Work and private life – it’s not always easy to reconcile these commitments. Families with children have to meet this challenge day after day. We want to create conditions for our staff which help them to successfully strike the right balance between family and work life.

With new parental benefits introduced in Germany at the start of 2007, even more mothers and increasing numbers of fathers are taking parental leave. In Germany, statutory parental leave regulations stipulate that employees can take three years off to look after their children and are guaranteed a comparable job on their return.

E.ON Ruhrgas goes well beyond the statutory regulations and offer their staff five or six years’ leave with a re-employment guarantee. In Sweden, employees receive parental benefits – similar to Germany – at the rate of 80 percent of their former salary in order to raise children. E.ON Nordic even tops up parental benefits from the government.

E.ON has also joined forces with the "Erfolgsfaktor Familie" network of companies, created in mid 2006 by the German Ministry for Family Affairs. This network offers information to companies grappling with the problem of work-life balance, as well as support and the opportunity to share their experiences with other family-friendly companies. The goal is to increase the number of companies practicing family-friendly human resources policies and keep this number high.