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Our guest today is here to talk about on site day care and how that can translate into more productivity with your employees. Andrew Field founded printingforless.com and quickly made it one of the nation’s fastest growing companies. His leadership has been recognized with numerous business awards including the Winning Work Places Best Boss Award. His company has also been recognized as one of the best on the web. Welcome Andrew, thank you for being here.
Andrew Field: Great to be here.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Now for my understanding that your company has the only state licensed company, childcare facility in the state of Montana is that correct.
Andrew Field: We’re proud to say that’s true.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Why did you do that? What made you decide to offer childcare?
Andrew Field: Well few years back, we had a couple very valued employees who happened to be expected mom for the first time and as a small company, you know how hard it is to get great people. And the last thing you want to do is lose them and in our area which is a very small count of only about 8,000 people there were some good Montessori preschools but they usually only start in about three years old. So for that gap between when a mom first comes back to work at eight or 12 weeks or whatever it is in three years there really weren’t a lot of good options. And we started our childcare program on site so that our parents wouldn’t have to choose between either being good parents or continuing with a good career.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Well I guess too for new moms it’s always nice to know that your child is so nearby and makes going back to work a lot easier I imagine.
Andrew Field: I think it does, there’s always that letting go stress and that sort of thing in the kids are crying the first day, but the fact that moms and dads for that matter can go up and visit their kids anytime throughout the day is really a nice thing. And I think it gives them a little more focus on their work during their day knowing that if something goes wrong they’re only a few steps away.
Susan Wilson Solovic: What are some of the other benefits of offering childcare to you as a company owner?
Andrew Field: I think it’s that focus and it gives people the opportunity to continue their careers not have to interrupt them and then relearn and retrain. Here’s another thing, even for a prospective employees who won’t utilize and maybe they don’t have children of that age or something like that. It says something about who we are and about the family values that our company represents and I know for a fact that it has helped us to recruit some really great people.
Susan Wilson Solovic: You know one of the things a lot of small businesses say to me that when they think about having on site childcare is they worry about the liability and the risk. How did you mediate that when you decided to do this with your company?
Andrew Field: One of the things we did was we are state licensed; we get regular inspections and surprise inspections. We obviously buy the appropriate insurance and every single loan of our providers has the right certifications and that sort of thing and we just try to do the same thing, we do in every other area the company that is high rate people. Another thing is that we’re not remote and we’re right there in the childcare facility right near the entrance so it’s pretty visible on out there and they’re open it gets a fair amount of visitors as well.
Susan Wilson Solovic: That’s great. Do you have any tips for someone in our audience who is watching that if they might want to open an on site childcares facility?
Andrew Field: I would say, if you can’t partner with somebody who already knows how to do it. That options wasn’t available to us even though we tried but if you an partner with someone who is already an expert that’s great, if not you’ll need to hire somebody particularly as the director position who has experience doing it. You don’t want to reinvent this wheel from scratch.
Susan Wilson Solovic: What about if they want to go and research this and what their options are and find these people that you’re talking about is there some place that they could go to begin that research?
Andrew Field: In most states and I think even national there are organizations that’s specialized in helping people get a childcare programs going so just look around on the web and find one near you.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Thank goodness for the internet, right?
Andrew Field: Yeah.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Well thank you fro being here Andrew we appreciate you’re sharing that story with us.
Andrew Field: My pleasure.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Andrew Field is the president and CEO Printing For less, be sure to check out his website at printingforless.com, you’re watching sbtv.com, where small business is our only business.
Transcription by: Scribe4you Transcription Services
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