Integrating company-sponsored childcare into urban planning strategies

Company Sponsored Childcare

Recently there has been a movement in urban planning to give more consideration to the needs of the community for which a project is being planned. Urban planning no longer only involves where to place buildings and how to adjust traffic flows. Urban planning is beginning to consider more and more the community that it serves. Many communities that are slated for renovation consist of a large number of mothers that could work if they had access to childcare. Providing mothers an alternative that would allow them to work and care for their children at the same time would increase the local workforce of a community and raise the economy of the area as well.

Companies have known about the benefits of company-based childcare since the mid 1970s. Many companies have programs in place that allows on-site childcare for their female employees. The proposed research will explore the possibilities of instituting a similar program into urban planning. This research will explore the possibilities of considering community childcare options in the mix of city planning. It will examine case studies of companies that have instituted company-based childcare and will determine the successes and failures of these programs. It is expected that this research will reveal that companies have found many benefits to company sponsored child care programs and that these programs will be easily instituted in the urban planning setting.

Introduction

Company Sponsored Childcare is a concept that has been around since the late 1970s. It arose from a need by companies to retain a loyal and competitive workforce. Women have been a valuable part of this workforce and cannot be ignored by companies. Traditional corporate structure was originally set up to cater to the adult male. They did not include women in the mix or take into consideration their particular needs. In this society it is the female who is responsible for the care and rearing of the children. However, the fact that women contribute considerable tot the workforce cannot be ignored either. Women who enter the workforce often find themselves unsuccessfully trying to juggle the responsibilities of family and career. Companies began to realize that they needed to address these issues in order to retain a valuable portion of the labor force.

The needs of cities are changing also and many have pointed out that what worked in the past no longer worked now. City planing has evolved from deciding where to place the buildings and roads to looking more closely at the needs of the communities that make up the city. Many of these plans focus on the inner city where there are many women that cannot work due to the needs of having to care for their children. They cannot afford childcare and cannot go out of their community to obtain it. Recently there has been a movement towards designing cities around a community center. The proposed research will explore the successes and failures of company-based childcare and will make recommendations as to how company-based childcare can become a part of urban planning as well.

Rationale for Study

This study is based on recent articles that point out that the needs of out cities are changing and that as a result, urban planning is changing as well. Urban planners must now consider many issues that were not considered in the past. Urban planners now must take into consideration the specific needs of the communities that their projects will serve. Many of these projects take places in parts of the city that are undergoing renewal and renovations. Many times these communities contain high populations of women with small children. These women could provide an important labor force and could substantially help to raise the economic level of the community. However, many cannot work due to their inability to find adequate childcare. This makes them dependent on the system instead of productive members of society.

This study is based on the idea that companies have long recognized the importance of their female workforce. There has been a growing trend to offer company-based childcare as a benefit to attract and retain capable female employees. This idea used to be unusual, but there has been a growing trend to offer this as a standard benefit package. Many companies can now reap the benefits of a full-time female workforce.

As urban planners attempt to build better communities that work together as a unit, there has been a growing trend towards the community center as a focal point of the community. If urban planners are to truly build cities that meet the needs of their residents they must consider all of the issues that concern them. Urban planners could benefit, as private companies have, by including a plan for helping to provide child care for their mother who wish to work. There are many models that these plans could take and city planners would do well to look at successful corporate programs and to follow their lead. This research will explore the successes and failures of company-based childcare programs. It will attempt to identify the qualities that are likely to lead to the success of a program and those qualities that are likely to lead to failure. In doing so it will try to determine a type of standard by which urban planners might devise their own child care initiatives to help mothers in the community become productive members of society. This research will critique the various options available to urban planners and will present ways in which urban planners might adopt some of the features of the more successful corporate plans into their own child care plans.

Scope of Study

This study will examine the successes and failures of company-based childcare programs for 20 companies in the United States. This study will include only companies that currently have a childcare plan in place. It will examine the case studies to determine what elements have led to the success or failure of the plans. It will include only companies that have had their plans in place for five years or more. It will include both large and small companies in all segments of the market. The primary objective will be to identify features that may be helpful, or mistakes to avoid in the planning of community childcare.

