Day Care Dreamin’

If you Google “day care at Google,” you’ll find this article from the New York Times.   Most employees only dream of employer-provided day care.  Even in their dreams, the day care is bare bones.  A place to drop the kids.  Someone to watch the kids.  But this is Google.  Three day care facilities on the Google campus.  Teachers for the kids.  Low teacher-student ratio.  Not free, but subsidized by Google.  Lengthy waiting list.  Quite a recruiting tool.  Too good to be true?  It is now.

Google increased the cost of its day care by 75%.  Parents will pay to be on the waiting list.  Though parents wept and protested,  the company with the “do no evil” motto, voted as Fortune’s “Best Company to Work For” the past two years, stuck to its guns.   Though progressive, as the company grew and its young employees began to have babies, Google discovered that it was subsidizing each child at the rate of $37,000 per year.

Under the new plan, day care services will be enhanced, but fewer employees can afford Google’s day care.  The waiting list has shrunk, and Google no longer advertises day care as a benefit for employees. 

The Times article concludes its analysis of what it clearly sees as a debacle:  “If Google had really wanted to do something path-breaking about its day care crisis, it would have spent less time creating elitist day care centers and more time figuring out how to ‘scale’ day care for everybody no matter what their salaries.  Instead, Google has shown that it thinks about day care the same way every other company does–as a luxury, not a benefit.  Judging by what’s transpired, that’s what Google is fast becoming: just another company.”

It’s likely that some Googlers have become spoiled, perhaps ungrateful.  They could, after all, be working at some fast food operation, making minimum wage.

The Google founders could’ve been unlucky, too.  They could’ve taken a big wrong turn or two.  They’re smart, but I’m guessing they’re luckier. 

What would happen if a company like Google provided free day care to all its employees?  Not a top of the line, Harvard-like day care, but something that allows any employee with a child not in school to bring his/her child to a day care facility in the workplace.

How much less money would the founders, other key executives, and the shareholders make?  How much money do you have to make if you’re already worth billions?  How much more money would you make if you motivated your employees with something that touches the most personal thing in their lives?

How would Google answer the question, “What’s your most important asset?”  Probably the way every other company answers it.  Why, our people, of course.  No one believes that response, but it would be something spectacular if a company as richly successful, forward-thinking and well-intentioned as Google proved that it meant what it said.  Who knows what would result from that kind of leadership?