood Education Center Task Force and implemented an innovative solution to a desperate regional childcare shortage.
Munson Healthcare
Munson Healthcare, a health care system spanning many counties in northern Michigan, currently offers child care through its Munson Child Development programs for more than 600 children of employees through multiple sites. These programs includes infant and toddler care, preschool care, Great Start Readiness Program and Head Start classrooms, a popular summer camp and other care options intended to meet the needs of employees. Some programs are available to community members and not just employees. A unique partnership with Northwestern Michigan College allows nursing students and other NMC students to access onsite child care, reducing barriers for parents. Educators and other employees of Munson Child Development are Munson Healthcare employees, entitling them to participate in benefits programs. They also are eligible to receive significant discounts for the care of their own children, providing a significant incentive to work there. The program has been in existence for more than 30 years. Although Munson Healthcare is only now embarking on a project to measure the impact of this long-standing commitment, leaders within the organization believe the investment has paid for itself in terms of employee retention, productivity and goodwill.
McLaren Health
Jennifer DiSanza, Director of Talent Acquisition for McLaren Health, has been participating in the Macomb County Child Care Coalition (MC4) since its’ inception. Not only is she heavily involved in workforce development but she is also a parent of two young children so she was able to offer two different perspectives. Jennifer participated in our CEO Roundtable event and presented the following to our audience.
The McLaren Health Care system includes 13 hospitals in Michigan, ambulatory surgery centers, imaging centers, a primary and specialty care physician network, commercial and Medicaid HMO’s, home health, infusion and hospice providers, pharmacy services and so much more. They have a total of 18,782 employees, of which 80.25% are female. They realized that they needed to do something as COVID seriously impacted their workforce.
They began their research and discovered the following:
- Women were more vulnerable to both layoffs and burnout during the pandemic
- Women predominantly held hospitality roles that were targeted for layoffs and healthcare roles which experienced the highest stress at the peak of the pandemic
- Many women resigned their careers due to a lack of childcare
- The diminished access to affordable childcare across the nation led parents – most often women – to say home and care for their children
- 58% of parents stated they were unable to find childcare and 26% of parents stated they were unable to afford childcare
- 32% of unemployed women have not returned to the workforce care for a family member
Combined turnover for a rolling year averages 19% and earlier in the year, when this research was done, McLaren had 206 open Nursing positions with 99 of those positions (48%) being night shifts. A huge barrier to filling these positions was lack of child care.
McLaren began to research what they could offer employees to encourage them to join and stay at McLaren. The argument for child care looked like this:
- Average cost of full-time child care is $1324 per month, per child
- The average number of kids per family is 1.93
- Average family will spend $2,648 per month on child care
- To break even with the cost of child care for the average family, the employee must make a minimum of $15.28/hr, working 40 hours per week. This is to simply afford child care, nothing else.
McLaren discovered that if they wanted to increase labor force participation, they needed to provide child care support to enable their employees to afford to be able to work.
McLaren has done the following:
- Researched the market for each McLaren Subsidiary
- Conduct a child care needs assessment survey
- Before offering something system-wide, they need to start with pilot areas
We are actively moving forward with implementing childcare support at several of our facilities. We plan to pilot programs at individual facilities and then expand the success to all McLaren locations.
McLaren plans to implement Tri-share at our Petoskey location this year for our service and support job family. Pending the success of this launch, we will move this program to our Flint, Lansing and Lapeer locations as a phase 2. Eventually, we will offer system wide.
Additionally, Bay City has a grant to add additional childcare providers in their community. The current waitlist of families for local daycare facilities is more than half McLaren employees. We will survey the McLaren employees and I will work with the city of Bay City to implement.
We look forward to seeing the impact made on the Macomb County communities, once these programs make it to our area.
Health West
Health West offers Tri-Share to 20 employees. Of the 11 employees surveyed, four stated that participation in the Tri-Share program allowed them to stay in the workforce. Health West then utilized their data to educate other employers on the positive business impacts of Tri-Share at our Cheers for Childcare Employer Summit in March.
Peterson’s Farms, Inc
Peterson Farms partnered with Shelby Public Schools to open the Oceana County Early Learning Center. The facility is available to families county-wide and provides care to children aged 0-4, as well as before and after school care for children up to 12.
University of Michigan
Christine Snyder is the Director of Child and Family Care at the University of Michigan. Together, Christine and the University have demonstrated an investment in, and support for, sectors of their workforce through participation in the Tri-Share Child Care Program. They have been a strong partner in collaborating with their local Tri-Share facilitator hub and other partners in the industry to find creative ways to ensure employees are able to access child care that meets their needs.
Ross Design & Engineering
Ross Design, and Lindsay Hudson in particular, have been a model for regional businesses in attending to their employees’ child care needs. They recently opened an onsite child care center for their staff, and are working toward making this center available to the wider community.
Duncan Aviation
Duncan Aviation has gone above and beyond to not only be a responsive, caring employer, but to also be a strategic partner as the Pulse Roadmap was being developed and launched. Andy is able to see that the system itself needs changing so he’s signed on to letters of support to lawmakers, testified in Lansing on behalf of the childcare workforce, partnered with a local childcare business and adapted their policies and practices to meet the needs of their working families.
Saint Gobain
Saint Gobain has shown serious interest in supporting their employees in childcare however they can.
Edward Jones
Erin has been a Trustee of the Mount Pleasant Area Community Foundation for 2 years. While advocating for childcare, she has worked with the MMDC to get funding for childcare resources.
Children’s Discovery Academy
Samantha has been working with the Regional Childcare Chelation since its launch a year ago. She is also the owner of her own childcare center in Alma!
