Why is this important?

One effective way to address corporate impact on children’s lives is to establish activities that strive to prevent and remediate any negative impact and/or create positive impact for children (and their parents). By operating a workplace that considers the needs of parents, positive indirect impact for children might include:  more time with their parents; access to day-care/schooling, and ability to breastfeed for a longer time period. Such initiatives have significant health and developmental benefits for children.

About the scoring

A score of 10 is given if the company has publicly available information showing that they are working actively to support parents and provide work-life balance for their employees such as:

• Programmes to incentivise parental leave (including for fathers)
• Offering on-site quality childcare or childcare subsidies to employees – or suppliers’ employees
• Offering subsidies for tuition fees, etc. to support education for employees’ children (under 18)
• Under circumstances where access to education is limited, providing educational solutions for employee’s children, e.g. running schools or offering transport to existing schools, etc.
• Supporting breastfeeding by providing leave or breastfeeding facilities for working mothers
• Supporting pregnant workers and ensuring their well-being

A score of 5 is given if the company has programmes to ensure employee well-being more broadly, for instance:

• Working hours
• Wages and other non-monetary benefits
• Health and safety programmes
• Prevention of abuse/harassment
• Promoting gender equality

If the programme focuses only on getting women back to work after childbirth, without any provisions for, e.g. breastfeeding and/or childcare, it qualifies as a general programme and results in a score of 5, as the benefit for the child in this case is unclear.

N.B. If the programme consists entirely of donations to an NGO/charity, it doesn’t qualify here, but it will be considered under Indicator 1.3.1 Collaboration.

Indicator reference

Children’s Rights and Business Principles:

• All business should meet their responsibility to respect children’s rights and commit to supporting the human rights of children (Principle 1)
• All business should provide decent work for young workers, parents and caregivers (Principle 3)

The GRI standards:

• 401-2