Research Note: Workplace Child Care and Elder Care Programs and Employee Retention

Using Statistics Canada’s Workplace and Employee Survey (WES) data for 2003 and 2004, this research note addresses an important component of labour market retention by investigating whether the presence of workplace child care and elder care programs influences employees’ decision to quit. The key findings are as follows: (a) workplace elder care support is almost non-existent in Canada; (b) employees are more likely to remain with an organization that offers workplace child care support programs; and (c) those employees who actually use the workplace child care support are even more likely to stay with the organization. We suggest that future research should assess whether the particular support programs themselves ‘cause’ employees to stay, or whether there are other factors (within organizations offering these support programs) that account for the retention.