1. Scope the Workforce
We review headcount by location, the hourly and salaried split, shift patterns, and any existing care vendors. This determines whether your program leans toward professional network placements or employee-directed care.
This is a program design page for Benefits Leaders, not a childcare planning guide for parents. If you have decided to fund childcare and now have to answer how many hours, for whom, at what cost, and live by when, this is the sequence Helpr runs with you. Package design comes first. Most employers land on 80-100 hours of care per employee per year, then adjust by population: hourly and shift-based employees need different hour banks than salaried employees, and a workforce spread across regions needs a mix weighted toward employee-directed care rather than professional network placements. From that you get an eligibility definition, a Care Fund allocation, and a modelled uptake assumption you can defend in a budget review. Implementation follows a fixed shape: scoping and package design, contracting, platform and eligibility configuration, a launch communications sequence, then utilization review at 30, 60, and 90 days. Care benefits return 4.93x, and that number is a function of uptake, which is a function of how the program was designed and announced rather than how much was budgeted.
The five stages between an approved budget and a childcare benefit your employees are using.
We review headcount by location, the hourly and salaried split, shift patterns, and any existing care vendors. This determines whether your program leans toward professional network placements or employee-directed care.
Set the annual hour bank, typically 80-100 hours per employee per year, define eligibility, and split the Care Fund allocation across populations. You leave this stage with a costed program on paper.
Eligibility files, allocation rules, and approval settings are configured in the Helpr platform, with your HRIS feed connected so entitlement stays current without manual maintenance.
A launch sequence built for your channels, covering manager briefings, employee comms, and the first-use walkthrough. Under-communicated care benefits are the single most common cause of low utilization.
We review uptake, spend against allocation, and care-type mix, then adjust hour banks or communications while there is still budget year left to act on the findings.
Employees whose needs run past backup care get 1:1 support from a dedicated care consultant, which keeps your program from stalling on the hardest individual situations.
The hard part of an employer-sponsored childcare benefit is not deciding to fund it. It is sizing the hour bank, writing eligibility that holds up across hourly and salaried populations, allocating Care Funds against modelled uptake rather than headcount, and getting the announcement right so the benefit is used in month one instead of month nine. Helpr runs that design work with your team and then holds an implementation timeline against it, with utilization reviewed at 30, 60, and 90 days so the first renewal conversation starts from data.
What Benefits Leaders get from a designed rollout rather than a vendor switch-on.
Start from 80-100 hours per employee per year, then split the design across hourly, salaried, and distributed populations so the hour bank matches how each group actually works.
Scoping, contracting, configuration, launch communications, and 30/60/90 day review, with named owners at each stage so the launch date holds.
Care Fund allocations are set against forecast utilization rather than raw headcount, which is what keeps the budget honest and the benefit fully funded.
Utilization, spend, and care-type reporting from day one gives you the basis for the 4.93x return case before anyone asks for it.
Most employers design around 80-100 hours per employee per year and then vary it by population. Hourly and shift-based employees typically need a larger bank because their care gaps are more frequent and less predictable, while salaried populations use fewer hours but often need them at short notice. We model this against your headcount before you commit a budget number.
Bring your headcount and workforce mix and we will draft a package and a timeline.
Women-owned business enterprise certification
Employee-directed care built into program design
One program design across every market you operate in
Send us your headcount, workforce mix, and target launch date. We will come back with a package design, a cost model, and an implementation timeline.
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