It's worth it if you have people with children aged 0 to 3 on staff. If you don't have them, then no.
The childcare ticket It is a benefit with a narrow scope and high value, not a mass benefit. And that, which seems to be a disadvantage, is what makes it profitable: it reaches a small number of people, but for those people it solves a large expense at the time of their working life when they have the least margin.
Here are the six reasons why it makes sense to have that profile on your team, what it costs in each modality, and the cases where we wouldn't recommend it. If what you're looking for is what it is and how it works, you have it here. «Daycare check: what it is, how it works and how to make the most of it».
Only for those who have children in the first cycle of early childhood education, from 0 to 3 years old. Not before or after.
That is the real limitation and it is worth mentioning first, because it determines everything else: the budget, the adoption rate you can expect and whether the effort involved in implantation is worth it.
The market data confirms this. According to the II Study on Labor Well-being and Health in Spain 2026, prepared by Edenred in collaboration with Savia, the digital health arm of MAPFRE, Daycare is the benefit most valued by 9.4% of Millennials, And it does not rank among the top in any other generation. Medical insurance, by contrast, is the first choice for 30.1% of the population.
On the surface, that would suggest that the daycare center doesn't matter much. But on closer inspection, it says something else: it focuses all its value on a specific segment, the generation of children of small age, and there it competes with benefits that reach the entire workforce.
Before deciding, measure. With three questions in an internal survey you know how many people are affected, and they are in the Step-by-step implementation article.
The difference between this benefit and almost all the others is the size of the spending it covers. A restaurant card improves everyday life. A childcare place is one of the highest fixed expenses in a young family's budget.
That changes the nature of what you offer. It’s not perceived as an improvement; it’s perceived as a relief. And the benefits that solve a specific problem generate more engagement than those that spread value in a diffuse way.
There is also a duration effect that plays in the company's favor: the benefit lasts exactly three years per child. It is short, and that makes it cheap to maintain compared to benefits that accompany a person throughout their entire working life.
Almost all in-kind benefits have a cap on the exemption amount. The restaurant card, €11 per day worked. Health insurance, €500 per insured person.
The daycare center There is no specific exemption limit for this service.. It is exempt from IRPF as long as the requirements of Article 42.3.b are met: that the center provides the first cycle of early childhood education, that it is authorized, and that the hiring is done by the company.
When the company bears the cost, it is a deductible expense for tax purposes under the Corporate Tax Act.
Two precisiones that are often confused. An exempt income does not pay taxesIt's not that withholding isn't applied to them; it's just that it doesn't count towards the tax base. And this exemption isn't the same as the childcare expense deduction that some families apply on their income tax return; they're two different and compatible things.
The complete ranking of benefits ordered by real savings in euros is available at Which social benefits are fiscally more advantageous.
According to the II Study on Labor Welfare and Health in Spain 2026, by Edenred and Savia, 36.6% of workers consider changing companies.
That percentage doesn’t distinguish by age, but a staff does. Having children aged 0 to 3 places a person, in most cases, between thirty and forty-five: with the training done, several years in the company, and a business knowledge that takes months to rebuild. This is the stage where leaving costs more, in money and time.
And it is the segment with the least leeway, because it coincides with the years of higher fixed spending. A benefit that covers one of those monthly and inevitable expenses, and that does not appear in all market offers, weighs heavily on the decision to stay on much longer than it costs the company.
In the flexible reimbursement modality, the employee allocates part of their gross salary to pay for the preschool education. The company does not contribute money: what it does is allow a portion of the salary to be paid in kind, tax-free.
A precision, because sometimes it is calculated incorrectly: Yes, the payroll structure changes, Because part of the gross is converted into in-kind remuneration. What does not change is the cost. Confusing the two things creates distrust in the payroll department just when their collaboration is needed most.
And there is a third way to spread the burden without taking on the entire burden: the mixed model, where the company and the employee share the cost.
We are not going to claim that this benefit reduces absenteeism by a certain percentage, because there is no data to support it. What can be described, however, is the mechanism.
A large part of the unexpected absences of someone with young children are not illnesses of their own: they are a mismatch that fails. A school schedule that doesn’t fit with work, a lost spot, a change of school halfway through the course.
A stable and affordable place eliminates one of the recurring sources of such incidence. Not all of them, and not the child's illness, which will continue to exist.
The real causes of absenteeism in Spain and the measures that do have measurable effect are in labour absenteeism in Spain.
Working fewer hours is the most commonly used method for caring for a young child, and it is used in very unequal ways. According to the module on work-life balance in the INE Active Population Survey, With data from 2025, among the employed people with care responsibilities 8.3% of women had the main change in their work as reducing their working hours, compared to 0.8% of men.. Ten times more.
Reducing the working week means reducing salary, and also contribution, effective seniority and access to promotions. The cost of reconciling this is not shared equally.
A paid childcare place alone does not correct that imbalance. But it removes one of its material causes: when the cost of childcare eats up what the second salary brings in, reducing the working day no longer becomes an option.
It is the least quantifiable of the six in terms of return for the company and, at the same time, the one that most often moves a management committee.
The legal rights of conciliation and how they are combined with benefits are in Work-life balance.
Two clear cases.
If there are no people on the team with children aged 0 to 3 years, There is no forecast that it will be available next year. Adoption will be zero and the implementation effort will not recover. The useful thing in that case is to ask first, not implement and see.
If the staff is scattered and the network of centers does not cover their areas. A benefit that half the people cannot use generates more resentment than satisfaction. It is a question for the provider before signing, not after.
And a third case that is not a “no” but a “not yet”: if you don’t offer any in-kind benefits, starting here is starting from the most basic level. It usually makes more sense to start with something of a general scope and add the daycare when the payroll system is already up and running. The complete order is in the checklist for small businesses.
With a children's school costing 300 € per month for 11 months, 3,300 € per year, and a marginal rate of 30%:
If you believe the profile is in your database and you want to put numbers to your specific case, we can help you to size it up.
Strategy professional with experience using data to solve complex business problems. Throughout my career, I have worked in international environments and consulting firms. Currently, I lead the Sales Excellence & Transformation area at Edenred, driving the transformation of the commercial department through solutions based on analysis and strategy.
