On any given workday, up to 85 children are running around Patagonia's Ventura, Calif., headquarters. The outdoor retailer offers on-site day care and after-school programs for kids up to 8 years old for its 550 employees. "You cannot miss the children on-site," said Dean Carter, a vice president of human resources at Patagonia. "I hear a kid laughing and playing, and there's something that almost alleviates stress. It just melts off," he said.
Patagonia estimates the program's cost at $1 million a year, even after it collects dues from parents1 and a $150,000 annual tax deduction. But much like other family-friendly benefits, it has high returns on employee retention and engagement, a point the company hammers home in a new, glossy 400-page book, Family Business: Innovative On-Site Child Care Since 1983. "That was one of the reasons we wrote the book, really setting the business case for it," Carter said.
Yet unlike other family-friendly benefits that are on the rise—such as paid parental leave—on-site child care is on the verge of extinction. Only 3 percent of organizations offer unsubsidized day care services, according to the Society for Human Resources 2016 benefits survey. That figure is down from 9 percent in 1996. "It certainly would be an advantageous benefit, I think, that many people would enjoy having," said Tanya Mulvey, a researcher at SHRM.
Patagonia employees certainly enjoy it. For parents, in-house daycare is the ultimate convenience. They eat meals with their children and moms can bring nursing infants to meetings or hang out with them at their desks. The childless employees don't seem to mind what some might consider workplace interruptions, Carter claimed. Recently, when a caterpillar decided to turn into a butterfly in the office, a group of enterprising children hung up two large signs to alert passersby. "Your day is lifted when you step over a butterfly chrysalis," Carter said.
Best of all, day care saves Patagonia on employee attrition. The company claims it has 25 percent lower turnover with employees who put their kids in the program. And 100 percent of moms return to work after maternity leave, a stat that the company attributes to the availability of nearby child care. The program has been so successful that Patagonia opened a second infant day care center for the 450 workers in its Reno warehouse. "We found that it's a really good business decision for us financially," Carter said. "It's worth more than the risk of losing valuable employees."
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