Employers’
attractiveness
according to parents
and carers

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.

Family friendliness is the minimum – to be an attractive employer requires more

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:

• Mothers require flexible working hours that they can fit around child care or school hours, as they are still doing the lion’s share of the child care. For this reason, they consider part-time management positions and job sharing appealing, as this can help mitigate professional disadvantage.
• Fathers want to be encouraged by their employers to take more parental leave and to make use of work-life balance options so they can remain flexible and be available for the family when needed.
• Carers require flexibility in the choice of working hours so they can fit them around their caring requirements. Once the working hours have been set, however, they also need them to stay that way (no last-minute changes to the schedule).

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.

Company strategies for better work-life balance

Prognos has developed a proactive work-life balance strategy for businesses with the following three stages:

• Creating an essential foundation: Establishing a company culture that is characterised by the consideration of work-life balance concerns. This first stage will have to be achieved by all employers, as the majority of employees with family responsibilities would otherwise be unable to work.
• Considering target-group specific preferences: Creating appropriate offers in the company work-life balance policy so that the different needs of mothers, fathers and carers are met. When employers take the family roles of their employees into consideration they increase their attractiveness as an employer.
• Considering the interaction of diverse life circumstances: The interaction of different aspects of working and family life (e. g., the age of children, form of employment, type of work) can result in “trigger points.” By taking these into consideration, employers can avoid potentially more dramatic consequences such as employees having to give notice or change employer.

Our approach

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.

Links and downloads

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