Haarlem, Monday 5 October 2009

Press release

Top 10 best employers for working parents made public

André Rouvoet, Minister of Youth and Families, accepts Loflist Best Employees for Working Parents  

Today, the chief editor of Lof magazine, Jolanda Holwerda, is presenting the Loflist Best Employees for Working Parents to minister André Rouvoet of Youth and Families at the Shell head office.   Also announced are the 10 organizations with the highest scores in terms of ‘ parent-friendliness’. Rouvoet: “I readily compliment these organizations for making it work both ways. Family-friendly employers benefit themselves, their employees and their children.”  Earlier today the minister announced that he plans to encourage the development of a quality mark for family-friendly employers.

Top 10 Best Employers for Working Parents

In alphabetical order, the Loflist sums up the organizations with the best facilities for working parents in terms of flexibility, leave, childcare, work/life balance, policy, culture and extras. This year, the 10 excelling organizations are: &Samhoud, Cisco, Achmea, IBM, De Nederlandsche Bank, het Kadaster, Higher & Company, de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Ernst&Young and the Haagse Hogeschool.*

* For a full listing of all participating organizations of the Loflist 2009, see www.lofonline.nl/deelnemers.

The originator of the research was Lof, the cross medial platform for and by ambitious mothers. The research is meant to reinforce public (and political) attention for the fact that in order to successfully combine work and family, working parents need to be facilitated in the best possible way. Other targets are an increase in women’s working hours, keeping women in high positions and more freedom of choice for parents with regard to combining work and family. Most important stakeholders: the Dutch government and all employers.

Striking family-friendly policies

A few of the most striking facilities and benefits that are provided by the participating employers: paid fraternity leave for fathers, life stage-oriented policies, optional hours and locations (The New Style), female leadership programmes, workshops for parents, balance plans, working school hours, women’s networks, luxury services (laundry, ironing, groceries), options in terms of employment and employee-specific conditions.

Employers score on combination work/family

The Syncopate research shows that for many organizations that appeared on the Loflist 2009, their internal culture was an important qualifying factor. 99% of them fully accept the use of special schemes, and at 83% the use of schemes does not affect or hardly affects employees’ careers.

Jolanda Holwerda, founder and publisher of Lof: “The employers of this year’s research generally offer their working parents more than sufficient family-friendly policies and facilities. Their answers prove that they are well aware that a satisfactory work/care balance is important and that they invest in the talents of women to achieve growth as an organization.” At merely 1/5 of the organizations, attendance is a virtually nonnegotiable issue; at half of the organizations choosing your own location to work at is totally acceptable.

Not sexy and ‘cool’ / bad mothers

Employers and employees alike, agree that organizations the Netherlands are far behind in knowledge and acceptation of the (use of the) available facilities. Employees still believe that (temporarily) working less or flexible hours is in total conflict with a booming career. Holwerda: “Obviously, the challenge we all still face is to make sure that an equal balance between work and family is 100% accepted for women and men. In today’s opinion it is still far from sexy en ‘cool’ for fathers to opt for more ‘family’ in their balance and women who are working more than 32 hours a week in pursuit of their career are still attesting to bad motherhood.“

Lof

Lof is the cross medial platform for and by mothers with ambition. Through Lof Magazine, web sites, newsletters, events and research, Lof communicates with readers, employers and government in order to improve the current climate in the Netherlands for women who choose to combine career and motherhood. Apart from information and inspiration about work, family, self-development and leisure, Lof also introduces role models and employers who have leading roles in terms of possibilities and opportunities to combine work and family and recruiting women for leading positions. www.lofonline.nl

The research Best Employers for Working Parents 2009 and the Loflist 2009 were partly facilitated by Synovate and the Ministry for Youth and Families.