Walgreens

To treat the symptoms of work-life juggle, the prescription is more affordable child care.

The client

Walgreens is the largest retail pharmacy chain in the United States, with over 8,000 locations across all 50 states. Headquartered in Deerfield, Illinois, outside of Chicago, they needed to expand their child care offerings to meet more than 260,000 employees nationwide with safe, quality care.

The opportunity

To recruit and retain the best talent, Walgreens focused on helping employees better integrate work with life by offering tuition savings on high-quality child care. Despite existing child care partnerships, Walgreens reached out to KinderCare Education at Work because no other educational organization could help them expand and enhance equitable child care benefits for all of their employees.

The solution

Through our partnership, Walgreens was able to offer a variety of tuition savings options for early childhood education and before- and after-school care. To increase employee awareness of the new Tuition Benefit, KinderCare collaborated with Walgreens’ Work-Life and Communications teams on a strategy that included a Chicago center open house, flyer distribution, newsletters, and intranet postings. Seasonal promotions, special offers for employees, and resources on child development and parenting helped keep families engaged with the program beyond rollout.

The results

The Tuition Savings benefit launched at the end of 2013 and has steadily grown since. Between 2016 and 2018, more than 400 employees have taken advantage of the benefit, collectively saving an average of over $242,000 each year in childcare costs across 37 states.

“I am very excited about being able to partner with KinderCare Education at Work because they have so many locations, as well as a great curriculum and flexible scheduling our team members need. Their footprint enabled us to implement a child care solution for the largest possible number of team members through a single partnership. This is an invaluable benefit to our team members throughout the country.”

— Jennifer Higgins, Principal of Benefits & Wellbeing Programs, Walgreens