employer

We provide child care consultation and development for corporate employers. Our clients include manufacturing firms, health insurers, software companies, universities, and hospitals. We provide consultation and research on:

  • Work-life strategic planning
  • Benchmarking studies
  • Needs assessment surveys and feasibility studies
  • Child care center consultation, including:
      -design and start-up
      -vendor review and selection
      -equipment selection
      -administrator recruitment
      -tuition assistance planning
  • Dependent care collaboratives
  • Flexible work arrangement programs
  • Development of specialized child care services, including: back-up child care programs, programs for mildly ill children, vacation care for school-age children

Exemplary Projects:

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts
Mills Consulting Group has worked with BCBSMA extensively over the past 14 years. This work has included administering written and online surveys on work-life balance issues, providing manager training, introducing flexible work arrangements, and setting up a lactation room. Mills worked with BCBSMA to develop its current workplace child care center and conducted evaluations of the center’s programs. We also created a tuition assistance program for employees’ summer child care needs. Our on-line needs assessment survey for BCBSMA employees determined their interest in various work-life initiatives including: continuation and/or expansion of on-site child care facilities, financial assistance for child are, emergency back-up child care, assistance finding child care, flexible work arrangements, elder care assistance, and a fitness center benefit. BCBS has been named in Working Mother magazine as one of the 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers, and is nationally recognized as a family-friendly place to work.

Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research
Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, Inc., (NIBR) in Cambridge, MA asked Mills Consulting Group to conduct a child care needs assessment survey of NIBR employees who are currently parents or expect to become parents within the next two years. We began the needs assessment process by meeting with senior Human Resources personnel at NIBR, which included the Vice President of Human Resources, the Director of Compensation and Benefits and other Human Resources department representatives. Our intent was to better understand NIBR’s goals for the needs assessment, and more importantly their corporate objectives for providing child care initiatives to their employees, such as improving recruitment and retention rates, and/or increasing productivity. Our work on this project included an online survey and a focus group of employees, child care market research, an investigation of space considerations, organizational models with associated budgets, and a final report with recommendations. Since that time we have continued our work with NIBR, updating the information collected previously.

Reebok International 
We began our consulting work with Reebok to assist them in decisions regarding organization and implementation of a high quality child care center for Reebok employees. We worked closely with both the Human Resources department and the Reebok Planning Group on all aspects of creating a new onsite center, including architectural design, construction, determination of center size, and management model. We assisted them in thinking about criteria for choosing a vendor model, budget projections and sliding fee scales. The Reebok child care center successfully opened in September of 2003. We have continued our work with Reebok since that time, and have focused on a variety of consulting and research activities, for example conducting quality evaluations and employee focus groups.

ARUP Laboratories
Mills Consulting Group recently completed a child care needs assessment and analysis of the 1,500 employees of ARUP Laboratories in Salt Lake City. The needs assessment survey tool was developed after examining the goals and objectives of the company and understanding the characteristics of the workforce. Upon the completion of data analysis, a comprehensive report was prepared providing a profile of all survey respondents, including those with children and those expecting to have a child in the next two years. Details about current child care usage (type of care, hours, tuition) and interest in various company-sponsored child care initiatives were also included. Recommendations for child care initiatives.