Playbook for Regions
Playbook for Regions

BRIEF:

Employer Engagement in Child Care

BriefEmployers have a unique stake in ensuring affordable, stable child care for their employees and the workforce of their community. Depending on the capacity of employers, there are various models for employer engagement in child care.

Examples:

  • Employer financial contributions toward an employee’s child care cost
  • On- or near-site employer child care, operated either by the employer or through a partnership or contract with a child care operator
  • Offering of a Dependent Care Flexible Savings Account (FSA) for employees
  • Contributions into a regional pooled fund to be used for building child care supply for region’s workforce
  • Discounted lease or real-property donation to reduce child care operational expenses and increase facility supply of on- or near-site child care for employees

Employer engagement in child care is an opportunity to leverage public-private resources for building child care supply in the region.

START HERE
  • Start conversations with key employers across the region. Understand their motivations for engaging on child care solutions and their readiness to invest.
  • Connect with existing child care providers to understand employer partnership opportunities. Tap into their expertise on employer-sponsored child care opportunities.
  • Collaborate with state level partners through VECF/Virginia Business Roundtable for Early Education (VBREE) to identify and develop the support needed for employers to engage in child care, such as state funding or an implementation guide, based on the child care needs of region.

Over 70 percent of Virginia children under age six have parents in the workforce, which means these families rely on child care to go to work. Employers across every region and industry are impacted by insufficient supply of affordable, reliable child care to meet the needs of hardworking families. Employers have a financial stake in making child care work for their employees, and are key partners to addressing the child care needs across regions.

Key Example

KEY EXAMPLE

Ready Together Pilot

Ready Together is an innovative public-private partnership that expands access to high-quality child care. It builds on the success of the Commonwealth’s Mixed Delivery program by funding high-quality child care for children birth to five through a mix of public and private providers. 

While Mixed Delivery is primarily state-funded, Ready Together introduces a cost share model, engaging employers as partners in financing child care to strengthen their own workforce. This pilot initiative, launched in collaboration with Ready Region Southwest, is designed to stretch state dollars further and support working families. It strengthens Virginia’s workforce while stabilizing Virginia’s early childhood system to enhance economic success.

Employers within regions have various levels of organizational, financial, and administrative capacity to engage in child care solutions for employees, and may vary in alignment based on employee demographics, business structure, and geographic location. Assessing employer capacity and readiness helps to identify key employers that would be best positioned to engage in child care solutions. Primary target employers to engage in child care likely have the following characteristics:

  1. Organizational Readiness: Existing planning, financial and administrative capacity, robust HR functions, and leadership commitment to engage in child care.For example, an employer that has existing data on employees’ child care needs, either through formal employee surveys or informal conversations, and recognizes child care as a key influence on business productivity.
  2. Employee Alignment: Employee demographics and needs align with envisioned role for employer. For example, an employer has a sufficient threshold of employees with child care needs to justify the employer’s engagement in child care as a workforce solution.
  3. Geographic Distribution: Employer child care engagement offerings align with location and needs of employees, and employers are located in areas with otherwise low child care capacity. For example, an employer interested in on- or near-site child care has a workforce that lives within a reasonable commuting distance.
  4. Business Variety: Employers represent an assortment of business sizes, structures, and industries. For example, small businesses may be interested in child care solutions that are different from employers with multiple locations across the state or country.
Assess Employer Capacity and Readiness

Once primary employer targets within regions have been identified, assessing employer capacity and readiness helps to determine the potential opportunities for an employer to engage in child care. The following interview guide can be used in conversations with key employers to develop insights on opportunities for employer engagement in child care solutions for the region.

Sample Employer Engagement Conversation Guide:

Background and Workforce Context

  • Can you start by sharing a bit about your role, and how workforce and child care considerations intersect with your work?
  • Tell me more about your organization – how many employees, type of work (hourly, shift, etc.), location?
  • What do you see as the biggest child care challenges facing your employees?

Interest and Goals Around Child Care

  • What makes you interested in exploring child care solutions? What are you hoping to achieve?
  • What are you currently doing related to child care initiatives? And/or what are you considering?
  • What, if any, data do you have on your employees’ child care needs at this point?

