Alfred McAlpine has launched a service to give its 10,000 employees access to emergency care for both child and elderly dependants with the aim of enabling them to balance work-life commitments.
Employees must register to use the eldercare service and undergo an assessment of their elderly dependant's needs, at a cost of £50, so that appropriate care can then be supplied when required. Employees can use the childcare scheme without an assessment.
Through the websites emergencycare.co.uk and emergencychildcare.co.uk, staff can source care up to two hours before it is needed.
Where eldercare is concerned, this can include help with getting dependants out of bed, cooking meals, shopping and home sitting at any time of the day or night.
Aidan Crossey, reward manager at the construction firm, said: "The number of people that have children to care for may be limited, but it is possible that all the workforce may have elders to look after, so we expect this to be an attractive benefit."
Those using the emergency childcare provision can source a place at one of 600 nurseries nationwide.
Alfred McAlpine has also launched a 24-hour telephone helpline through which employees can access the services if they are not office based, and do not have readily available access to the internet.
