Employers back pop-up kids camps to help workers through summer child care woes
School closures during summer and other seasonal breaks can be a nightmare for working parents. But some employers are trying to make finding temporary childcare easier and cheaper for staff by bringing pop-up summer camps to the office.
Bright Horizons, a major operator of child care services for employers, is holding a summer camp at its headquarters in Newtown, Massachusetts, where 600 staff work, throughout July and August. Kids ages 4 through 12 can attend during the regular workday hours. The camp is held in the office, taking up a collapsible conference room and part of the cafeteria, where kids have camp counselors, do activities and eat meals catered by the office cafe.
Bright Horizons is seeing more demand from other employers wanting to hold their own pop-up camps as they try to make returning to the office less logistically difficult for staff, said Priya Krishnan, chief digital and transformation officer. “I certainly believe this will be an increasing trend, childcare as an office amenity,” Krishnan said.
It has clients holding camps in varying formats, sometimes with smaller companies and fewer children, or even during shorter holiday breaks in the spring, fall and winter.
At Bright Horizons, staff pay their children’s camp tuition through backup care benefits, which are employer-sponsored childcare subsidies to help employees find and pay for care when their regular arrangements are disrupted. On average, the price to send a child to a summer camp is about $87 a day, according to the American Camp Association. That adds up when the summer break alone lasts 10 to 12 weeks, with parents often spending thousands of dollars if they have more than one kid to send.
More employers have extended backup care benefits in recent years amid the pandemic, school and daycare closures, and childcare staffing shortages, aiming to boost productivity and retention.
Over half of employers are prioritizing child care benefits in 2024, up from 46% last year, according to a survey from Care.com including responses from 600 HR leaders and over 1,000 full-time U.S. workers. That survey also found that a lack of caregiving benefits was the top reason workers gave, across all ages, for seeking another job.
While the summer can be particularly tricky for parents, more employers are looking to help with temporary childcare support during other times of the year, too. Bright Horizons recently helped financial services firm State Street to hold a pop-up camp during spring break.
Vish Chawla, head of product engineering at Bright Horizons, currently brings his eight-year-old son to summer camp at the office.
The rising fourth-grader plays in-person games, and “what we love the most is he is not on the iPads anymore,” Chawla said. “I was also pleasantly surprised to see a pillow that he sewed, because he’s learning sewing in the camp.”
“We’ve done a bunch of baseball camps and soccer camps in the past, but they are sort of one-trick pony camps. This is not only beneficial when it comes to convenience, but also cost effective. And he’s in proximity to me, we get to have lunch together at times when I go down. I mean I couldn’t have asked for a better setup.”