Career & family

It is the ambition of the IGZ to offer its employees optimal conditions for reconciling work, care and family, and for achieving a sustainable work-life balance. Only those who have the opportunity to meet both their professional and family demands can realise their full potential and perform outstanding scientific work. In 2012, the IGZ first started using the audit workandfamily (audit berufundfamilie) as a tool for reinforcing its sustainable HR policy geared towards different stages of (family) life. Following a successful reauditing process, the IGZ was re-certified as a family-friendly institute in 2022.

Combining work and family life

The certificate involves a voluntary commitment by the institute to take necessary and appropriate measures to implement the promotion of balancing work and stages of (family) life and to engage in active gender equality efforts. The aim of these measures is to maintain employees’ motivation and health, and to enhance the IGZ’s attractiveness as an employer, facilitating excellent science.

Work related to the audit at the IGZ is coordinated by an audit berufundfamilie working group (audit@igzev.de).

 

Existing measures

These are just some of the existing measures already in place to enable employees to strike a balance between family and work life:

  • Flexitime working time models featuring arrangements for flexible work locations
  • Annual working time accounts
  • The ability to take time off work to care for close relatives in need of long-term care
  • Entrenchment of work-life balance in annual performance reviews
  • Professional development programmes during working hours
  • (Grand-)parent and child work room
  • Health promotion options (massages)
  • Transition to even more flexible working time models and mobile working
Planned measures
  • Support in the case of individual needs concerning language training
  • Expansion of health-promoting activities and sporting opportunities

Gender Equality & Equal opportunities

For the Leibniz Institute of Vegetable and Ornamental Crops (IGZ), both an equal opportunities and an equality-oriented personnel policy are of central importance. This aims to make the IGZ a place of work where all employees can develop and contribute their skills regardless of age, ethnicity, gender, physical limitations, religion, sexual orientation or ideology. Accordingly, the IGZ sees diversity as a fundamental component for high-calibre research and uses it as a resource in terms of mutual understanding and appreciation, a gender-equal, discrimination-free and family-friendly working environment, individual career advancement and the reduction of disadvantages in other areas.

The IGZ aims to provide equal opportunities for all in terms of entry, development and promotion opportunities. The IGZ recognises that all decision-making processes and measures must question and take into account the different life situations, interests and opportunities with regard to gender-specific and other effects or possible disadvantages (e.g. of an underrepresented gender).

The Gender Equality Plan documents internal institutional strategies and identifies further opportunities for development. It thus functions as a strategic guide for the institute.

In order to make the importance of equality and equal opportunities clear, a new gender equality plan (GEP) for the IGZ was developed in 2022 and signed by the management.