How Employers Can Better Support Working Parents

Every summer, millions of working parents face the same logistical puzzle: school is out, camps fill quickly and reliable childcare becomes both harder to find and more expensive. For employers, the resulting strain often shows up as higher absenteeism, dipped productivity, disrupted schedules and, eventually, turnover.

The scale of that strain is well documented. A Bright Horizons Modern Family Index survey of more than 2,000 U.S. adults found that 87% of working parents report challenges or disruptions when their children are home during the summer, and 76% say their focus at work depends directly on how reliable their kids’ summer schedules are. Employers have reason to care beyond goodwill: a study from Boston Consulting Group and Moms First found that companies investing in childcare benefits saw returns ranging from 90% to 425%, with retaining as few as 1% of eligible employees covering the cost of the benefit for everyone who qualifies.

To find out which benefit delivers the greatest return, we turned to members of the Senior Executive HR Think Tank, a curated group of human resources leaders and advisors. Their answers point to a nuanced truth: the benefit that pays off is the one employees can actually use.

Flexibility Beats a One-Size-Fits-All Perk

Tyler Crebar, Founder and CEO of Crebar Career Consulting, a career strategy firm built on recruiting experience at JPMorgan Chase, LinkedIn and the NCAA, says employers chasing a single silver-bullet benefit are asking the wrong question.

“Rather than trying to solve childcare with a single traditional benefit, I believe the greatest return comes from giving employees greater flexibility,” Crebar says. “Every family’s situation is different, making it difficult for employers to offer one childcare solution that meets everyone’s needs.”

He points to adjusted schedules, hybrid arrangements and results-oriented expectations as ways to let parents navigate school breaks without sacrificing output. “Employees who feel trusted to manage both their work and personal responsibilities are often more engaged, less stressed and more likely to remain with the organization,” he adds.

Great Benefits Still Need Great Management

Sharifah Masten, Managing Partner and Principal Advisor at Counterpoint Collective, a strategic advisory firm, and a former chief human resources officer with more than two decades of experience across the military, nonprofit and corporate sectors, makes the case that the most valuable family-friendly benefit is not a benefit at all.

“It’s a leader who knows how to manage work well,” Masten says. “Summer childcare challenges expose a larger issue that exists year-round: organizations often offer flexibility without redefining priorities and expectations.”

Employees, she says, do not need every personal challenge eliminated for them. “They need leaders who design work around reality, instead of expecting people to work around the system.” One effective practice, according to Masten, is for managers to proactively review workloads and clarify what is truly mission-critical as capacity shifts.

“Organizations can invest in childcare benefits, flexible schedules or backup care, but employees experience those benefits through how they are managed,” she says. “When managers create clarity, trust and realistic expectations, existing benefits become more valuable, and engagement and retention improve as a result.”

“A reasonable boss who leads in a reasonable work culture is probably the best ‘policy’ an organization can aspire to.”

– Steve Degnan, Advisor, Board Member and Former CHRO

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A Reasonable Boss Beats Any Policy

That same theme runs through the perspective of Steve Degnan, an advisor, board member and former chief human resources officer who spent 20 years as the top HR executive at one of the world’s leading food and pet food companies. Degnan has seen generous, well-funded benefits underdeliver when the surrounding culture does not support them.

“A reasonable boss who leads in a reasonable work culture is probably the best ‘policy’ an organization can aspire to,” he says.

Degnan recalls a former workplace that offered both generous parental leave and onsite daycare, yet he says neither compared to the value of having a boss who could discern outcomes.

“In the end, having a boss who can discern outcomes and not get obsessed with when and where work gets done by reliable performers beats any such perk or policy,” he says. The lesson for senior leaders, he adds, is that culture change has to start at the top: “Top leadership has to model it.”

Lower the Bar on Non-Essential Work This Summer

Volen Vulkov, co-founder of Enhancv, a resume-building platform featured in Forbes and Business Insider, takes a more tactical approach: give employees explicit permission to deprioritize lower-stakes work over the summer.

“Don’t hesitate to set lower performance targets for non-essential tasks throughout summer,” he says. “Many firms claim to offer flexibility but still expect all hands on deck.”

Vulkov says the message matters as much as the policy itself. When leadership tells a team that everything outside a handful of core objectives becomes secondary for the quarter, he says, “it delivers immense psychological relief.”

That signals something deeper than scheduling relief: it tells employees the company values them as people, not just producers. “The message that you perceive the human being as more valuable than any quarterly task ensures the employee’s loyalty in the long run,” he says.

