About Us
Journey of Work+Family Solutions
Work+Family Solutions, part of the Bright Horizons group, is the leader in delivering family friendly solutions to companies all over the UK and Ireland, and beyond
Combining work+family is not always an easy balance.
We're dedicated to making it better.
Here's our story so far...
1993 - Procter & Gamble decides it should do whatever it takes to become a great place to work for parents. It is at the forefront of flexible working and childcare support for employees.
1994 - Oliver Black starts at P&G (as a lowly sales and marketing exec on the Oil of Olay account). Ollie is amazed and impressed with all the things that P&G is doing for its working parents and resolves to become a big player in the childcare industry.
2000 - Ollie convinces his brother Ben and Amanda Coxen, to help him buy Tinies, a bankrupt chain of 7 nanny agencies.
2005 - With 28 branches, Tinies has become the biggest nanny agency in the UK, the biggest supplier of staff to nurseries, and a leading provider of creches. Ben decides to build a website that allows parents to book whatever childcare they want when they want it - nannies, nurseries or childminders - and that allows companies to subsidise bookings however they see fit. Emergency Childcare is born.
2006 - Barclays Capital, the Met Police and Herbert Smith become the first clients. IBM helps develop a parallel eldercare service and Backup Adult & Eldercare is born.
2007 - Emergency Childcare wins the Daily Telegraph's CPP Trailblazers young company of the year award. My Family Care, as the Group is now called, buys BUPA Child and Dependant Care, a consultancy which counts Bank of America, P&G and Shell as clients.
2008 - A range of Training Workshops are introduced and we develop the Top Employers for Working Families awards with Working Families. Backup Care is now seen as part of the mainstream employee benefits mix.
2010 - Jennifer Liston-Smith, a maternity coaching pioneer, comes on board to develop the coaching and consultancy side of the business.
2012 - We launch the ground-breaking Work+Family Space. Parents and carers can now see all their employers initiatives and polices in one easy place.
2016 - The innovative Parental Leave Toolkit launches. The new digital product allows individuals and their managers to receive timely support throughout the parental leave journey.
2017 - Backup Care now has two apps. One allows parents and carers to make quicker bookings, and the other allows nannies to accept booking requests (speeding up the time to accept and inform parents).
2018 - Parental Leave Toolkit now has an app version! Support throughout parental leave via the product has launched globally.
2019 - At the start of the year Bright Horizons, a company we've long admired, acquired My Family Care. We're looking forward to supporting even more parents and carers, their employers, and our ever growing network of providers.
2020 - We're continuing as Work+Family Solutions to support our clients and their employees.