Today, caregivers make up 75% of the U.S. workforce. This not only impacts market demand, but also business strategy – as business leaders across industries cultivate environments to attract and retain this growing demographic of employees. Corporations and start-ups alike are adapting their policies and cultures in ways that maximize the productivity, motivation, and loyalty of today’s caregiving generation – which, research shows, is paying dividends to their bottom line. 

The Best Place for Working Parents®, founded in 2019, is the leading national network of businesses proving that family-friendly policies are also business-friendly – through the top 10 research-backed HR policies that have quantifiable ROI for companies of all sizes. The Best Place for Working Parents® National Trends Report identifies annual trends and anomalies across these top 10 family-friendly policies, and highlights the top insights from this national data set broken down by business size, region, and industry.

Based on the 1,500+ businesses that have earned the Best Place for Working Parents designation, three high-level takeaways from this year’s report illustrate how family-friendly policies and caregiver-friendly practices are driving business and employee success:

1. Back-up child care is a growing policy across businesses of all sizes. Perhaps because employers see a 30% reduction in employee absences¹ when offering back-up child care, there has been a three-year positive trend in offering this benefit within micro- and small-sized businesses across the Best Place for Working Parents® network, as well as for on-site child care and child care assistance.  Today, nearly 60% of small businesses now provide back-up child care, while 83% of medium-sized businesses and 82% of large-sized businesses offer this benefit. 
2. Small businesses are closing the healthcare benefits gap with increased adoption of the most popular trifecta of employee health benefits: medical, dental, and vision. While medium- and large-sized businesses dominated this trifecta of employee health benefit offerings in years past, micro and small businesses have caught up in the health benefits race, with 72% of micro businesses and 76% of small businesses offering this trifecta today as compared to 82% of large businesses – which means more small businesses are gleaning the 47% ROI on their investment in these key policies.
3. Parental leave is a distinguishing “stand-out” policy in 13 out of the top 19 industries in the Best Place for Working Parents® network. From Business & Information, to Finance, Healthcare, and Technology, parental leave continues to top the list of family-friendly policies that can give companies a competitive edge in today’s hiring market. And the return on these policies is significant – with recent research showing that small businesses offering maternity leave being 50X more likely² to have a high-performing team.

Congratulations to the business leaders who are innovating and effecting positive change for their businesses, as well as their employees and their families. And thank you to our regional partner leads across the country, and to the 2,000+ businesses who have engaged with the Best Place for Working Parents® online assessment, peer-to-peer network, and family-friendly resource supports over the past year. We look forward to continuing this journey with each of you and are grateful to have the opportunity to learn alongside this outstanding community of changemakers.