THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 10, 1994 TAG: 9410070584
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 8 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY PEGGY SIJSWERDA, SPECIAL TO BUSINESS WEEKLY
LENGTH: Long : 198 lines
Waxed hallways shine under fluorescent lights. Hushed voices speak in solemn tones. Smiling women peer expectantly over desks, waiting to help visitors.
It could be any hospital anywhere.
Yet walk down one hallway in Riverside Regional Medical Center in Newport News and step outside. Shade trees tower over children as they explore the toys scattered about.
Welcome to the Riverside Child Care and Learning Center, a day-care for children of hospital employees.
Day-care centers and the corporate world are no longer strangers, not since women surged into the work force in the 1980s.
``Employer-sponsored child care is quickly becoming the most essential benefit of the '90s,'' said Meg Ambrogi, regional director for KinderCare At Work, a day-care operator.
There's little wonder.
Ambition, education, changing lifestyles and inflation brought women into the work force in droves.
By 1990, Hampton Roads' official labor force included 315,000 women 16 and older, of whom 57,500 had children younger than 6. And 70,000 women at work had school children ages 6 to 17.
Once women streamed into jobs, forward-thinking businesses began striving to keep their employees happy with day-care centers, family-friendly work policies and parent perks.
Child care, once the domain of the family, now appears in a new light as an economic issue. A current of thought says the quality of day care could influence the quality of the work force in the future.
``If we make children the lowest priority, they will continue to exhibit that behavior throughout their lives,'' said Susan Goranson, a coordinator at the Planning Council, a nonprofit Norfolk agency that maintains a list of day-care providers.
``Companies need to be working on family issues that will support the employees of today and the future,'' said John E. Pearl, employee relations adviser at the Norfolk office of United Services Automobile Association, a Texas-based insurance company.
Beth Mollick had an idea. It was the late '70s, and workplace day care was scare. Mollick, then an instructor at Riverside Professional School of Nursing in Newport News, needed day care for her young children.
She conducted an informal survey among Riverside staff, then approached the administration with a petition urging the hospital to consider setting up an on-site facility. Nothing happened.
``It got put on a back burner,'' Mollick said.
Some years later, Mollick's students studied the possibility of on-site day-care at Riverside for a school project. They discovered the idea had merit and approached officials with their results.
This time the administration listened.
Established for employees, Riverside Child Care and Learning Center opened in January 1989.
It proved so popular, Riverside had to find a second site, and located a day-care center that had gone out of business nearby on Oyster Point Road.
``Both centers started out slowly with 30 or 40 kids,'' said Riverside day-care director Janet Yang. ``But now we're consistently full with hundreds, literally, on the waiting list.''
The Riverside center caters primarily to employees, although Oyster Point accepted the children of Smith/Kline/Beecham Lab employees when Riverside sold that operation recently.
One unique element of the Riverside centers is flexibility in dealing with the schedules of hospital staff.
``We leave some spaces open for drop-in care,'' Yang said. ``Parents just call in and reserve space.''
Riverside employees also can use the centers only part time rather than enroll children full time.
``With downsizing and flex time, some people don't need full-time care,'' Yang pointed out.
What's more, Riverside offers school-age care from September to June, providing a summer program as well as transportation to and from area summer schools.
Tuition is less expensive than retail child-care centers, and tuition assistance is available for employees who may not have been able to afford child care. Yang said 82 families used tuition assistance last year.
Operating the centers is not cheap. Yang said one center broke even and the other came close last year.
Getting the centers up and running, however, is important to the company, Yang said.
``It costs so much to hire and train a new employee,'' she said. ``If we just keep five or six employees from leaving, we save thousands of dollars.''
Surveys show the centers were an important factor in employee decisions to join and remain at the hospital, Yang said.
Moreover, on-site care can reduce absenteeism, improve employee morale and decrease late arrivals, early departures and telephone calls.
``It's a win-win situation,'' Yang said. ``It doesn't just benefit the parents. It benefits the system as a whole.''
Riverside was not alone. Discovery Care Centers, which are affiliated with Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters, opened a child-care center in Ghent in 1986 to benefit employees at King's Daughters and Sentara Norfolk General Hospital.
In the late 1980s, Discovery Care opened three more area centers. Each offered tuition discounts to employees in nearby offices and hospitals, and also served the general public.