The formal study will be limited to companies that have these plans in place in the United States. However, several other countries will be explored, such as Sweden that have developed successful plans to bring more women into the workforce in their own country. Sweden is a particularly interesting place because they have recently faced a severe shortage of labor and had to develop some innovative solutions to their predicament. The purpose of this study will be to examine the possibilities that could be incorporated into urban planning schemes. The positive and negative aspects of each idea will be examined. This research will be exploratory I nature and will seek to provide solutions to the problems faced by urban planners as they attempt to build communities that truly serve the needs of the constituents that live in them.

Thesis and Research Objectives

The exploratory data in this study will support the thesis that company-based child care programs could provide an model that could be used by urban planners to design communities that better serve the citizens that live in them. This research hopes to achieve several objectives. The first is to compile a series of case studies that have company-based childcare programs and that has had them for more than five years. The second is to determine the common elements that are present in successful programs and those that are present in unsuccessful programs. The Third is to determine how these models could be translated into the urban planning scenario. The fourth is to devise a criteria for evaluating the success or failure of current programs as well as to provide a standard by which to determine the success or failure of current programs and those in the future.

The final product of this research will be a report that details the findings of this information in a clear format that clearly draws relationships and makes the patterns easy to detect. The final presentation will paint the picture of the current state of company-based childcare plans and how they may be translated into the urban community setting. It will also discuss various economic and social implications of these types of plans on the communities that they serve. It will discuss various models and programs that may be employed to help develop successful plans in the future. It is the ultimate objective of this research to focus on a problem and to make suggestions that may help to pose solutions as well. It is expected that the qualitative data found in the available report will support the main thesis of this work.

Methods

This study will be exploratory in nature. However the exploratory data will later be coded to determine if patterns do exist, indicating the factors that are present in successful and unsuccessful programs. The study will be conducted in three phases.

The first phase is to locate the information. This will be performed through library and Internet searches for companies that have instituted company-based childcare programs. Where the information cannot be obtained through unobtrusive sources, a phone call will be made to obtain the information. Next the information will be coded into two categories. These categories will include the number of people who actually use the company-based childcare programs, expressed as both a raw number and a percentage of total employees and total female employees of childbearing age. These will be taken on an individual basis and the best judgement of the researcher will be used.

After the incidents are identified in the case studies and coded, they will be divided into columns and statistically analyzed to see if there is a statistical significant difference. A p-value of

Until the actual research is conducted it cannot be determined what similarities and factors will be identified. However, these items are an example of what may be discovered during the preliminary case study examination. The primary goal of the research is to identify any patterns that may exist. An attempt to predetermine the categories prior to conducting this type of study may tend to bias the results. In this case the research may only search for the known or suspected factors in a successful or unsuccessful program and in turn may ignore an innovative idea that could lead to greater success of future programs.

Phase two of the research will involve examining the characteristics of the various company-based child care programs for similarities in structure, funding and other qualities that would indicate factors to success or failure. This information will be summarized in a spreadsheet so that statistical analysis can be used to determine frequency distribution of the various attributes. These will help to spot commonalties, such as programs that have similar schedules or the children divided into appropriate age groups.

These statistical methods will accomplish the research objectives of this study: to compile a series of case studies that have company-based child care programs and that have had them for more than five years, to determine the common elements that are present in successful programs and those that are present in unsuccessful programs, and to determine how these models could be translated into the urban planning scenario. The fourth is to devise a criteria for evaluating the success or failure of current programs as well as to provide a standard by which to determine the success or failure of current programs and those in the future.

As one will recall, the fourth objective is to devise a method for evaluating the success or failure of any plans currently in existence, or those that may be developed in the future. This one may be a little more difficult to accomplish due to the subjective nature of the terms success or failure. There are many ways in which a program might achieve success or failure. The program may increase the profitability of the company by a certain percentage. The program may increase worker satisfaction and reduce the turnover rate. A program may be a success in other ways, such as giving the company a good community image ore reducing stress for female employees. The success may be something such as the ability to attract the female employee that later increases revenue by a large percent or finds a new way or save on costs. Many of these items cannot be measured in a definitive manner and the criteria for each company will be different. What one company may consider to be a success, another may consider to be a failure.

