Study on non-legislative initiatives for companies to promote gender ...

106 Gender equality initiatives
Most of the large multinational companies are offering crèches or day care centres to
the children of their employees. This is an initiative that in many European countries still
predominantly supports women, who might otherwise opt for quitting their jobs to raise
the children. This makes sense especially in countries, where public child care facilities
are insufficient (concerning the availability of places, the starting age as well as opening
times) and where private child care is expensive. As the opening hours of these
company kindergartens are in line with the working times of the employees, companies
benefit because employees can better concentrate on their work and need to spend
less time on arranging the bridging of kindergarten schedules/holidays and working
time.
Besides offering a child day care centre TUI AG within its comprehensive initiative
family friendly activities, among others, financially supports child care activities
for the children of its employees. Thereby, the employees may chose to bring their
children to the child care facilities at the company premises or to employ another
kindergarten and receive financial support.
Nevertheless, especially smaller companies may not have the possibility to run a
crèche or kindergarten for their employees (due to financial constraints and/or lack of
adequate space at their premises). Formastur S.A. therefore decided to give monthly
nursery vouchers over a specific amount to employees with children younger than
3 years. At Stormberg children are allowed to accompany their parent at work when no
day care is available.
Polgár-Társak 2000 Kft., another small company, gives children of employees, who
have already reached working age and are on (summer) holidays from school, the
opportunity to do an internship at the company for this period of time. Thereby the
children get to know the work of their parents and on the other hand have the
opportunity to earn some money during their vacation from school.
Within its Social Programme, the Bulgarian Telecommunications Company (BTC) offers
targeted initiatives for children of their employees, such as foreign language or
drama courses, etc. These targeted initiatives for children are in fact seen as big
assistance for female employees, because, according to the observations of BTC, child
care is very much attributed to women in Bulgaria.