Will the company pay someone else to take my wife on a 2 week romantic get away?
Will the company pay someone else to take my wife on a 2 week romantic get away?
It's simple accounting really: If you want your employees to work 5 more hours a week, you need to free 5 hours from their schedules. Obviously, quality time spent with children or a spouse is the last thing employees will be willing to sacrifice. But running errands? Cleaning the house? Doctors appointments? Meals at work? Make these frictionless and you'll gain in productivity.
The productivity doesn't come from extra time, it comes from alleviating stress and increasing the ability to focus. If my thoughts at 2pm are, "Wait, is it my day to pick up the kids? I've got a 3pm meeting, I've got to text the wife to let her know I can't get them today." I'm unfocused. Childcare, consequently, can relieve me of those thoughts. Same thing with bringing in food or having medical and fitness options available. They relieve some stress/unproductive time spent thinking and planning, which will hopefully improve productivity overall, but extra hours recovered from this are not necessarily more productive just by being available.
If they did, you'd have a lot more free time for them to exploit in the future.