One of the key differences in evaluating the success or failure of company childcare programs will be to examine their original goals and purpose for starting such a program. If the original objectives of the program have been met, then the program will be determined to be a success. However, this in itself still does not determine success or failure of a program. The goals and objectives of the program may have been met, but there may have been a negative effect that was unforeseen in the original planning of the program. All of these factors will have to be weighed on an individual basis.

The research methods for this study act actually a hybrid of exploratory and traditional inductive statistical methods. The primary sample will be derived from exploratory data. This data will be converted into survey-type statistics and then analyzed using standard statistical methods. In this way it is hoped that statistical significance can be established between the various factors previously discussed. In this way exploratory data will act as survey data, for statistical purposes.

Delimitations of the Study

Finding statistically significant result on one factor will not prove that a certain element will lead to the success or failure of a program. All of the portions of this report must be taken as a whole. In this way the data interpretation will differ from a traditional survey. It is not expected that a one to one correlation on any one factor can be led to a conclusion regarding the final answer. All of the result of all of the elements will have to be combined and weighed against one another in order to draw a logical conclusion.

The research will have to be careful not to jump to false conclusions based on any one portion of this report. All of the factors must be weighed together. Even though this research contains a statistical element to draw correlation's between certain elements, it is still an exploratory study. In the end, results and conclusions will not be drawn on statistical analysis alone, but will rely on a judgement call by the researcher, in this way maintain its exploratory format.

We must remember that the goal of this research is not to obtain a correctional relationship between the factors that lead to the success or failure of a program. But rather they are to act as a springboard for ideas. The results of this study are supposed to provide possible solutions to a problem. They are not intended to be conclusive in themselves, but are to act as an idea generator and give the reader something to consider in the design of their community. It is expected that the results obtained will serve the original objectives of the research and that the research goals will be realized.

Findings

It is expected at the findings of this research will uncover patterns and solutions to the problems currently being faced by urban planner and communities regarding the child care issues. It is expected that the case studies will reveal many attributes that can be easily identified and associated with the success or failure of a corporate childcare program. It is expected that the research will support the hypothesis and that positive advantages will b gained from including childcare into the urban planning process.

The conclusions of this research will be inferential and could be subject to several sampling biases, including the expectations of the researcher. Therefore two other researchers will compute the research and act as a check against research expectations and bias. It is possible that another source of bias may exist in that the case may have withheld certain information from the public and that this information has had an influence on the results and conclusions of the project. Companies may only publish the positive aspects of their program in order to boost public acceptance ratings. It is impossible to know if this bias exists and to what extent it may influence the final conclusions and answers.

This is a unique study method developed due to the complexity of the subject matter. There are hundreds of companies that are known to have company-based childcare provisions and these programs come in many forms. The first task of the researcher in this study is to attempt to standardize these various report forms into a standard format for easy tabulation and computation. This will be done with the use of charts and graphs.

The results of this research will assist in developing a set of recommendations involving how to utilize the information in the development of community childcare programs. This study does accomplish another important task that needs to be performed in order to perform similar studies in the future. It provides framework for conducting and standardizing this type of information into to a manner that can be analyzed for statistical significance.

This same framework could be used to analyze similar data structure in the future. It is unique in that the data set comes from a source that was not in a standard format. This will serve as a model for future research.

This research is not to act as a final conclusive element in evaluating either the changing situation in urban development, nor will it give a clear picture of the entire childcare situation. It gives us yet another element to consider in the urban planning setting. This research is expected to accomplish several important elements that will be necessary when further research becomes necessary. The primary task that it will accomplish is to provide an evaluation criteria with which to assess and evaluate any programs that may arise from these considerations of childcare in the development of our cities.

There have been a few studies conducted on the effects of company-based childcare. However, it is obvious that there are many more topics in this field that could be the subjects of future research. Many companies make claims that their programs are successful> However, they have no means with which to evaluate them, and it is not known by what standards they are making this assessment. It is difficult to draw conclusive result on whether something is a success or not without concrete set of evaluation tools.