Backup Care Delivers the Strongest Return

Dr. Curtis Odom, Managing Partner of Prescient Strategists, a Boston-based consulting firm that advises Fortune 100 companies on workforce transformation, and an executive professor at Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business, points to one specific benefit. “Backup dependent care assistance, delivered through a Dependent Care FSA paired with subsidized backup childcare providers like Bright Horizons, consistently delivers the strongest return for employers,” Odom says.

Drawing on 25 years advising organizations through workforce transitions, Odom says he has watched summer coverage gaps quietly erode productivity.

“Parents scrambling for camp coverage take unplanned time off, disengage during meetings or quietly start job searching for more flexible employers,” he says.

Employers who offer even five to 10 subsidized backup care days annually see measurable reductions in absenteeism and stronger retention, particularly among mid-career women, who are statistically the most likely to exit the workforce due to caregiving strain. Compared with onsite childcare, Odom says backup care “scales affordably and signals genuine institutional support.”

However, that kind of targeted support only pays off if the surrounding culture lets employees use it without hesitation.

“Benefits provide resources; leadership determines whether employees can actually use them.”

– Britton Bloch, VP, Global Talent Acquisition Strategy and Head of Recruiting at Navy Federal Credit Union

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Benefits Only Work When Leaders Allow It

Britton Bloch, VP of Global Talent Acquisition Strategy and Head of Recruiting at Navy Federal Credit Union, says the highest-return benefit is not a single program. “It is a culture of meaningful flexibility, supported by leaders who understand the whole person, not only the employee,” she says.

Bloch notes that backup care, dependent-care subsidies and camps can help with unpredictable summer disruptions, but their value is limited if employees fear judgment for adjusting their schedules.

“Wholehearted leadership creates the conditions for those benefits to work: flexible hours, outcome-based performance expectations, reasonable meeting practices and grace during temporary disruptions,” she says. The payoff, according to Bloch, includes stronger retention, sustained engagement, reduced absenteeism and greater trust.

“The most effective approach combines practical childcare support with leader accountability for flexibility,” she says. “Benefits provide resources; leadership determines whether employees can actually use them.”

“The benefit is downstream. It is the receipt, not the value.”

– Christopher Bylone, Principal Strategist and Founder of Innovation Unbiased

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The Benefit Is the Receipt, Not the Value

Christopher Bylone, Principal Strategist and founder of Innovation Unbiased, a consultancy that builds cultures of belonging through data and storytelling, contends that any benefit is only as credible as the culture surrounding it. “The benefit that delivers the most is the one your company already behaves as it believes,” he says.

“A summer childcare stipend lands differently at a place that schedules the 5 p.m. all-hands than at one that does not. The benefit is downstream. It is the receipt, not the value.”

What most leaders miss, according to Bylone, is that a family-friendly benefit is a result, not a starting point. “What produces it is design: who the calendar is built around, whose PTO gets quietly questioned, whether leaving at 3 p.m. for pickup reads as commitment or as a red flag,” he says.

Before pricing the next perk, he says, leaders should ask a harder question: “Does your organization state, in writing, that family life is a design input and not an interruption? If it cannot say that plainly, no benefit will carry the weight you are asking it to carry.”

Turn Family-Friendly Benefits Into Business Results

• Flexibility works because no two families need the same fix. Adjusted schedules and outcome-based expectations let parents solve their own puzzle without sacrificing performance.
• A generous benefit cannot outperform a bad manager. Programs only pay off when managers clarify priorities and adjust workloads as summer capacity shifts.
• Culture beats policy on paper. A manager who judges results, not hours logged, delivers more retention value than any single perk.
• Explicit permission to deprioritize non-essential work reduces guilt. Naming a shorter list of summer priorities in writing gives employees real relief.
• Backup care solves the acute, unpredictable gaps a school break creates. A modest annual allotment of subsidized days can meaningfully reduce absenteeism and turnover.
• A benefit only works if employees feel safe using it. Leaders who model flexibility and avoid penalizing schedule adjustments determine whether a program gets used.
• Every benefit is a byproduct of company design. Before adding a new perk, leaders should examine whether meetings and PTO norms already treat family life as a legitimate input.

The Real Competitive Advantage Is Trust

Working parents have never had more family-friendly benefits available to them, yet the Think Tank members quoted here make it clear that benefits alone rarely determine whether employees stay or leave. Flexibility, backup childcare and dependent-care assistance all provide meaningful support, but their value depends on whether leaders create an environment where employees can confidently use them.

Organizations looking for the greatest return should resist the temptation to search for a single signature benefit. Instead, they should design work around clear priorities, equip managers to lead with empathy and trust and invest strategically in resources that address employees’ biggest pain points. When leaders do that, family-friendly benefits become more than workplace perks—they become part of a culture that strengthens engagement, improves retention and helps organizations attract the talent they want to keep.