How to Help Working Parents – Child Care Solutions at Babbel

The daycare crisis is everywhere, and it’s especially acute in Berlin where parents are desperately looking for placements. Fewer and fewer are able to lock down daycare options, many have to wait several months. This results in parents resorting to temporary solutions like reducing their working hours, hiring babysitters, and often not being able to return to work as planned. This not only causes severe problems for them personally, it affects their whole workplace.
In early 2018 a group of Babbel parents formed a group to share tips and support each other. The group had a very specific problem: everyone in it needed a childcare spot. It was immediately apparent that creativity was in order. The family room wasn’t going to suffice and there was no way an on-site Babbel childcare operation could be up and running as quickly as this group needed. So we decided to look for other temporarily solutions.
Silvia Steude, Katja Thiede von JuggleHUB, Mara Kohler and Kristin Kosmella from Babbel
We also provide a childcare arrangements for extreme cases. Currently, we are cooperating with two childcare providers who offer occasional care for a monthly fee.
The process of setting up official child care solutions at Babbel has been incredibly rewarding, not just for us in HR, but for the whole company.
We began the process of setting up childcare solutions with a questionnaire sent to all parents. The goal was to identify actual needs. The results surprised us: Over 50% of the parents were struggling with a lack of childcare, many of them despite having a childcare spot lined up. Many complained about being forced to take holidays when the childcare center was closed. We realised not finding childcare after parental leave is actually just one of several challenges working parents have to face. So we changed our approach, to identify different solutions.
We were lucky enough to get the buy-in of our CEO, Markus Witte, right from the start. He saw the need to do something and instantly supported the process of setting up official initiatives to tackle the problem. Obviously, this helped to speed up the process. We also got official support from our Director of Didactics, Miriam Plieninger, who took the initiative under her wing.
The difficulties in setting up new initiatives like this often come from a lack of clarity around responsibilities. Who is leading the project? Which departments need to be involved? Where does the money come from? We in HR led the project, but we cooperated with many different departments, like office management, legal, finance, and so on, so that the budget got shared across several departments.
I also started talking to companies that offer babysitting services, as well as providers that are helping companies to set up an in-house childcare. So don’t worry, you don’t have to set it all up yourself.
Even though you expect older kids to be able to entertain themselves for a certain amount of time, it’s also a challenge to take care of a six or ten year old while working. We found that a family-friendly culture and good examples go a long way. At Babbel, seeing kids hanging out in the kitchen or the leisure area is not unusual. The family room also helps provide a setting that makes bringing your child to work easier.
It wasn’t just parents expressing appreciation; our email inbox was hit with a barrage of positive feedback from co-workers who did not have children. It made them proud to work at Babbel, and one deemed it the most meaningful initiative in recent years. Doing something for parents affects the whole company. It matters. For everyone.
It also helps in recruiting. Since Babbel is recruiting not only in Germany but the whole world, supporting our parents has a huge impact when it comes to getting the attention of international professionals, especially in fields where we compete with lots of other startups, and for more senior roles, for which candidates often already have children.
It exemplifies how initiatives that really touch people's lives are the most warmly welcomed
I believe it’s important for HR to focus on initiatives that have the potential to change the lives of employees for the better. Nice perks like fruits and free drinks or even just more money -- these are not really what it’s going to be about. 91% of young employees with children say family-friendliness is just as important as their salary.*
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Annika Keilen,
Editor; Main interests: culture & diversity in organizations
From an economic perspective, it's easy to look at the world in figures and to lose sight of the human element. Annika believes employees are the heart of a company: At Babbel, she sees her values put into practice and documents her learnings so others can learn from Babbel's experience.
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