Readiness and Feasibility

  • Where would you put your organization on the spectrum from “just starting to explore this” to “ready to take action”?
  • When you think about child care solutions for your organization, what models or approaches feel most realistic?
  • Is your organization most interested in direct to employee benefits, such as contributing to child care costs, or in working in collaboration with other employers, such as to build a shared child care facility space?
  • Are there approaches that feel like non-starters for you? What makes them not feasible (e.g., capital requirements, ongoing operational complexity, liability concerns, benefit parity across employees, timeline, others)?
  • What are your biggest concerns about engaging in child care issues for your employees? What do you see as the biggest advantages of engaging in child care solutions?

Next Steps and Engagement

  • Is the organization’s leadership invested in this issue?
  • Who within the organization would need to be involved and/or what components would need to be in place for work to move forward?
  • What would you see as next steps for your organization’s engagement in child care?
Identify Employer Child Care Solutions

Based on the child care needs of the region and the interest and capacity of employers to engage, as determined through the employer interviews, consider the varied strategies for employer engagement on child care. Within a region, it may be advantageous to support multiple types of child care solutions across different individual employers, based on readiness and financial capacity.

Menu of Options for Employer Child Care Engagement
Key Example

KEY EXAMPLE

Massanutten Guaranteed Slots Pilot

Massanutten Ski Resort is piloting contracting with a child care operator to offer a guaranteed allotment for a set number of slots for their employees at a newly opened child care facility, with Massanutten providing funding to subsidize the employees’ child care costs at the new facility.

For many employers, investing in child care is a new and potentially overwhelming possibility. While employers increasingly understand the impact of child care on business productivity, employers benefit from having a clear path forward for them to follow that includes an actionable plan, coordination infrastructure, and capital. The actions to bring employers into the child care fold are well-suited for the role of the Regional Delegations and through the Delegations’ state partnerships with VECF and the Virginia Business Roundtable for Early Education (VBREE).

  • Actionable Plan: Recommended strategies or roadmap with clear opportunities for engagement in child care and anticipated return on investment for workforce
  • Coordination Infrastructure: Convening of cross-sector engagement between stakeholders, including multiple employers, developers, and child care providers
  • Capital and Subsidies: Pathways to funding sources, government subsidies or tax incentives, and grant opportunities for employers, and insight on how employers can both contribute and the value gained through workforce return on investment
Key Insight

KEY INSIGHT

Statewide Employer Survey

When child care doesn’t work for families, families can’t work. A statewide survey of hundreds of Virginia employers in December 2025 showed that the lack of affordable, quality child care options is not just an issue for families — it’s a problem for businesses too. 

More than 80% of employers statewide indicated that the lack of affordable, quality child care options impacts hiring and retention and business productivity. Due to inadequate child care, employers reported that 65% of their employees reduce hours, and many turn down job offers or promotions (41%) or are forced to leave jobs (34%) to care for their children. Organizations with nontraditional work schedules, such as those with shift work, were more likely to report child care challenges negatively affecting their business and workforce. 

This survey was sponsored by the Virginia Chamber Foundation, the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, and the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation. Results can be accessed here.

Employers benefit from employee access to reliable, affordable child care, and their stake in child care creates an opportunity to engage employers in child care solutions. Employers want to help, but need support and coordination to know how to invest.

Virginia Resources
Out-of-State Resources
  • Kentucky Employee Child Care Survey. List of recommended questions for employers to use to gauge their employees’ child care needs and determine what type(s) of employer-provided child care support might be most impactful on the well-being of their employees.
  • Iowa Child Care Solutions Fund. Pool or seed funding, capital grants for provider expansion, scholarship funds, etc.
  • US Chamber of Commerce Foundation. Overview of key public-private child care partnership initiatives by state (since 2022), showing how costs and responsibilities are split between employers, families, and government, and the scope of each program.
Financing Resources
  • Employer-provided child care credit (IRS 45F). The Employer-Provided Childcare Credit offers employers a tax credit up to $150,000 per year to offset 25% of qualified childcare facility expenditures and 10% of qualified childcare resource and referral expenditures.

  • Dependent Care FSA. Dependent care FSA is an employer-sponsored benefit that helps employees manage expenses associated with caring for a qualified dependent, such as a child care.

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