Obici Hospital in Suffolk opened a child-care center in January 1993 for workers.
Gin Straylor, director of the Obici facility, said employees ``come in often to visit their children. . . . It's been a real good thing for Obici. It makes a big difference in recruitment and retention.''
The handwriting on the wall'' was visible, said Meg Ambrogi. More and more companies wanted day-care centers nearby. Ambrogi's employer, KinderCare At Work, has capitalized on the trend.
In the past year, the Chicago-area company has opened seven on-site centers throughout the nation, more than it had opened in a dozen years. The first KinderCare center was launched in 1982 at Disney World.
The client list now includes Citibank, General Motors' Delco Electronics, the University of Kentucky, Oregon State University and the U.S. government.
``Each arrangement is unique, tailored to meet the needs of the company,'' said Ambrogi, director of KinderCare operations in the south-central United States.
Companies can choose a management agreement, in which they own the center and let KinderCare operate it. Or KinderCare owns and operates a center at the company's location.
The latter requires guaranteed enrollment and usually requires 3,000 or more employees to sustain the enrollment, Ambrogi said.
In her marketing role, Ambrogi distributes information to employees who desire workplace day care. The package outlines how to analyze the need for day care, select a task force, gather information and prepare a recommendation to upper management.
She also meets with prospective clients. Indeed, Ambrogi said, KinderCare's new focus on employer-sponsored child care mirrors the growing interest in the business world.
Having a happy, well-adjusted child in a quality day-care arrangement reduces stress on employees who have children and fosters productivity,'' said Paul Robinson, human resources executive director for United Services Automobile Association.
USAA, which opened its mid-Atlantic regional office in Norfolk in January 1990, is building a 26,000-square-foot center for up to 300 infants and preschoolers at its Texas headquarters.
The hope is, said Pearl, USAA's Norfolk employee relations adviser, that a successful pilot will result in an on-site child care facility for the 700 employees in Hampton Roads.
``It's a strong possibility,'' Pearl said. ``However, the timing will be based on several factors, including the lessons we learn from the pilot program and the planning process that will be required to develop a quality facility.''
Parent perks go beyond on-site day care. Some companies offer child-care subsidies or favor seminars on work and family. And there's R&R - resource and referral services.
The R&R program helps employees find child care. The Planning Council in Norfolk, an affiliate of United Way, contracts with area corporations to provide the Child Care Answer Line program.
Companies with contracts include Newport News Shipbuilding, Eastern Virginia Medical School, The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star and the United Auto Workers at Ford Motor Co.'s truck assembly plant in Norfolk.
Employees at the companies can turn to the Planning Council for advice and information regarding their child-care needs, although the Ford plant goes a step further.
For six hours each week, Goranson works in the truck plant, brought there by UAW-Ford's contract with the Planning Council.
Her responsibilities in the plant include orientation for new hires, in which she describes the assistance available to families in search of child care.
She helps parents decide what kind of care is right for their children, what to look for when searching for quality care and how to word an advertisement for an in-home care provider.
``I save you a lot of legwork,'' she told a group of new employees during a recent orientation.
The Planning Council's comprehensive database lists hundreds of area licensed day-care centers and family care providers. In one case, a woman who needed someone to pick up her child in midafternoon from a day-care center in Ghent was able to find a child-care provider in the database, Goranson said.
NationsBank offers its Hampton Roads employees more than R&R. Parenting seminars on subjects range from becoming a parent to understanding adolescents.
Open to NationsBank employees and their spouses, the parenting seminars are offered free during the lunch hour or after work.
Parents of school-age children can also ask advice from an experienced educational specialist by dialing a toll-free number. This service also provides access to a national database that assists in the comparison of school systems, both public and private.
Another program, NationsBank's Child Care Plus, provides financial assistance to eligible employees to help pay for child care.
``The message that comes across is the employees believe the company cares for them,'' Goranson said. MEMO: Virginia Beach writer Peggy Sijswerda is co-publisher of the monthly
publication Tidewater Parent.
ILLUSTRATION: Color photo on cover by motoya Nakamura
Color photo by Motoya Nakamura
Day-care counselor Susan Goranson, right, talks with employee Lisa
Kelly at the Ford Motor Co. truck assembly plan in Norfolk.
Chart
Working mothers in Hamp[ton Roads
For complete information see microfilm
KEYWORDS: DAY CARE CHILD CARE by CNB