Balancing personal and professional life at BASF

Our identity as an employer includes our belief in supporting our employees in balancing their personal and professional lives. We want to strengthen their identification with the company and our position in the global competition for qualified personnel. We want to achieve this with a wide range of offerings aimed at employees in different phases of life.

We take into account the unique challenges parents face, particularly with regard to the health and wellbeing of expectant and nursing mothers. Our goal is to protect their health and shield them and their children from harm. We are committed to acting with particular care toward mothers and ensuring that they are treated with respect. Working women should be protected from all forms of discrimination related to their pregnancy or status as a mother.  BASF has established a Group-wide standard for maternity protection to safeguard the health of expectant and nursing mothers and to prevent harm to them and their babies. This includes a minimum of 14 weeks of maternity leave with at least 6 weeks after delivery. Compliance with our internal maternity leave policy is monitored and evaluated through a global risk-based management process. In some countries, we provide a level of maternity protection that exceeds local statutory regulations.

Our employees can take parental leave in line with the relevant legal entitlements.

At many sites worldwide, we offer our employees professional support with stressful situations in their personal and professional lives. In Germany, this is done by the BASF Stiftung’s social and life counseling service, for example, and is increasingly also offered at sites outside of Ludwigshafen. As part of our global Corporate Health Management, we support employees in strengthening their mental and physical health and adapting their health behavior accordingly, among other things.

At our largest Verbund site in Ludwigshafen, Germany, we provide a wide range of offerings to help employees balance personal and professional life. The BASF SE nursery LuKids is one of the largest company childcare facilities in Germany with a total of 260 places and offers demand-oriented all-day care. It is supplemented by flexibly bookable emergency childcare places via other providers and children’s holiday programs.

We have formulated global guidelines for more flexibility that regulate where, when and how employees can work. These opportunities have become an integral part of our employees’ day-to-day work, job permitting. These include flexible working hours, part-time employment, remote working, and time-off options. Desk-sharing concepts support the new form of collaboration and create areas to withdraw as well as interaction spaces for sharing ideas and being creative together. There are also external and internal coworking opportunities that employees can take advantage of.