DAY CARE CAN SAVE BUSINESSES MONEY.

Byline: Sara Eckel Newspaper Enterprise Association

It sounds like a win-win situation for everyone. Working parents take their kids to a day-care center located on the company premises. The kids have the security of knowing that mom or dad is in the next room or building. The parents are equally at ease. Not only can they check in with the kids and monitor their care, they can avoid the mad dash between company punch-out time and day-care center closing time.

The employer, in turn, is rewarded with increased productivity in the form of lower absentee rates, lower turnover rates, increased loyalty, higher morale and a more focused, less stressed work force.

Patagonia, an outdoor gear company located in Ventura, estimates that it saves anywhere from $15,000 to $90,000 in turnover costs - employment advertising, agency fees, training time, etc. - for each working parent who stays with the company to take advantage of its high-quality day-care center.

``I want employees who feel secure enough at home that they can be creative while at work. I want them focused. And if they're distracted by guilt, they can't focus. We don't provide these benefits because we're nice. We provide them because it's good for our company,'' said Patagonia Chairman Yvon Chouinard at the recent White House Conference on Corporate Citizenship.

Chouinard's words are echoed by executives at many companies, including Campbell's Soup, Prudential Insurance and Johnson & Johnson's. By providing day care, these companies not only avoid the high cost of child-related absenteeism - an estimated $3 billion a year nationwide - they also build goodwill in the community.

It all sounds great, but it also begs the question: If on-site child care is so cost-effective, why do so few employers provide it? I posed this question to several work-family experts, and the following reasons are the most commonly cited.

Marcia Brumit Kropf, vice president of Research and Advisory Services for Catalyst, said that in order for a company to get on-site day care, it must have a senior manager who is strongly behind it. ``A lot of companies will say, gee, we make widgets, we don't understand child care.''

Kropf also said many high-level executives don't understand the pressures that working parents face. ``A lot of companies are organized around an understanding of the work force that is outdated. They are organized with the assumption that someone is at home taking care of these things.''

This will ultimately have to change, Kropf said, because the problem of balancing work and families might be difficult, but it won't go away.