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Cutting Edge Companies - Bright Horizons by Heidi Vanni From the Fall, 2007 issue of ValuesThis column highlights companies in the business of providing solutions to social and environmental challenges. Featured companies are typically held in the SmallCap Innovations portfolios offered to Walden clients.
What do a teacher in Boston, an accountant in Atlanta, and an attorney in San Francisco have in common? If they are parents, they all juggle the demands of earning a living and raising children. While this balancing act affects both mothers and fathers, women disproportionately bear this burden, as traditional child rearing stereotypes have been slow to change.
Women’s participation in the labor force has been on an upward trajectory for the past 30 years. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2005, 68 percent of women with a child between the ages of three and five years old worked; this is up markedly from 1975 when just 45 percent of these mothers worked. Historically, many families have relied on relatives to help them raise children. This too is changing. Geographic barriers, and the reality that many grandparents are still participating in the labor force themselves, have limited the role that relatives play. As a result, many parents are turning toward childcare centers.
Bright Horizons Family Solutions is the world’s leading provider of employer-sponsored childcare, early education, and work/life solutions. Center-based childcare services include before and after school care for school-aged children, infant care, “backup care” (i.e., emergency childcare services at the workplace), conference care, and stormy day care. Bright Horizons has the capacity to serve approximately 69,000 children in 41 states, Canada, Ireland, and the U.K. The company’s services address employers’ changing workplace needs. Employer-sponsored childcare enhances employee productivity, reduces absenteeism, and provides a powerful recruitment and retention tool.
Bright Horizons’ employees enjoy a 5 to 15 percent pay premium relative to the industry. Additionally, the company offers training programs, career advancement opportunities, and an unusually comprehensive and affordable benefits package. As a result, employee turnover is quite low relative to other childcare centers: 22 percent at the teaching staff level and in the 10 to 15 percent range at the center director level. This continuity among employees contributes to the high-quality care that Bright Horizons consistently provides.
Bright Horizons was listed as one of Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” in 2007; a prestigious list to which Bright Horizons has been named eight times. Interestingly, Bright Horizons is also in the unique position of being a “benefit” for many Fortune 500 companies. Forty of the companies recognized in Fortune’s list and 75 of Working Mother magazine’s“100 Best Companies for Working Mothers” are Bright Horizons clients.
The balancing act between working and parenting will likely persist. Bright Horizons makes that tightrope a little easier to walk.
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