REWE Group was the 500th company in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) to be awarded the "Compatibility of Work and Care" charter. NRW Health Minister Karl-Josef Laumann met with our HR Director Daniela Büchel at the REWE Group headquarters in Cologne to sign the charter.
The charter is awarded to companies, authorities and organisations with a work-life balance policy that are particularly committed to employees who care for relatives alongside their work. "It's not an easy task that more and more employees are facing in our ageing society," said Minister Laumann, recognising the "balancing act between work and caring for relatives" that is part of daily life for many employees. This is where the NRW state programme "Reconciling work and care" comes in: it supports participating companies in making it easier for their employees "to provide care alongside their job and to provide them with information and support services." The Minister told signatory Daniela Büchel that he was "delighted" that the REWE Group, the 500th signatory to the charter, was "another large company to join the programme".
"For me as an employer, it is a matter of course that we are committed to this programme," replied HR Director Büchel, adding: "More and more colleagues are taking on caring responsibilities in their families. We want to support them in this important task."
For Büchel, the relevance of the topic for REWE Group was also reflected in the employee structure: "We are a large company. 65 per cent of our workforce are women, especially in the stores. And the issue of home care in Germany is unfortunately still largely a women's issue.
Against the backdrop of an ageing society, it is becoming apparent that "care is becoming an increasingly important part of the issue of work-life balance": "As an employer, we now have a responsibility to create framework conditions and low-threshold offers for everyone. We already offer a lot, but would like to do even more in the future. I am very pleased that the state of NRW is supporting us here," said Büchel.
In the future, REWE Group wants to "invest a lot of heart and soul" in order to make the existing relief programmes, such as awo lifebalance, better known to all colleagues, especially in the area - and thus enable everyone with care responsibilities to continue working.
The NRW state programme "Reconciling work and care" is aimed at both companies and employees with comprehensive offers on the subject of reconciliation. This includes, for example, the qualification of in-house contact persons, so-called care guides, financed by the AOK state health insurance funds. The programme is funded equally by the Ministry of Labour, Health and Social Affairs, the state associations of long-term care insurance funds and the Association of Private Health Insurance Companies. Participation in the programme is free of charge for the participating companies and their employees.
