Striking a balance

It is increasingly important for companies to sharpen their focus on employees’ family concerns as they compete for qualified talent in the light of the demographic shift. By supporting employees’ efforts to combine a career with their family lives, we are not just living up to our self-image as a family business. We are also safeguarding our own future, which we would like to shape together with our motivated and capable employees.

Flexible solutions for committed employees: our working hours schemes

We offer our workers a variety of flexible solutions to help balance family and career, from individual working hours schemes at logistics locations and in our shops to trust-based working hours, partial retirement, provision of childcare services, job sharing and working from home.

We also highly value staying in contact with mothers and fathers during their parental leave and helping them ease their way back into the workplace. For example, we help our employees on parental leave to stay abreast of important events from home by giving them access to the Tchibo intranet. Mothers and fathers taking time out from work for parental leave can meet at get-togethers to discuss their experiences, and a “buddy” programme ensures that parents stay up-to-date on important developments in their department.

The ability to combine work with a family has to be reflected in our management culture in order to truly be a part of our everyday business. Part-time work and reintegration into working life are therefore topics for management seminars at Tchibo.

Childcare for over 40 of our employees’ children

We want our employees’ children to be well cared for during working hours so their parents can dedicate themselves completely to their work. It is often difficult for working parents to find easily accessible, qualified and – in the best case – year-round childcare facilities. This is why we have been cooperating with a childcare centre in Hamburg since 2006. Here, trained childcare workers look after about 100 boys and girls, from babies to school-age children, of which 33 are the children of Tchibo employees. The centre takes applicants’ socio-economic situations into account when awarding places. In 2011, ten new places will be made available for employees’ children.

“Familienservice” helps out in emergencies – providing comprehensive advice

Who will take care of the children if an employee has to work late or has to take a weekend business trip? And who will be there for an elderly mother in need of care if the caregiver calls in sick at short notice? Whenever such gaps in care or other family emergencies occur, Tchibo employees can call on the help of Familienservice, an external employee development partner. We have been cooperating with this independent consulting and recruitment service since 2009. We work with Familienservice to offer our employees seminars, workshops and events to give them qualified advice and assistance with finding help in the following areas:

• Childcare
• Use of emergency care facilities for children
• Care of relatives or older people (eldercare)

Familienservice also offers free holiday care for children (“Company Kids”) to bridge childcare gaps during school holidays. All company employees in the German federal states of Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg and North Rhine-Westphalia can make use of this service.

In 2010, we extended our cooperation with Familienservice Germany-wide, making their services available to our employees at our Gallin site and in our shops.

Free seminars for our Hamburg employees

We are able to offer our employees free seminars on parental leave and eldercare through our partner Worklife Koordinierungsstelle für Familie und Beruf (coordination centre for family and career). These events give workers an overview of services for older relatives in need of care or teach them how to optimise childcare and plan their return to work after parental leave.

Additional services make everyday life easier

Tchibo employees have access to a concierge service to make it easier to balance everyday life and work. Possible services include errand running, shopping services and house sitting, and a cleaning service is also available.

A pioneer among retail businesses: certified family-friendliness

We are a leader in family-friendly business practices. We are very proud, as a family business, to be the first retail company in Germany certified as a “family-conscious employer” by berufundfamilie gGmbH. The Hertie Foundation’s initiative issues the certificate as a seal of quality for family-conscious HR policies in Germany. The initiative conducts audits in which eight defined areas of action such as work organisation, management skills and services for families are assessed by means of 35 individual measures. Tchibo now sends annual reports on its progress to berufundfamilie.

In 2010, to further improve employees’ ability to combine their careers with family life, we established a “master plan” for the upcoming three years, based on several workshops. In the plan, we have recorded our targets and the measures we want to take to attain them. One such target, which we are putting into action in 2011, is to form project groups to focus on sabbaticals and care for relatives. Additionally, a brochure has been written to inform all Tchibo employees about how the company supports them when they have caring responsibilities for relatives.

Employees by form of employment

As of 31 December 2010, Tchibo GmbH and its German subsidiaries employed 2,949 persons full-time and 5,477 part-time.