On-site daycare: the competitive advantage.

• Author: Thayer, C. Thomas
• Position: South Florida Water Management District's social program

The South Florida Water Management District's three-way partnership with a developer and a daycare operator paved the way for the creative financing of on-site daycare for children of its employees.

Editor's note: Each year the Government Finance Officers Association awards its prestigious Awards for Excellence to recognize outstanding contributions in the field of government finance. The awards stress practical, documented work that offers leadership to the profession and promotes improved public finance. This article describes the 1992 winning entry in the financial management category.

In the mid-1980s the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) recognized the need to make available child daycare to be able to continue to attract and retain high-quality employees. The number of households with both spouses working outside the home had grown to a point where child daycare was becoming a necessity for employees during the first half of their working career.

In today's workplace, greater emphasis is being placed on employee benefits and a quality work environment than ever before: pay alone may not be enough to succeed in attracting top candidates. Child daycare can be a significant part of a comprehensive compensation package, providing the employee with additional disposable income through pretax deductions and/or lower costs. It can reduce anxiety by providing more frequent interaction between parent, child and care giver and can increase employee morale, which favorably impacts on productivity. Most importantly, it conveys an attitude of caring, a feeling of "family" within an organization.

The SFWMD is a unit of regional government. Its jurisdiction encompasses approximately 18,000 square miles, serving a population of five million citizens. The SFWMD is a 40-year-young organization which has grown into a total workforce of 1,500 employees. Its missions involve all aspects of growth management relating to water supply and protection and environmental protection and enhancement, as well as continuing to perform its originally established role of flood control protection, principally related to hurricanes and other storm events. Having recognized the need to make available child daycare in order to continue to attract and retain quality employees, the SFWMD decided in the mid-1980s to make on-site daycare a reality at its headquarters in West Palm Beach, Florida.

It took seven years of research, planning, negotiating and problem solving to bring this project to fruition with the opening of a new daycare center in the fall of 1991. The investment provided an immediate yield, but the real payoff will be reaped many times over in the future. The cost/benefit ratio on this project is virtually incalculable. Many of the benefits are intangible and would be difficult to quantify, while the out-of-pocket cost to the SFWMD is easily counted on no hands -- zero dollars.

Planning for Child Daycare

The concept of employer-provided daycare services is not a new one. What made this project unique was the initiative of providing on-site daycare without the expenditure of taxpayers' dollars. The path of least resistance would have been to appropriate budgeted funds; but SFWMD pursued more innovative financing for the construction and operation of the child care facility to serve its employees.

A committee of interested SFWMD employees was impaneled to gather the information necessary to effectively plan and implement this project. The committee was composed of representatives from senior management and many departments: human resources, research, regulation, legal, risk management and administration. A zero-dollar budget was established, and four simple guidelines were instituted; the project was to

* provide quality care and a learning environment for children,

* minimize of SFWMD involvement and investment,

* establish an extremely competitive fee schedule and

* document activities so as to transfer lessons...