Wake Forest University is adding an on-site child care center to its University Corporate Center at its Reynolda Campus in Winston-Salem, joining a national trend of employers trying to support and retain working parents.
Why it matters: North Carolina is in the midst of a child care crisis that's only gotten worse with the expiration of pandemic-era funding. Offering child care on site is not common, but it's catching on among employers.
Support on site is especially valuable to employers who want to encourage employees to return to the office.
By the numbers: Best Place for Working Parents, a network of 1,700 businesses nationwide promoting family-friendly employer policies, recently examined the practices of its member employers, the Wall Street Journal reported.
11% of employers provided on-site child care between April 2021 and September 2022, per WSJ.
That's up from 9.3% in the first year of the pandemic, and 5.5% in the months before lockdowns began in March 2020, per WSJ.
Between the lines: KinderCare, the third-party operating the Wake Forest facility, also opened a KinderCare on the UNC Rex hospital campus in Raleigh in November 2022.
KinderCare at WFU will primarily serve the families of university faculty, staff and students. It won't be free — WFU families will still have to pay tuition.
It will be a 5-star, accredited facility offering care across eight classrooms for 120 children, ages 6 weeks to 5 years old, per the university.
This is the first child care center for the school's corporate center, but the university's medical center has had an on-site facility located on the Bowman Gray campus for several years, a spokeswoman told Axios.
Yes, but: Offering child care on site is a substantial investment. Employers increasingly offer other child care options, such as discounted tuition and backup care.
What they're saying: Child care is "increasingly becoming top-of-mind for employers wanting to attract and retain top talent," Dan Figurski, president of KinderCare for Employers and Champions, told Axios.
"Simply put, child care allows families to rejoin or stay in the workforce."
Zoom out: Roughly half of U.S. working adults in a recent Pew survey cited child care challenges as a reason for quitting their jobs. Absent those challenges, returning to in-person work could be easier, some say.
In a recent Charlotte competition challenging the community to come up with ways to transform outdated offices in Uptown into fresh new uses, a winning proposal included adding a child care facility to One Wells Fargo Center, a 42-story office tower.
The big picture: While offering on-site or nearby child care is rare, it isn't unheard of for major employers in North Carolina. Bank of America, for instance, operated a child care center in Uptown Charlotte for 20 years before its 2013 closure.
The center was started by the bank's former CEO Hugh McColl "to recruit talent and boost employee productivity," WCNC reported.
What's next: Construction on KinderCare at Wake Forest University is underway. It'll open in September.