The Spark
A sick child does not stay one problem. Betsy Oliphant had both of her children in daycare, and she remembers the bugs and sniffles that would run through the whole family, and the caregivers too. Care that falls through on a Tuesday morning becomes a missed Tuesday at work. Oliphant is now Head of Total Rewards at Truist, and her experience, shared by many, helps shape how the bank thinks about the benefits they provide their teammates.
Kim Moore-Wright, the bank’s Chief Teammate Officer, describes why the care benefit is so important: a teammate who knows care is covered can focus on their work and show up as their best self. Care is also how Truist describes itself, and the bank applies the word to teammates the same way it applies it to clients. Across roughly 38,000 teammates, that care need takes more than one shape, from a newborn to an aging parent.
The Solution
Truist’s child care support runs through Care.com. Teammates can easily register on the platform themselves and quickly get the support they need. Two components do most of the work for families with young children.
The first is back-up care. When a regular arrangement falls through, because a child or caregiver is sick, a provider closes, or school is out, a teammate can book care for a set number of subsidized days a year. Truist covers the majority of the cost and the teammate pays a modest copay. Truist offers their teammates peace of mind – knowing they have an affordable, easy-to-arrange, quality back-up option that’s available as soon as they need it. And the support is even greater for new parents: Truist increases the number of back-up days available during the first year of a child’s life, when arrangements are newest and break most often.
The second is care navigation. Teammates use the same platform to search for permanent care, compare providers, and reach savings and support tools. In markets where a licensed infant slot takes months to find, that search function does real work.
Eligibility is wide on purpose. Every regular U.S. teammate scheduled at least 20 hours a week qualifies. Truist is also clear that this is a care benefit rather than a child care benefit. The same back-up days cover an aging parent or a disabled adult living in the household. As Moore-Wright puts it, the family member a teammate is caring for is part of that teammate.
Truist understands that communication impacts utilization. Jamie Dexter’s full-time job is getting the word out across the entire teammate base and driving adoption. With a menu this wide, Oliphant notes, teammates do not always realize how much is available to them.
The Results
Truist runs this as part of a holistic well-being strategy, and teammates reach for it at exactly the moments care falls apart. Demand comes in waves around school breaks, illness season, and the weeks after a new parent returns from leave.
The most direct evidence came from inside the interview. Jamie Dexter runs benefits communications at Truist and has three children, ages 3, 6, and 9. She takes advantage of Truist’s offerings herself. “It really is a supportive environment, especially for someone like me in the stage of life that I’m in,” she said. “I would not be able to keep this up if I didn’t have that environment. Truist is definitely a great place to work when it comes to being a working parent.”
Truist’s periodic total rewards survey backs the design. Teammates report that what they value most shifts with life stage, which argues for a flexible menu over a single flagship benefit.
THE BLUEPRINT
Investment: Truist covers the majority of the cost of care, while teammates pay a modest copay. Although Truist does not disclose specific cost figures, expenses generally scale based on program utilization. In addition, there is no physical facility or infrastructure that the employer must build or maintain to offer the program.
Timeline: Close to turnkey. No construction, no licensing, no provider to recruit. Regulated employers should add time for procurement and vendor risk review.
Partners: Care.com, providing the platform, the provider network, back-up care fulfillment, and caregiver search. No facility partner, state agency, or community organization required. Truist used no state or federal child care incentives, though spending of this kind is eligible for the expanded federal 45F credit.
Key Decision: Making the benefit effortless to reach, then communicate it effectively. Moore-Wright's standard is that it is not enough to have the benefit. It has to be easy enough that a teammate does not have to remember it or work for it.
Their Advice: “I just think it helps make your employees feel valued and supported, and so that’s what I would lean into.” Betsy Oliphant, Head of Total Rewards
Kim Moore-Wright, Chief Teammate Officer, ties that directly to performance: “You’re thinking about the teammate as their full self, their full person. This family member that they’re having to care for is part of that person. Anything that you can do to enable them to be able to fully show up, this is an investment in being able to do that.”