Regulations on compatibility

There are many facets to reconciling work and family life: from flexible working hours and part-time management to childcare and caring for relatives. Legal regulations provide the framework for designing a family-friendly HR policy. We have summarized the most important regulations for you.

Women also want to pursue their careers as mothers, while fathers want to play a greater role in bringing up their children; many people take care of their relatives at home and therefore want to cut back on their careers. More and more employers are responding to employees' desire for a more flexible work organization with family-friendly personnel policies.

• Employees are entitled to parental leave during the first three years of their child's life. Information on entitlement, duration and registration for unpaid leave from work can be found in the article Parental leave here on Familienportal.NRW.
• All questions relating to the topic of parental allowance, the amount of parental allowance, requirements and employment opportunities while receiving parental allowance are also answered in detail on the Familienportal.NRW.
• If a child falls ill, employees have the option of taking time off work. Read the information on child sick pay on the Familienportal.NRW.
• Most carers and working relatives need more flexibility in terms of time. The law to improve the compatibility of family, care and work creates individual framework conditions for different care situations.
• Section 8 of the Third Book of the German Social Code (SGB III) regulates work promotion.
• The aim of the Part-Time and Fixed-Term Employment Act is to promote part-time work and define the conditions for the admissibility of fixed-term employment contracts.

Employers can also fall back on a wide range of company offers to support employees in reconciling family and career:

• Measures to facilitate time management range from part-time and flexitime to flexible annual and lifetime working hours and consideration for vacation arrangements. The article "Family-friendly working time models" here on Familienportal.NRW presents the various models in detail.
• Companies can support their employees in their work processes by offering the option of home office, setting up parent-child workrooms or providing in-house daycare centers. You can find suggestions and tips on these topics in many articles here on Familienportal.NRW.
• Other measures include the promotion and communication of a family-friendly corporate culture, reintegration, support programs for parents, job sharing, financial support services and household-related services. You can also find practical tips and concepts on these topics here on the Familienportal.NRW.