Child Care Benefits Help Women Remain In Workforce

Arkansas Northeastern College introduced Camp College over the summer to provide child care to employees (Courtesy Arkansas Northeastern College)

Child care costs can be among the largest of a family’s expenses. According to the First Five Years Fund, annual costs for child care in Arkansas in 2025 range from $7,900 to $9,100, depending on the type of care, representing 10-30% of a family’s annual income. 

At Farmers Bank & Trust in Blytheville, employees were leaving in droves after starting families, finding that it was more economical to have one parent — typically the mother — stay home with the children than pay for child care, says President and CEO Randy Scott. 

“We had turnover like crazy, and a lot of it was because they just couldn’t afford the child care,” Scott says, noting that most employees who left their positions to take care of their children were young women, under 30. “Probably 60% or more would leave for that reason.”

The same was true at Arkansas Northeastern College, says Melissa Arledge, associate vice president for college and career readiness. 

“We had several employees who came to me and said, ‘I’m going to have to think about looking at other opportunities because I don’t have child care during the summer, and that’s really an obstacle for me,’” Arledge recalls. 

According to a 2024 study by the National Institutes of Health, an average of 24% of women leave the workforce in the first year of motherhood; five years later, 17% haven’t returned. Resume gaps can hamper later career development and earnings, according to the Harvard Business Review. 

Both Farmers Bank and ANC have taken this challenge head-on, with new employee benefit roll-outs this year aimed at improving employees’ access to child care. 

Case Study: Cost Sharing

In January, Farmers Bank & Trust began offering to pay half of their employees’ child care costs, up to $5,000 annually, or $416 per month. The maximum cost was recommended by Excel by 8, a nonprofit child advocacy organization, Scott says. The bank cuts a check to the employees’ licensed child care facility of choice on the first of each month. 

“We thought: What can we do to entice some of these employees — make it easier for them to be able to have child care, and focus at work, and maybe not be so physically and mentally drained?” Scott says. 

Out of the bank’s 72 employees, seven were utilizing the program as of August. Only one employee left their job in the same period. 

“We feel like it’s a great retention program. Some of our employees even tell their friends about it,” Scott says. 

The program has benefits outside the bank, as well. Local child care facilities are getting a boost in business, with new clients who otherwise might not have been able to afford those services. It also feeds into Mississippi County’s ongoing growth, acting as a draw for the young families the region is hoping to attract. 

Farmers Bank & Trust is also part of Mississippi County’s Work Here Live Here program, providing discounted home loans to local residents and new arrivals. 

“With our bank, you can get a 10% down payment on the house, stay employed at Farmers Bank for four years and that loan is forgiven, and then you get discounted child care until your child goes to school at the same time,” Scott says. 

As time goes on, Scott expects the bank’s child care cost sharing impact will become even more obvious. 

“A lot of our senior VPs here at the bank, the executive team, they’ve been with us 20 or 30 years, and they started as tellers or customer service reps,” Scott says. “We’re hoping that we’re providing for the next generation of leaders at the bank by doing this.”

Employees are eligible for the program on day one, and part-time employees can also participate. 

Case Study: On-Site Care

Arkansas Northeastern College, a community college in Blytheville, took a different approach to faculty and staff child care concerns. 

“In this area, we have good day care options for kids until they start kindergarten; that summer after they start school, we have no options here. We used to, and then COVID kind of took some of those options away,” says Courtney Fisher, chief of staff at ANC. “We are kind of ‘program poor’ during the summer in our area.”

Amid the pandemic and subsequent limiting of summer child care options, ANC was also recruiting young talent, which Fisher says came with both challenges and opportunities. 

“A lot of these younger talents that we had coming in did have younger kids. They were starting their families and things like that, and it was all fine up until all the kids started kindergarten,” she says. 

This summer, ANC offered its first Camp College, a two-month summer day camp for staff and faculty’s children, providing enrichment and care right on the college campus. 

“There were three main components that we wanted to make sure the students got during the summer: We wanted to make sure they read something every day, that they did some sort of writing every day and some sort of physical activity,” Fisher says. 

Staffed by four counselors and with a licensed elementary teacher as camp coordinator, Camp College was a natural fit for ANC, whose mission is to provide lifelong learning opportunities. 

“When we pitched this to our cabinet, we said, “This is creating a lifelong learning opportunity — just a little bit earlier,’” Arledge says. “So it was really important that we get these students on our campus and let them see all the wonderful things we have to offer here.”

In its first year, 15 campers participated in the summer program, representative of 13 ANC employees. It cost about $15,000 to launch the program, with the primary expense being counselor salaries. The college charged participating parents $25 a week to help offset the costs of snacks. 

“People are actively seeking us out to say, “This is so wonderful, we’re so grateful to have this opportunity,’” Arledge says. “We’re glad we’re doing this because this is going to help us retain the employees we have, but also be an attractive incentive for folks to work here.”

According to the Center for American Progress, U.S. companies lose an average of $12.7 billion annually due to their employees’ child care challenges. In Northeast Arkansas, Farmers Bank and ANC are hoping to turn some of those potential losses into savings through employee retention.