9 April 2020
Managers are rolling up their sleeves and getting their hands dirty. That’s the message being sent out by several supermarket chains. Loblaw, Empire, Longo, and the Canadian subsidiary of WalMart, have all asked head office managers to take the lift down to the shop floors and support their core employees. In this time of Covid-19 related crisis and fear, Anthony Longo, the general manager of the Longo’s deli chain in Ontario, wants to tell its 5,000 employees that they are not alone. He too is taking...
24 March 2020
During this Covid-19 pandemic, two business sectors are bucking a general downtrend with extremely strong growth, namely the supermarket and distribution sectors. With demand levels already high, both are multiplying their job offers, and with the free movement of people now hampered, their hiring methods have also had to adapt and the hiring pool has also altered as other businesses abruptly lay off workers. While in order to attract workers, the supermarket chains are boosting bonuses, they aren’t so quick to...
6 March 2020
Santander is introducing a global minimum standard for parental leave in every market in which it operates, with mothers granted at least 14 weeks of paid leave and the father or secondary parent granted at least 4 weeks. Paternity or secondary parental leave can be taken in a single period or in two periods of two weeks until the child is one year old. The rule is applicable for the 196,000 people employed by the bank across the 10 countries in which it operates. The change results in an increase in maternity...
18 February 2020
On 13 February the French construction materials company launched its “CARE by Saint-Gobain” social protection program that will provide specific minimum cover for all the Group’s more than 180,000 employees worldwide and their families. This program will cover medical support for the families and access to care, providing minimum cover for health costs, leave for the arrival of a child in the home and for death by providing the family with financial aid.
6 February 2020
The Franco-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CFACI) and the French branches of four large German chemicals groups (BAYER, BASF, Merck and Boehringer) have teamed up to create a joint training scheme for maintenance engineers, through which they can earn a BTS, a French vocational qualification. The scheme will involve digital training as well as several weeks spent in Germany, with trainees earning a double French and German certification. The initiative was unveiled on 20 January but the content of the...
6 February 2020
Employees at the pharmaceutical company’s French subsidiary are set to receive an extra two weeks of paid parental leave above and beyond the standard minimum duration as required in the pharmaceutical company’s global policy that was issued in March 2019 (cf. article No. 11048), and that fixes a minimum of 14 weeks of paid parental leave irrespective of employment contract (permanent or fixed term), career length, and marital status, and is available to those welcoming the arrival of a child (childbirth and...
5 February 2020
An opinion piece published in the 05 February edition of the daily economics publication Les Echos (here) indicates that 105 companies (primarily in the tech, organic, and sustainable development sectors, and for a large part SMEs) have committed to putting second parent leave arrangements in place. French legislation currently recognizes only 11 days of paternity leave (that is partially paid by the social security system). These 105 companies are highlighting their willingness and intention to ‘lead by example...
5 February 2020
Fathers in Hungary can avail of five-days of paid statutory leave following the birth of a child. This leave can be taken whole or in several parts but must be used before the child is two months old. Diageo, one of the leading global alcoholic beverages companies, has introduced a family-friendly measure that will see fathers having the opportunity to avail of an additional 26 weeks of leave. The company’s global parental policy provides a standard 4 weeks of leave as well as 26 weeks of maternity leave. The...
2 December 2019
On 25 November the German arm of US IT giant Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced that all employees will now be eligible for six months of parental leave, with 100% pay from the company, following the birth of a child or an adoption. This move is indicative of a growing trend in Germany; faced with a shortage of qualified staff and the aspirations of new generation of workers, less focused on their careers, an increasing number of companies are introducing measures to foster an improved work-life balance....
27 August 2019
On 23 August, Google updated its Community Guidelines, a company policy designed to govern internal interaction between employees. Having been faced in recent months with a new form of social activism harnessing both internal and external communications, the Californian tech giant says it wants to strike a balance between right of employees to speak up , which is something it encourages, and individual responsibility, while banning political debates. Indeed, for several months, Google employees have been coming...
