At Budapest Business School, we believe that our internal community is our greatest asset. Their well-being and development are a priority for BBS, so we set out to design an organisational culture that seeks to reconcile work and private life. Part of this is the family-friendly approach and the development of a family-friendly university, which we have been consciously moving toward in recent years through a variety of ways.
Background
The internal community of BBS consists of our students, faculty, managers, and staff working in functional and service departments. They are the Citizens of the university. At our university, we have previously recognised the fact that the contribution of our Citizens to the successful operation is invaluable. In our Sustainability Strategy that we realised in 2017, we have identified the development of our internal community as an important goal, as this is the key to a sustainable, balanced organisational operation in the long-run. In order to achieve our goals, we have identified improvements in the areas of health, safety and well-being. This process can best be aided by the development of a supportive organisational culture, which includes the creation of a family-friendly work environment. The University therefore, aims to develop an organisational culture that seeks to reconcile work and private life and communicates this appropriately to employees and the outside world.
Family-friendly programs and workplaces are an integral part of the sustainable and responsible university strategic goals of Budapest Business School for the development of internal communities, and part of the initiative to preserve the mental and physical well-being of colleagues, taking into account their special life situations.
Major initiatives
- Family-friendly Institution
As part of the family-friendly measures, we set out to help students and employees with young children, therefore baby changing rooms were set up on each BBS campus. As a further investment, we plan to create family-friendly rooms. The possibilities and opportunities are now being examined in each individual building. - Family-friendly Events
At the same time, the family-friendly approach is not specifically limited to family events, such as Santa Claus Celebrations. From 2018, we have been continually striving to make as many BBS events as possible family-friendly, whether it’s a science conference or a university open day. We consciously develop programmes for children before the event or on-site (e.g.: drawing competition) or organise activities that can be a common experience for the whole family (e.g.: film screening, robot-building competition). These steps are very important and the fact that so many members of our internal community and their families are attending our events in increasing numbers, only confirms our efforts! - Home Office at BBS
The family-friendly approach is also clearly reflected in the way we think about Home Office at our University. Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, we created a framework for the Home Office option and launched our program on a pilot basis in the summer of 2019. As a result of the positive experience, in the spring of 2020, we expanded this opportunity and created the necessary boundary conditions, regulatory and support systems. The emergency caused by COVID-19 greatly accelerated this process and encouraged us to innovate further. We are confident that we will continue in this direction once the emergency situation is over - now with much more experience and innovative solutions! - Family-friendly Workplace
In 2019 for the first time, we entered and won the Family-Friendly Workplace tender competition announced by the Ministry of Human Capacities. In addition to recognition, we also received support that allowed us to implement a number of initiatives, including a family-focused programme aimed at improving the health of our employees.
The recognition was accepted by Dr. András Jancsik, Vice-Rector for Education and Dr. András Sas, Director of Legal Affairs, from Secretary of State, Katalin Novák on July 11th, 2019, in the Conference Room of the Public Procurement Authority in Budapest.
