Winning the War for Talent with Inclusive Parental Benefits | Best Practice by Swiss Re
One of the offers provided by the internal organization ‘Parents at Swiss Re’, are holiday camps or ‘Ferienplausch’ for children of Swiss Re employees. The holiday camps help solve the pressing problem of childcare during school breaks when working parents have to juggle, more than usual, their professional and private lives. By supporting working parents, Swiss Re aims to positively contribute to inclusion, both in the workplace and in Swiss society.
This best practice was first published in the Gender Intelligence Report 2021.
‘Parents at Swiss Re’ by HR Switzerland was established with the aim to support parents at work. We currently have an active community of 550 parents. “Parents at Swiss Re” can help us to compete for the best talent as it is an attractive benefit to our employees. It delivers on our goal to become the employer of choice in Switzerland and is a strong differentiating factor in our industry. It also provides an opportunity for us to strengthen our employer brand, increase employee engagement, support gender equality and facilitate employees’ return to work in the post-Covid workplace.
Senior Event Manager & Parents at Swiss Re Co-Lead
Senior Event Manager & Parents at Swiss Re Co-Lead
We offer parental coaching, reserved KITA spaces, and two holiday camps (‘Ferienplausch’) in spring and summer for up to 100 children aged 4 – 12 years. With these camps our goal is not only to provide two weeks of children’s entertainment and support for our working parents at Swiss Re, but also to give the children a possibility to learn from each other. Our aim is to connect each holiday program to topics that are closely linked to our Swiss Re initiatives, from protecting our environment and reducing our carbon footprint, to our company values. We make the world more resilient, starting with our youngest generation as early as possible
Ferienplausch ‘Discover what moves us’ and ‘Sustainable We’
With the Ferienplausch, we aim to make our working parents’ lives as easy as possible. The daily program runs from 09:00 to 17:00 hrs. The meeting point is at one of our Swiss Re premises, so parents can continue to work their regular office hours, while managing their childcare and work during school holidays. During the pandemic we accepted the challenge and offered the program during the spring break. We wanted to ensure compatibility between family and career for our employees, even in times of mandatory home office. Most parents are familiar with the challenges of working from home, while having their children around during a school break. But even without a pandemic, the same challenge remains for many parents as children have 13 weeks of school holidays, with parents usually having 5. To cover the remaining 8 weeks, we needed to get creative, particularly if no immediate family (e.g. grandparents) is close by to step in. With our Ferienplausch, employees’ children experience a fun week with their peers but with a pedagogically valuable concept also in place. Parents can follow their usual routine, knowing that their children are well taken care of.
Even during the home office restriction during this last spring break, parents could drop off and pickup their children in front of the Swiss Re headquarters and continue their work at home.
“For my son it was the first time he participated in the Ferienplausch organized by Swiss Re. What a fantastic program you put together – thank you, thank you very much!!! It was simply a great experience for him – from group flying in Winterthur, to building a dance robot, to moving on the dance floor and to painting at Kunsthaus. Besides the great fun the kids had, it was also super valuable for me as a parent to be able to work while knowing that you put all your creativity into a super program.”
-working father at Swiss Re
At Swiss Re, we work in an inclusive culture that embraces the best of multiple generations and cultures. With “Parents at Swiss Re” we take a special focus on the inclusion of working parents, keeping in mind that this demographic accounts for the majority of our local workforce. Living in the “rush hour” of their lives, parents have to cope with the challenges of combining family and career. With offers like the Ferienplausch we want to create an environment that enables each employee to give their personal best. In the end, we are convinced, that if we support working parents reconciling their professional and private lives, we contribute to inclusion at the workplace and in society.
“MASSIVE thank you, dear “Parents at Swiss Re” for offering and providing the Ferienplausch in such challenging times! You cannot imagine how thankful we are for this program! For me, as a working mom, some normality came back with this as well and that week was just great! Well organized and beautifully planned program. Thank you!”
-working mother at Swiss Re
To further assess the demands of parents, we launched a targeted pulse survey on the compatibility of work and family life at Swiss Re at the end of 2020. The results showed us that our parents would appreciate even more tangible, flexible and high-quality childcare solutions at Swiss Re. These solutions will help employees adapt more smoothly to the changing requirements of working in the future, where agility and flexibility, also with regards to childcare, will be needed more than ever.
We are currently developing a roadmap to get a better understanding of what is needed in terms of generations management at Swiss Re to further improve conditions for parents at work. We’d be delighted to share our next steps with you, once we have moved forward with our ambition to make Swiss Re a welcoming place for all.
Please contact Jeanine Waser, at Jeanine_Waser@swissre.com or Barbara Schneider, at Barbara_Schneider@swissre.com for an exchange on the topic or more information.
Check out our I&D page for more insights into Swiss Re’s I&D efforts.
This Best Practice was first published in the Gender Intelligence Report 2021.
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