For Small Businesses
Small businesses account for 99.6 percent of all businesses in North Carolina and employ nearly half of all North Carolinians. And overall, 60 percent of small businesses nationwide say the labor shortage is affecting them.
Attract Workers and Keep Them
Family-friendly workplaces attract more workers and keep them longer. Yet, by and large, small businesses tend to offer fewer family-friendly policies to employees:
- Nationally, 28 percent of employers with 500 or more employees offer child care benefits, but just five percent of small businesses with fewer than 50 employees do.
- Similarly, larger employers are more likely to offer paid family leave and paid sick leave than small employers.
For many small businesses, determining how to incorporate family-friendly workplace practices can be a challenge. Many times, business owners feel they don’t have the cash flow or resources to offer support like paid family leave or child care stipends. On top of that, most small businesses do not have a dedicated HR professional (or even someone experienced with workforce issues) handling their HR needs.
But the cost of not having a family-friendly workplace is steep. In a 2021 Pew Research Center survey of workers who quit their jobs in 2021, nearly half cited child care issues as one of the reasons, and 43 percent said the benefits weren’t good.