Thursday, March 24th, 2011
On November 1, 2009 our practice opened an employee daycare. Since we happen to be in the business of taking care of pets, most people assume it’s a daycare for our employee’s pets. Every time I mention that we have a daycare, I get a “double-take” from the person I’m talking to….”you mean the employees can bring their dogs, right?” is the question that is almost always asked.
Our daycare is for human children! We like to call is BRAC Buddies, since we refer to Broad Ripple Animal Clinic as “BRAC”. Most people are amazed that a small business can pull this sort of thing off. In the end, a little ingenuity with a dash of luck, and the blessing of our practice owner resulted in a free-standing, fully-licensed private childcare facility that is just steps away from where we do our daily work of caring for the pets of Indianapolis.
Our practice is in a small neighborhood and we actually work out of multiple buildings because there isn’t much room for expansion and rebuilding. Our administrative offices and staff break room are actually across the street from the main clinic, while we have four more exam rooms in the Wellness Center down the street and a dog-training facility a mile away. We’re used to being “creative”! So, when adjacent property became available we chose to purchase it. Did we know what we were going to do with it at the time?….No! We just knew we might need it down the road.
As we labored over remodeling the little bungalow, we toyed with the idea of renting it out. Then, our Human Resources Director (and father to twin infant girls) casually and half-jokingly said, “let’s make it a daycare for the staff.” We laughed about it, but that night I thought more and more about the possibilities. Earlier in the year we had lost a veterinarian who was struggling with dependable childcare and a few key team members who could no longer afford to work and pay for childcare after having their second child. The next morning, I pitched the idea to our practice owner, who is thankfully an extremely progressive thinker. He weighed the pros and cons, then gave us his blessing to create BRAC Buddies.
How does it work? There is a dedicated childcare staff, and we are inspected annually by the state, who issues us our license. The employees pay a minimal amount per hour for each child, and our HR Director is responsible for scheduling the daycare to reflect the employees’ scheduled hours. Childcare is then direct deducted from payroll. Would it work with a small staff? Probably not…..(we have 54 employees). The first year we were open, the daycare cost the practice $22,000 and that annual cost appears to be pretty fixed from month-to-month. As we have grown (we now have 14 kids who use the daycare), the added costs have mostly been absorbed by the employees’ hourly childcare rates.
What did the practice get in return? Several key team members returned to work. We feel we now attract “top talent”, who are interested in the daycare. We have also decreased turnover rates and have a team more bonded to the practice. Is it a headache to manage? A lot of the time! Is it worth it? ABSOLUTELY!! And it’s a good thing, because for some reason…it seems we always have more babies “on the way”.
Tags: childcare, creative benefit packages, daycare, human resources, veterinary benefits
