SAN FRANCISCO, July 23 /PRNewswire/ -- San Francisco employers are losing millions of dollars in productivity each year when their employees are not able to come to work because of a break down in child care. When school is closed, a nanny is sick, or other child care arrangements fall through, parents are often forced to take the day off from work. In fact, U.S. businesses lose $3 billion in productivity each year due to child care breakdowns.
With the opening of the Bright Horizons at 2nd Street high-quality child care and early education center, local businesses have a new solution in town to eliminate the cost of lost productivity while increasing the recruitment and retention of key employees.
Bright Horizons Family Solutions, the world's leading provider of employer-sponsored child care, back-up care, early education, and work/life solutions, just opened a state-of-the-art child care center at 2nd Street and Harrison, right off of the 80 Freeway. The new center offers full-service and back-up child care and education for children ages six weeks to 12 years old. Local businesses can sponsor memberships at the center for their employees without making a bricks and mortar financial investment.
Studies Reveal Business Value of Child Care
Recent studies show that 90% of parents using full-service child care centers say that access to a work site center positively impacts their ability to be productive at work. Moreover, 96% of back-up care users say that employer-sponsored back-up child care would be important if they were to change jobs. Local businesses have signed on with Bright Horizons to offer their employees a convenient and high-quality child care program at the new center.
"Our employees have consistently asked us for a solution to their child care needs," said Eric Wells, Founder, CEO, and President of Softagon. "We are excited to sponsor the new Bright Horizons child care center and anticipate reduced absenteeism and higher recruitment, retention and productivity because our employees now have a safe place where their children can play and learn located right near the workplace." Wells, like many of his employees, is using the center for full-service care for his own child.
Other local businesses that have chosen to sponsor the Bright Horizons center as a benefit for their employees include Fenwick & West LLP, Littler Mendelson PC, Morrison & Foerster LLP, Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker LLP and Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP. In addition to being available for local businesses to offer as a benefit to their employees, families who live or work in the community may enroll their children at the center.
"We are excited to open the first combined full-service and back-up child care center in San Francisco. The enthusiastic response to the center opening among San Francisco businesses has proven there is great demand for a high-quality center that offers a variety of options to families who live and work in the area," said Leslie Spanier, Division Vice President of Bright Horizons Family Solutions.
Bright Horizons at 2 Street: Only Back-Up Program in City with Outdoor Playground
Bright Horizons at 2 Street is the only child care and early education program in the city with a dedicated outdoor playground for children attending a back-up program. Children today spend so many hours in front of TVs, video games and computers that they have little time to play outdoors and enjoy nature, which is critical to their healthy development. The playground at the 2 Street center enables young children to dig, race, jump, climb, and explore the outdoors in a safe and well-supervised environment so that they can build on their emerging social and gross motor skills.
Bright Horizons is operating its 2 Street center as it does each of its programs, including its 13 other full-service centers in San-Francisco, and one back-up center at 555 California Street, San Francisco, according to the highest standards of excellence as defined by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).
About Bright Horizons Family Solutions
Bright Horizons Family Solutions (http://www.brighthorizons.com/) is the world's leading provider of employer-sponsored child care, back-up care, early education, and work/life solutions. The company operates more than 600 child care and early education centers across the U.S., in Europe, and Canada, including more than 80 dedicated back-up child care centers and more than 45 back-up care programs within full-service child care centers. Bright Horizons was recently named one of FORTUNE magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For in America."
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