“Work – Life Balance”

Les Clementines

Team: Nicoleta Anton | Sabina Baciu | Roxana Beicu

Ambassador: Adelina Stoian

Why work-life balance?! Work-life balance is the second major concern of people all around the world. (Nielsen study Oct. 2008)

Today, employees lack the values of stability and loyalty job-hopping is a common practice personnel fluctuation costs companies a lot of money.Our solution:

Encouraging employees to start a family and offering the conditions to reach a work-life balance leads to:

SG employer branding loyal employees employee retention long-term wins

Mission

Supporting SG’s young employees who want to establish a family and then offering all the condition to reach a balance between career and family life

Objectives

• The growth of employees’ trust in SG as a reliable partner concerning their future plans

• Increased employee retention

• Responsible HR policy of work-life balance

• Creating the image of SG as a supporting institution towards employees’ plans related to family

Strategies

Objectives and strategies

Tactics

1. We will start with organizational well-being questionnaires

2. Mentoring schemes: put in touch senior people from SG with juniors to bond and pass on know-how and values

3. Kindergarten for employees’ children

4. “Be a parent for one day” type of programme - partnership with an orphanage so that employees spend one day per month with a kid 

5. Parents online community – to stay in touch with the changes in the company during maternity leave

6. Counselling and preferential financial packages for employees personal events

7. Societe Generale Kids - programmes for employees’

children (scholarships, internships, SG summer school

for children)

9. Monthly in-house magazine focused on free time topics

8. Part-time and flex-time for employee for important personal events (such as periods before and after wedding or birth)

Target audienceSG’s employees aged 20-35 years old

>Work on positions ranging from entry level to top management in SG>Plan to get married and/or have children in the next 5

years>Interested in their professional development

“Stefan is 27 and he’s been working for SG for 2 years. He has a beautiful girl-friend who is very upset because Stefan doesn’t ask her to marry with him already! Stefan doesn’t take the big step because he doesn’t feel very confident, and delays it until he will become a manager. Then he will be able to buy a big house with a children’s room too. After becoming a manager he will also have more time to spend with his girlfriend, because now he is constantly staying long-hours at work.”

Problem:

Stefan is an SG employer who: - thinks on short term- feels no particular attachment for SG as employer- has health problems due to working long hours and accumulated work-pressure

Resources

One of the strong points of the project is the little amount of resources it needs, mainly because they already exist within the company.

Concerning the human resources, the people responsible for implementing “Work-life balance” in SG will be from the HR department.

Regarding time resources, the campaign will take into consideration the time needed for organizing the events, such as “Family Day”, or the other activities that need to be planned, such as mentoring. The project is designed to be implemented for one year and, then, after an evaluation, to be implemented on a long term/continuously (more than 5 years).

Financial resources include money spent on offering scholarships, the deductions from the financial packages offered preferentially on important occasions, or kindergarten facilities.

Benefits

Long term investment in employees make them valuable assets for SG

Confidence at the workplace results in higher work efficiency for employees

Higher level of employee retention (they feel closer to the company)

SG is known for being actively involved in global natality growth

SG employer branding – known as a supporter of family growth among its employees

To sum up, the project offers SG a loyal,motivated, healthy and stable work force thus, in the long term, employees become essential assets.

Our researchWe have used the following 4 research methods in order to have a comprehensive view on the current work-life balance status in Romania:

• Focus-group with 5 people from our target audience• 9 interviews with SNSPA professors and PR, HR and CSR

specialists • Questionnaire – 74 respondents to work-life balance and

family issues• Discussions with college professors from SNSPA – Camelia

Crisan, soon to be a PhD in CSR, who offered feedback on our project

Our wikiblog20 media appearances on blogs, web-sites and forums

190 comments

Buzz made on facebook, twitter, cirip.ro, yammer, etc.

Mails sent on >35 Yahoo Groups

Coverage of the subject by well known bloggers and leading CSR websites in Romania

What they sayOne of the main purposes of our wikiblog was to test our idea and receive feedback. Here are some of our reader’s thoughts: