Pharmaceutical company Roche encourages parents to reduce their working hours

Pharmaceutical company Roche
Up to 15,000 euros: The company supports parents who reduce their working hours

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The pharmaceutical company Roche wants to pay parents up to 15,000 euros if they reduce their working hours together for at least a year. Women in particular should benefit from this.

Every father and mother would like more time for the family. Often, however, this remains a resolution that is difficult to implement – mainly for financial reasons. And so, in the end, parents spend a lot more time at work than with their children.

The pharmaceutical company Roche wants to encourage its employees with an unusual offer to work less and to look after the family more. Employees there receive a one-off payment of between 10,000 and 15,000 euros if both parents go into so-called full-time part-time work for at least twelve months within the first four years of their child’s life. That means working hours between 28 and 32 hours a week, i.e. three and a half to four days a week.

Few fathers still take parental leave

In order to be able to take advantage of the funding, it is sufficient if one parent is employed by the company, said Roche. The program should “contribute to fundamentally changing the awareness of equality in families and in our society and at the same time motivate parents to take advantage of this opportunity,” said Andreas Schmitz, Managing Director Human Resources at Roche in Germany.

With the funding, the company wants to prevent a child from becoming a career kink – this is a particular risk for mothers. It should “create more fair competition and equal opportunities in the working environment” and promote the equality of female talents. The Swiss company employs more than 14,000 people in Germany.

Still relatively few fathers take parental leave, even if the number is rising steadily. Of the people who received parental allowance in the past year, only a quarter were fathers. In addition, their time off usually only lasts relatively short: in 2020, according to the Federal Statistical Office, the length of parental leave for men was on average 3.7 months, while women took an average of 14.5 months on parental leave.

Sources: “Press release from Roche “/” Statista “

This article originally appeared on stern.de.

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