Employers’ attractiveness according to parents and carers
Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (BMFSFJ)
2024
With around 11.6 million people, mothers and fathers make up a quarter of the total working population in Germany. Furthermore, 2.5 million employees are caring for relatives. For this group of people, in particular, achieving good work-life balance is essential. Our study considered which measures are of primary importance to them and what, from their perspective, makes an employer attractive.
More than 2,500 working parents and carers of relatives were interviewed on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (BMFSFJ). The study is part of the Federal Ministry’s “Erfolgsfaktor Familie” (Family success factor) business programme.
Employers are expected to take the family responsibilities and work-life balance of their employees into consideration. Flexibility for planned or spontaneous leave and interruptions to working hours are central to this. Furthermore, employees with families should not be disadvantaged professionally.
The needs of fathers, mothers and carers can be distinguished as follows:
In total, 70 percent of all workers surveyed considered flexibility to be important. Around 30 percent would like fixed working hours to enable better planning.
Prognos has developed a proactive work-life balance strategy for businesses with the following three stages:
In a representative survey, working parents and employees caring for relatives were asked about their respective needs and priorities. A total of 2,542 people took part in the survey. The group was made up of 1,706 parents, 525 carers as well as 311 parent-carers.
The survey participants were asked to rate different criteria such as working hours, child care/care, career opportunities, company communication and culture.
How important they considered these work-life balance characteristics and measures to be was then collated across multiple levels. The carer employees rated them firstly on a scale of 1 to 100 and then prioritised the ten most highly rated characteristics and measures. From this we developed a relevance index for individual company offers.
To the study (PDF in German)
Further information on the “Erfolgsfaktor Familie” project (in German)
Project team: Dr Claire Samtleben, Evelyn Stoll, Dr Dagmar Weßler-Poßberg, Ulrich Weuthen
Latest update: 06.06.2024
Partner, Head of Social Policy
Project Manager
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