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Insights / Blog / Inside AOE

AOE again most family-friendly employer in the Internet category

September 28, 2022

Of course, balancing family and career is not a new challenge. What is new is the context that over two years of the Corona pandemic have shaped. Today, in most cases family, education and work no longer have to be conducted completely under one roof and coordinated in terms of time, space and resources, but the effects are of course still felt. For example, the 100% home office situation from spring of 2020 has evolved into a new mode – one that brings with it new challenges. We are therefore all the more pleased to have achieved first place in the "Internet" category in this year's "Most Family-Friendly Employer" ranking.

Most family-friendly employer: This is what it's all about

The basis for the ranking by kununu and Freundin is a study by the employer review platform kununu, which is based on over 2 million reviews of 250,000 companies. The following criteria had to be met in order to be considered:

  • At least 50 kununu reviews
  • of which at least one since January 1, 2022
  • kununu score of 3.5 (out of a possible five stars)
  • at least 3.3 stars in certain rating categories
  • certain benefits such as home office or childcare

The ranking thus included the following factors:

  • Well-being: supervisor behavior, dealing with colleagues 45+, work-life balance
  • Career: equal opportunities, career/continuing education, salary/benefits
  • Family-friendly benefits offered: flexible working hours, home office, childcare, company pension scheme

The result: 700 employers from 29 industries were recognized as "family-friendly employers", including AOE in first place in the "Internet" category.

Yenia Zaba

VP Global Communications & Brand / kununu
It is important to remember that family friendliness ultimately means more than home office and flexible working hours. Family friendliness is more complex. It also manifests itself in the fact that companies create individual solutions to meet the needs of their employees – for example, by addressing the difficult situation of single parents or supporting employees who care for relatives.

Why we won: Flexibility as default

A lot has happened since we had to switch to 100% remote work within three days in 2020 due to the pandemic. Today, we can finally enjoy the benefits of our beautiful office again, and it makes us happy that employees again like to make good use of this. On the other hand, home office and remote work also offer enormous advantages for many. That's why we keep on offering the option of mobile working (including the necessary equipment) – because we believe that our employees themselves know best how they can work optimally.

We create the necessary conditions for this as far as possible, for example by offering flexible working hours and part-time options. We mean flexible quite literally, both in terms of the working day and the total number of hours, if employees want to increase or reduce their hours, for example because their family situation requires it.

A challenging family situation is, for example, the illness of a child. In this case, we would like to relieve employees as much as possible and therefore offer normal continued payment of wages for 10 days of sick leave for children per year – even without a doctor's certificate. For these 10 days, employees do not have to apply for child sick pay from the health insurance fund and can decide for themselves whether a visit to the doctor is necessary.

The award continues the trend from previous years: in 2020 AOE achieved second place in the Internet industry, in 2019 first place, and before that in first place in the kununu employer ranking in the Internet and multimedia industry and second place in the kununu ranking of employers with the best work-life balance.