Food multinational Nestlé extends paid leave by 3 months, or 12 consecutive weeks, for working dads or second caregivers for the birth or adoption of a child. With the trade unions, Fai Cisl, Flai Cgil, Uila Uil, the group has in fact signed an agreement establishing the “Nestlé Baby Leave”, on which it will invest over one million euros per year.
The target
The goal is to allow the whole family to devote time and energy to the newcomer, with a measure that represents an important step forward both compared to the ten days currently envisaged by Italian legislation, and to the policies adopted so far by Nestlé itself which, as early as 2012, it introduced two additional weeks of paid leave for the father worker or second caregiver.
The decline in births and the burdens of women
It is a measure in support of shared parenting which is an increasingly challenging factor in our society. Numerous researches, and even before the Istat data, tell us that in 2020 our country has reached the negative peak of births, with a rate of 7 newborns per 1,000 inhabitants.
The INPS data, on the other hand, tell us that the weight of parenthood, especially in childhood, is heavily shifted to women. The data on the beneficiaries of parental leave for Covid-19 tell us that only 21% of fathers have requested it, compared to 79% of mothers. Numbers that confirm how much women still play the role of main caregiver in Italian families.
The strategy
“Initiatives to support parenting and the removal of gender barriers have always been a priority for Nestlé. These are two absolutely inseparable themes since parenting continues to impact the career advancement of women, thus making it necessary to rebalance roles and tasks in the family context – interprets Giacomo Piantoni, Human Resources Director of the Nestlé Group in Italy -. We were the first in Italy, in 2012, to provide for two weeks of paternity leave and today, ten years later, we continue to show that we are pioneers on these issues. It could not be otherwise, Nestlé has been at the side of the new parents since its foundation over 150 years ago. Attention to the needs of children and parents is engraved in our DNA.