MBF Agency Pioneers Backup Care for Top Texas Law Firm Austin, Texas –MBF Agency, Texas’s largest nanny and household staffing agency, will begin offering corporate backup care to Houston-based Fulbright & Jaworski, LLP., the international law firm with offices around the state. Fulbright is the first law firm in Texas to adopt a backup care program for its employees. Beginning this month, MBF will partner with Work Options Group, a nationwide backup care company, to service Fulbright employees in Texas with a benefit of 80 hours per year of in-home and drop-in backup dependent care. The Austin-based company is currently one of the only household staffing agencies in Texas to offer this increasingly popular benefit to companies, which supports working parents by meeting their child care needs in the convenience of their homes. “We are very pleased to join Fulbright in pioneering this exciting new benefits program for the firm in Texas,” says Kathy Dupuy, President of MBF Agency. “Backup care programs are an encouraging new trend which more and more corporations are finding increase retention, decrease absenteeism and help attract top female executives.” Corporate backup care programs are designed to stem the financial losses to companies and personal stress to employees associated with child care interruptions. MBF will provide Fulbright employees with in-home child care in emergency situations, such as when a child is mildly ill but too sick to return to school or when parents experience a breakdown in their regular child care service. The program will also provide child care service during school cancellations, holidays and teacher in-service days. Parents will have access to a 24-hour call center and website whenever their normal arrangements fall through. “We believe we will be able to help many Fulbright employees achieve a proper work-life balance by providing them with this service,” says Dupuy. According to a Work & Families Institute study published in 2002, in a three-month period, 29% of employed parents experienced some type of family care breakdown, resulting in absenteeism, tardiness and reduced concentration at work. They estimate that absenteeism caused by child care-related difficulties costs American businesses more than $3 billion annually. CCH, Inc., a provider of human resources and employment law information, claims that the costs of these unscheduled absences can be more than $1.5 million for companies with up to 5,000 employees. Currently 7-9% of companies nationwide offer backup care programs as a benefit to their employees, although that number is growing. Nearly half of Fortune magazine’s “Top 100 Companies to Work For” have adopted backup care programs. “Fulbright is really on the forefront in terms of being among the first ten national law firms to roll out this program,” says Dupuy. MBF Agency has been offering corporate backup care to companies around Texas since 2003. Their clients include Dell, Alliance Data Systems, AT&T, Caremark, Ernst and Young, Guidant, APL Logistics, McGraw Hill and Austin Regional Clinic. |