Family-friendly with distinction

What if the child is ill? What if your parents need support in their old age? Or do you simply need more time for your family during a certain phase of your life? The Bielefeld bag specialist Halfar has a clear answer to this: family friendliness. In 2016, its corporate policy was recognised for the first time with the certificate “EXCELLENT FAMILY-FRIENDLY”. Now those responsible were pleased to receive the award again. What is special about this award is that, together with the “local alliance for families in Bielefeld”, a total of eight institutions and groups jointly evaluate the companies. On behalf of all of them, IHK General Manager Petra Pigerl-Radtke and Bielefeld Mayor Pit Clausen presented the certificate to the team of bag specialist Halfar on 24 August.

“As a family business, family friendliness is in our DNA. And we are constantly developing it further, because the demands on families are also constantly changing. Whether it’s flexible working hours, home office, wage inflation compensation or a family event like the BAG FAMILY DAY: with all of this, we want to support our employees in a sustainable and targeted way,” Kathrin Halfar-Stühmeyer, shareholder and managing director, summarises how comprehensively Halfar understands family friendliness.

In fact, Halfar works on many levels to make it easier to reconcile family and career. With family-friendly working hours, it offers very individual options and agreements on when to work instead of rigid full- or part-time models. And the where is also flexible: home office and mobile working have long been a matter of course at Bielefeld. Above all, the goal is to change structures in the long term: the quota of women in the company as a whole and in management positions is to be further increased, the acceptance of family leave, also for fathers, is to be further promoted and the return to work afterwards is to be made as easy as possible. Family is a challenge both organisationally and financially – which is why the bag specialist supports mothers and fathers with various instruments. They benefit from the company pension scheme, various cash bonuses or the possible subsidy for childcare costs. JobRad and JobTicket are also benefits that go easy on the family budget – and also on the climate and the environment. This shows in particular how sustainable family-friendly corporate policy is. www.halfar.com

Photo: Pleased with the award (from left): Mayor Pit Clausen, IHK Managing Director Petra Pigerl-Radtke, Armin Halfar (Halfar System), Annika Thiel (Halfar System), Kathrin Stühmeyer-Halfar (Halfar System), Brigitte Meier (Wege Wirtschaftsförderung Bielefeld).