Winner
Danelle McCusker Rees
President, Human Resources and Operations Training, UPS
How an Uptick in Employee Absences Prompted This Executive to Expand Childcare Support
After noticing an increase in unplanned employee absences, Rees and her team looked into the issue and realized that many employees were not calling out due to illness, but because of last-minute disruptions in childcare. “We found that people did not want to admit that they had a childcare problem. There’s this stigma that still exists,” she told HR Brew. Under Rees’s leadership, UPS entered a partnership with childcare startup Patch Caregiving, and in 2022 they launched a pilot emergency child care program for employees working abnormal shift hours. The program, which was first offered to employees in California between August 2022 and January 2023, helped turnover rates drop from 31% to 4%. The availability of emergency childcare also helped UPS avoid 120 unplanned absences during this time period. UPS plans to expand the program to additional facilities across the United States in 2024.
By: Courtney Connley
