Childcare? What Childcare?
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Anne Ross, Accor Services corporate business manager, concedes the lack of awareness is a concern. "A lot of people have never heard of childcare vouchers, which is quite worrying," she says. "We get so many enquiries about it that it can lead to a false sense of it [being widely in use]."
Accor currently has between 700 and 800 childcare voucher clients, and around 30,000 parents take the vouchers. This, she admits, is "tiny" compared with the number of parents in the workplace. She predicts that with the changes, the market - currently worth £69m - could rise to £300m by 2006.
In the past, there have been misconceptions among employers that the vouchers were expensive and difficult to administer. But with the introduction of salary sacrifice schemes - where the employee takes a chunk of their salary as vouchers - and now the tax reforms, that should no longer be the case, she insists. "Once it gets going it is really quite straightforward."
The firm is currently working with tax consultants to produce a guide on the changes. The message is also beginning to get through that, by offering benefits such as childcare vouchers, employers are adding a vital retention and recruitment weapon to their armoury. "They are finding that, by offering childcare vouchers, they are becoming an employer of choice," Ross says.
"HR is fundamental to it. They are the people who need to convince management that it is a good thing. We have seen growth in the past three years of around 30 per cent year-on-year. But the take-up is still relatively low," she adds.
