As coronavirus pandemic rages on, eCommerce giant Amazon is joining other big tech companies by offering a temporary backup childcare benefit to employees who are struggling to keep up as they try to work from home while taking care of their children with schools closed. In a blog post today, Seattle-based company announced it is offering temporary backup family care to over 650,000 U.S.-based employees.
In an announcement by Beth Galetti, Amazon senior vice president of Human Resources, Amazon will offer a new family care benefit through Care.com to 650,000 full and part-time Amazon and Whole Foods Market employees in the U.S. This benefit will provide each employee up to 10 days of subsidized emergency backup child or adult care between now and October 2.
Beth Galetti said:
Amazon will offer a new family care benefit through Care.com to 650,000 full and part-time Amazon and Whole Foods Market employees in the U.S. This benefit will provide each employee up to 10 days of subsidized emergency backup child or adult care between now and October 2.
Amazon is not alone. Last month, Microsoft added to its childcare benefits package for parents as part of the company’s response to COVID-19. Apple, Facebook, and Alphabet are already providing similar benefits.
“We added an additional leave option to give our employees greater flexibility and time off as they face extended school closures: the 12-week Paid Pandemic School and Childcare Closure Leave,” a Microsoft spokesperson said. “This benefit may be taken on a continuous, reduced, or intermittent basis — for example, it could be used to take leave for 1-2 days per week while remotely working the rest.”
For Emily Colby, an executive assistant at Amazon’s Seattle campus and a member of an employee affinity group called Momazonians, this new choice for care means less juggling between her and her husband over who watches their 18-month-old son, Silas, while they work. Colby says before the pandemic her family shared a nanny with four other families. During COVID-19, Colby, her husband, and her mother have found ways to balance work while making sure their son has supervision all day.
