Workplace flexibility enables work-life balance, particularly with young parents, and companies offering a family-friendly environment are setting a standard that is becoming increasingly critical for attracting young talent. Through this, young parents are also given the opportunity to be successful in all their roles – as parents, and as professionals. Workforce diversity enhances business results, including notably the proportion of women in management, and particularly in top management.
Creating a workplace climate characterized by support, collaboration, and trust, and attracting and retaining the best talent through that takes a considerable skill. Spona Code has been assisting companies along this path for 10 years now by means of the certification process linked to the introduction of the MAMFORCE Standard.
The MAMFORCE Standard is awarded to companies, organizations, and institutions who have attained a standard of quality in employee relations that enable the working parents to balance the professional and family obligations, and offer women equal opportunities in career development. The evidence-based approach of the method demonstrates that, over the last 10 years, family-friendly work environment and work-life balance have become and important component of employer branding. At the same time, promotion of women to top management positions has been recognized as important element of successful business, and fathers taking family leave have ceased to be a novelty.
The information collected by 50 MAMFORCE certified organizations, in which the working conditions for some 40.000 employees have been improved, indicate that within the year of the Basic MAMFORCE certification the absenteeism rates are reduced by 11%, the overall employee satisfaction is improved by 19.5%, and employer branding is increased by 4.5%. Better insight into the needs of women in organizations and into their potential resulted in increase of the rate of women among recognized talent by 15%, among successors by 9%, and by 29% more promotions of women on average.
“MAMFORCE has become a recognized quality mark of responsible business, but we had to overcome a lot of obstacles to achieve acceptance, recognition, and awareness of what we have been doing. I am pleased to see that the results of our 10 years of focused work demonstrated that we have improved working conditions for so many people, that we brought into focus and prominence the issues of work-life balance and family-friendly work environment, and that those issues have become central to employer branding strategies. Moreover, the promotion of women to top positions is now seen as an important aspect of business success, and dads on family leave are not a wonder any more. There is still a lot of work ahead of us, but we have proven that we’re well on our way.” – noted Diana Kobas Deskovic, the creator of MAMFORCE Standard.
On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Standard, individuals and organizations whose unwavering support and assistance were instrumental in the success of the initiative and in the resulting more equitable working conditions, received a recognition.