Another difficulty in making assessments of company-based childcare programs is that there is a wide degree of variability as to what would be considered a success or failure. Criteria for evaluating these items are made on an individual company basis. The results of this research will not provide a one-size-fits all set of criteria for evaluating the success or failure of the childcare programs being discussed. It will provide a proper framework with which to evaluate these programs that is flexible and easy to adapt to the individual program. It is easy to find companies that say their childcare program has been a success. However it is difficult to determine on what they are basing this statement as success can be measured in many ways. The first element of good research is a definitive set of criteria by which to evaluate the subject of the research. This is a primary focus of the proposed research, to provide the groundwork for further research. To make a statement without these elements makes the conclusion of the research no better that a glorified opinion.

This topic area represents new material and a new way of looking at old problems. The development of any new research topic goes through many stages before it becomes a mature topic. The first stage is the discovery stage, where the new idea or topic is first discovered. At this stage there is little or no academic research to support it. However, depending on the nature of the topic it may have many newspaper articles published on it, most of which are based on opinion and have no true scientific value. There may even be information published on the subject that later proves to be false or incorrect.

In the next stage, researchers must find a way to quantify the new idea or concept. At this stage there are a few academic studies that attempt to do just that. The primary focus of research at this stage is to find a way to measure the new thing in a meaningful way. Research at this stage is generally broad within the topic and sub-topics begin to emerge. This is the stage that the current research is in at this time. We need to define our evaluation criteria and assess how it can best be applied and be of use in further studies.

In the next stage of research true correlational studies begin to emerge and the research topic become more focused. In this stage one might expect to find a number of direct correlational studies on the given topic. This subject is not at this stage yet. However, in the future there are many aspects of this issue that will need to be studied in order to draw conclusions and further refine how to solve the child care crisis. Some possible topics that deserve future discussion are the superiority of one type of community-based child care system over another. It would be useful to study the effects of company-based child care programs on the actual profitability of the company as well as to assess by way of survey, the attitudes and stress levels of mothers under different child care programs. Studies also need to be conducted on the effects on the children as far as developmental topics and behavioral topics. There are many more topics that need to be studied before we can fully understand the effects of company-based childcare on everyone involved. The se studies will help to design better childcare programs, no matter where one lives in the country. After this stage it is simply a matter of narrowing the topics further and gaining a broader range of knowledge on the topic.

The idea of including childcare as one of the needs that should be included in urban planning is a new idea. It is obvious that if urban planning is shifting to a perspective that takes into account the needs of all of the people in a community, then it should attempt to identify all of the problems that the community faces. Including childcare in the urban planning and development of an area could have many of the positive effects on the local economy that it has had for companies that instituted company-based childcare. It is expected that if these programs become a part of community programs and that they become readily available then many more mothers will enter into the workforce. This will bolster the local economy and have many positive effects for the children and mothers alike.

Conclusion

The ideas that form the basis for this research are old problems and have had no easy solutions in the past. Urban planners are trying to create urban settings that will take into account the individual needs of the community in which they are located. There is a general consensus that we need to find a way to put people, especially in low-income areas of town back to work. However, in order to do this we must solve an age-old delimma.

Working mothers often have conflicts that create stress. They want to do what is best for their children, but sometimes the pressures of work and home conflict and this creates a great amount of stress in the mother's life. Workers are more efficient and productive when they do not have pressures and stress to deal with. It is considered common knowledge that stress has many negative health effects and that reducing stress in the work place leads to less time off and greater productivity. Eliminating this major source of stress for working mothers would have many benefits for everyone involved.

Research in to ways to combine community-supported childcare into the urban planning setting is relatively new. It is obvious hat this is the next step. The purpose of this research will be to explore the ways in which childcare can become a standard part of the urban planning process. It will provide the basis from which further studies can be designed. It will provide the background work necessary to further conduct studies on the topic. It will serve as a starting part for the understanding and future development of programs that will ultimately help to reduce the child care problem that exists in inner cities.