Balancing Personal and Professional Life
Our identity as an employer includes our belief in supporting our employees in balancing their personal and professional lives. We want to strengthen their identification with the company and our position in the global competition for qualified personnel. To achieve this, we have a wide range of offerings aimed at employees in different phases of life that accommodate – as far as the job allows – the growing demand for flexibility in when and where they work. These include flexible working hours, part-time employment, remote working, and time off options that provide the necessary flexibility to care for children or family members, for example. We are continually working to expand these options and increasingly support the effective use of digital solutions here.
We have formulated guidelines for more flexibility in where, when and how employees work. These opportunities have become an integral part of our employees’ day-to-day work, job permitting.
At the Ludwigshafen site in Germany, for example, teams can draw on many tools to live more flexibility and at the same time, strengthen teamwork. Many BASF units have hybrid work models, working partly on-site and partly remotely. Desk-sharing concepts support the new form of collaboration and create areas to withdraw as well as new interaction spaces for sharing ideas and being creative together. There are also external and internal co-working opportunities that employees can take advantage of.
Our Work-Life Management employee center in Ludwigshafen, Germany, (LuMit) offers a number of services under one roof: childcare, fitness and health, and the Employee Assistance Program with social counseling services offered by BASF Stiftung.
Other BASF sites also have a wide range of services to foster a balance between personal and professional life and promote health and fitness. For example, the Münster and Frankfurt sites in Gemany offer mobile and hybrid working, childcare options including emergency care, and psychosocial support and counseling services.
In Germany, the Employee Assistance Program with social counseling services has been offered for 100 years under the organizational umbrella of BASF Stiftung: It provides an anchor and supports people in difficult life situations in Ludwigshafen and at three other German locations. In addition, BASF Stiftung promotes projects around the world to permanently improve the living conditions of people in need and to help people affected by emergencies and natural disasters. Examples include the year-end donation campaign “#HornOfAfrica – Children need water and food” and the major donation campaign “#ColleaguesForUkraine”. The site in Lemförde, Germany, also hosted an aid campaign for Ukrainian refugees, organizing a leisure program for a total of around 45 refugee children and their mothers as part of summer holiday care.
We have also offered our South American employees numerous support services for many years now. For example, there is a team that coordinates activities to promote employees’ emotional, physical and social well-being. The portfolio is continuously enhanced and refined to optimally meet current local needs. One focus topic in 2022 was burnout and illness prevention.
In Asia, too, many countries have specific support programs designed to help employees with personal and professional problems. These include a wide range of offers, for example on mental health and on preventing and dealing with stress. Thanks to employees’ voluntary efforts, employees in need were provided with special assistance such as food packages during the lockdown triggered by the coronavirus pandemic in 2022.