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A family-friendly company has an easier time retaining top employees. However, this is precisely one of the biggest challenges facing recruiters and HR professionals today. More and more companies are having problems filling positions with well-trained employees due to demographic change. It's no longer enough to simply post a vacancy and wait for applications to come in, because job seekers want more from their job: a company that is responsive to their needs. For employees :inside, balancing work and family has become increasingly important. After all, there are possibilities for this. An astonishing 86% of Germans say that family and work need to be more effectively coordinated.
As mentioned above, the job market has changed. Instead of employers being free to make their own choices, well-trained talent has become scarce. This is due in no small part to the demographic shift, which will become even more pronounced in the upcoming years, transforming the employer market into an employee market. Companies are therefore taking measures to remain visible and attract applicants, such as employer branding. Developing your own employer brand helps someone who is interested in a job with you to better assess you and check how well you match. Nowadays, hardly anyone wants to join a company blindly. But visibility alone, as for example through job ads, is often not enough for potential candidates. Instead, the right benefits and a positive corporate culture are also needed to attract talent. Incidentally, fruit baskets are not enough; what is needed are flexible working hours, the opportunity to work from home, benefits with business partners, regular company events and much more. One of these benefits is also being a family-friendly company. Likewise, your corporate culture should be on display, possibly supporting charities, working on a complete trust basis, having a flat organizational structure or an effective error culture. At the end of the day, you should show potential candidates why you would be the perfect employer.
The possibility to combine family and work is not only a simple benefit, but also part of the corporate culture. If the manager has a general lack of understanding that an employee can't come to late meetings because the child has to be picked up from school, he or she won't feel comfortable in the long run. Therefore, you should generally ask yourself what your employees want now and in the long term. What are they looking for in a job? How can you make their lives easier and better? Family friendliness is a core issue that affects most people in one form or another. Whether you're a young father or a new grandmother, if you want to secure your employees for the long term, you have to accommodate and adapt to them. One of the ways to adapt is to become a family-friendly company. After all, offering support at every stage of life is the only way to be a partner for the future. By reducing employee turnover, costs are also saved at the same time, as positions do not have to be refilled. Likewise, you can fill positions faster, thereby reducing your vacancy costs. Not only that, but employees who work in family-friendly companies also return from parental leave more quickly.
Now the term family-friendly has been thrown around a lot. But what does it mean anyway? And how can you make your company more family-friendly? Here are some ways you can improve your company's family-friendliness and make it an attractive place for employees:
1. Offer flexible work schedules
There are many ways to make life easier for employees with families - especially parents. Flexible working hours are an easy way to promote employee retention and show that you care about your employees lives outside the office. You could also, to score points as a family-friendly company, offer flextime, annual-lifetime accounts, sabbaticals and/or part-time.
2. Allow your employees to work from home
Allowing home office is a fantastic option to relieve parents with childcare responsibilities. Especially since with children, plans change or the unexpected arrives more often than not. Additionally, this option can help with employee retention. In some companies, there are entire departments that work from home or where at least this option exists when it comes to office tasks. In this case, home offices offer the flexibility needed for day-to-day living. Becoming a family-friendly company has become easier thanks to digitalization and the opportunities it offers.
3. Help with childcare
Offering flexible working hours is one way to help employees with their childcare needs. Another option is to provide assistance with daycare through a company nursery. If your company is not large enough for this, it is also a good idea to get in touch with companies in your area and possibly find a joint solution. A flexible arrangement could also be made with a childminder or simply provide premises for day care. As a family-friendly company, you could also cover the cost of childcare or pay subsidies.
4. Plan family-friendly events
If you have more than one person with children in the company, it is worthwhile to make larger company events child-friendly as well, or to offer that families can come along. Summer or winter parties are especially good for this and can even lead to new friendships between the children. The bonus for your employees here is that they don't need babysitters for the event, which is especially relieving for single parents. From bouncy castles to face painting for the kids, the sky's the limit on creativity here, and some young at heart will be happy about it, as well.
5. Cancel late-night meetings
If you want to become a family-friendly company, you should avoid meetings that are scheduled in the late afternoon. Often, these are times when children need to be picked up from school or daycare. Instead, these can be scheduled in the morning.
Of course, we are aware that these measures cannot be implemented from one day to the next. In this regard, the above-mentioned possibilities are only initial ideas that you can implement quite quickly in order to become a family-friendly company. In the end, change takes time and in many cases it even takes a sophisticated strategy to change the way you work. Therefore, it is advisable to consider support for the change. Especially if you want to permanently change your way of working in a way that all employees can find a suitable solution for themselves with you.
As the world of work continues to evolve, employers must strive to attract, but also retain, workers through a variety of methods. This requires a range of benefits and a positive corporate culture. Family-friendliness stands out in particular, as it affects most employees. No matter what stage of life your employees are in, the measures it takes for to be considered a family-friendly company also have a positive impact on employees without children. In addition to an increased work-life balance, costs are also saved and, above all, your image as an employer is improved. Feel free to ask us how you can improve your family-friendliness.
Sources: Melita.de | impulse.de | persona.de
