Day care center keeps kids close to parents at S.D. bank

First Bank & Trust is like most community-focused financial institutions, except in the town of Brookings, S.D., it’s also something more: A day care center. Kids World Learning Center opened on Nov. 30, 1995 next door to Brookings’ eastern location of First Bank & Trust, and it’s still the only employee child care center in the state of South Dakota..Bob Fishback, the late president of First Bank & Trust and a third generation banker, came up with the idea. When a store closed and the bank took it over as one of their locations, he decided to build out a day care center as they refurbished the space. There wasn’t a management meeting to discuss the possibility of Kids World; Fishback said they were going to do it, and that was that.“Bob was someone who wanted to help employees in any way that he could,” said Nan Poppen, executive vice president and chief human resources officer at First Bank & Trust. “He cared deeply, and he was very much about family.”The creation of Kids World wasn’t haphazard. Fishback had staff hired well before the center opened so they could help design and put the center together.At first, the day care was open to the community at large. In the 2000s, its services became exclusive to bank employees. Today, it’s so popular among employees that there is a waiting list to get in.“As a child, I often visited my dad and still remember playing under the stairs at the bank while he worked,” said John Fishback, Fishback’s son and current chief product & experience officer of First Bank & Trust. “Maybe those visits inspired him, because by the time I was off at college, Dad was championing the creation of Kids World. He believed employees would be more engaged in their jobs if they had assurance their children were well cared for, and for the past 30-plus years, that has proven to be true.”Poppen also emphasized the impact the day care center has had on employee experience via retention and recruitment. “Yes, it’s child care for your kiddos that could be an option for you as an employee,” she said. “But it also speaks to the importance the Fishbacks and the organization put on family … when we have a really strong employee [whose] kiddos are ready to leave Kids World and go off to school, we always joke, ‘are you sure you don’t want to have another one?” We know that there’s just a sticking factor with [Kids World].’”The bank recently opened the day care for employee grandchildren as well, and Poppen noted that some employees are pushing out their retirement so they can give their grandchildren the Kids World experience. On the other end, because the center has been around for 30 years, children who attended Kids World are coming back to work for First Bank & Trust.“When the bank was building out the space that includes Kids World, I was just a kid myself; in fact, I recall skating in the empty building on freshly poured concrete,” Tom Fishback said. Tom Fishback is market president and executive director of community development for First Bank & Trust. “That my kids now play in that space alongside so many of my colleagues’ children is something special! I’m thrilled our organization offers this benefit to employees.”Poppen said the reason for the day care’s success comes down to Bob Fishback’s authentic intentions behind it, which allowed for the organization to commit to supporting Kids World from a monetary and resource perspective. Most child care centers have costs — rent, maintenance, HR, cleaning services — that can add up quickly given their low levels of revenue.“A child care center is not a profit center,” Poppen said. “It’s a cost center.”Yet at Kids World, these costs are already covered by being part of First Bank & Trust, and this allows the day care’s director to focus on quality of service. Additionally, the family behind the bank is fully committed to supporting Kids World freely and thoughtfully.