SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cleo, the most comprehensive support benefit for working families provided by diverse global organizations, today announced new offerings that are a direct response to challenges contributing to significant parental burnout and employee attrition, especially among women.
McKinsey recently shared that 15 million Americans have quit their jobs since just April 2021 while Cleo’s latest national State of Working Parents survey found that 50% of all working families have had one or both parents leave or scale back their job in order to manage caregiving responsibilities. 18 months into the pandemic, balancing work and caregiving needs continues to be a challenge for working parents with 1 in 4 working families still without child care. These parents are 33% more likely to leave their job. 35% of working parents say a childcare benefit would make them feel more supported, but only 1 in 5 parents currently has access to one through their employer.
In addition to lack of childcare, working parents are increasingly responsible for navigating a pediatric health concern, pediatric chronic illness, or a neurodivergent condition, such as Autism Spectrum Disorder or ADHD. Cleo’s State of Working Parents survey found that 55% of families are dealing with a pediatric health concern and 25% of families reported having a child with a mental or behavioral health issue, which is more than double the amount from September 2020.
All of these challenges are leading to burnout among working parents and many are looking to their employers to help address these challenges.
Cleo has partnered with its enterprise clients to respond to the most urgent and persistent demands from employers seeking to support their working family populations. Cleo has more than doubled in the past year due to strong continued demand across its range of product offerings. Cleo’s new programs were created in partnership with a diverse set of Fortune 50 companies seeking a bold and holistic solution to address the most urgent health, career and retention issues they face with their parent populations, who represent 40M Americans and several million employees internationally. They are available to employers now alongside its core suite of parenting and pediatric health products; Cleo Considering, Cleo Baby, Cleo Kids and Cleo Marketplace:
Child Care and Enrichment Concierge
Cleo’s Child Care and Enrichment Concierge Program was built to help employers who are struggling to provide an all in one solution for the remote and distributed parents in their population, along with high-touch concierge service that gets parents to the finish line of childcare. The program provides families with highly personalized concierge support to identify and hire a range of child care providers and enrichment activity for a variety of family needs - from finding a nanny or babysitter, to vetting and securing a place at a daycare or preschool, to sourcing tailored child care programs, securing summer camp spots, to enrichment classes and local tutors. This solution enables employers to access a broad range of child care services through a single contract that can also be combined with Cleo Marketplace, giving employers ease of contracting and implementation to a range of childcare solutions that meet the diverse needs of today’s workforce, including Wonderschool, The Learning Care Group, and UrbanSitter, among others. In addition, if an employer does not actively subsidize child care or have dedicated solutions in place, Cleo’s program is still designed to ensure that Cleo’s specialists support families through a robust process to vet local options that best meets their specific needs. This program is currently available to serve member families across the United States.
"In the past year, we’ve seen an incredibly high adoption rate of in-home childcare options, given the impact of the pandemic on existing child care services and centers. Despite this shift, there is still a gap between connecting working parents to child care resources that meet their families' needs. We’re excited to be partnering with Cleo to help bridge the divide, giving more employers the benefits they need and more families the care solutions that allow them to thrive,” said Chris Bennett, Co-founder and CEO, Wonderschool and Cleo Marketplace partner.
Expanded Clinical Support for High Risk and Urgent Needs
The challenges facing working families are many, and constantly evolving. Cleo has added proactive, specialized support across new areas that help build better parental resilience and navigating children's development and needs. Cleo Guides provide evidence-based guidance and navigation related to family’s needs in areas that require specialized support, including; pediatric neurodivergence (e.g. Autism Spectrum Disorder, ADHD), pediatric gender identity exploration, birth equity and culturally concordant support, sleep and parental burnout.
A key pillar of Cleo’s support for working families is in the evidence-based programs that are designed to drive clinical outcomes, such as Cleo’s Best Birth Program which steers members to quality local providers and has resulted in a low-risk cesarean birth rate of 13.9% among Cleo members versus 26% nationally. These programs are designed and overseen by Cleo’s Clinical team with specialities including Family Medicine, Obstetrics, Nurse Midwifery, Neonatology and Licensed Clinical Psychology.
Cleo for Work
Cleo for Work is an expansion of Cleo’s programming for organizations that supports employers to build more inclusive workplaces, along with measurement and data to enable continuous improvement. Cleo for Work offers timely and relevant insights, live virtual workshops and resources to company leaders and HR teams, people managers, and employees to drive continuous improvement of an inclusive and supportive workplace for working families that prioritizes performance, engagement and upward mobility of working parents, particularly working mothers.
Cleo for Work now also includes an annual cultural assessment that provides insights for employers about how employees perceive workplace cultural aspects and how well their workplace supports families. Cleo also provides benchmarking information to all participating clients to allow them to evaluate how they are performing in comparison to similar size companies.
How Cleo works
Cleo serves global member families from the family building journey through parenting pre-teens with three products: Cleo Considering, Cleo Baby and Cleo Kids, all offered alongside Cleo Marketplace which provides employers and members with a “one stop shop” of best of breed partners in categories including childcare, fertility, baby gear and more, available through Cleo. Cleo’s products help working families achieve improved health, and career progression by pairing them with expert Guides who support parents through every question, through the highs and lows of the parenting journey. Cleo Guides help direct members to the best possible healthcare decisions, promote healthy behaviors, and intervene with expert guidance at critical moments that add up to improved health for the whole family.
About Cleo
Cleo is the most comprehensive support benefit for working families, reinventing how forward-thinking employers improve family health, control costs and attrition and build inclusive cultures. From the earliest stages of planning for a family to parenting older children and beyond, Cleo families are happier, healthier, and more engaged as they balance their roles at home and work, supported by proactive, expert guidance for every stage.
Forward-thinking employers including Pinterest, PepsiCo, Box, and The Learning Care Group, engage Cleo to actively transform and improve company culture, employee retention, diversity and inclusion, and population health. Serving working families in 55 countries and over 100 enterprise clients, Cleo is headquartered in San Francisco. Cleo is backed by NEA, Greylock Partners, and Transformation Capital. Learn more at hicleo.com.
