Equal Opportunities

Anyone seeking long-term success and job satisfaction needs a stable social background. At the Max Planck Society, we care about your work-life balance and equal opportunities. We bear in mind personal circumstances that affect our employees and their partners, and make every effort within the restrictions of public funding law to put together individual packages of measures.

The Max Planck Society recognises that the demands of professional life often conflicts with home life. Therefore, we offer extensive support to employees to strike a healthy balance between the two.

The Max Planck Society offers:   

  • Childcare places in the home and in industry-wide day-care centres; contract with the service company "pme Familienservice" to arrange care (including for the elderly); financial subsidies for childcare at conferences
  • Dual-Career Service: help and care facilities for dual-career scientist couples
  • Options for part-time working and teleworking
  • Central equal opportunities commissioner and confidential counsellors in the institutes
  • Guidelines for a constructive interface between male and female scientists

    The Max Planck Society is the only German scientific organization that qualifies for the non-profit-making PLC "work and family" certificate, which acknowledges its family-oriented personnel policy.

    www.mpg.de/equal_opportunities

    Code of Conduct (Protection against Sexualized Discrimination, Harassment and Violence)

    BALANCING FAMILY AND WORK AT THE CSBD

    At the CSBD we are invested in equal opportunities and are continually improving the equality of our work place.

    Based on the guiding principles of the MPI-PKS and the MPI-CBG, we are committed to increasing the share of women at the CSBD. Our staff benefits from the continuous efforts at both institutions to help balancing family and career. At the MPI-PKS, you are especially welcome to contact five excellent female scientists at the institute, should you want to know more about life and work at the MPI-PKS, in particular as a woman scientist.

    We are proud that the MPI-CBG has been named the “Most Family-friendly Company in Dresden” in 2012 for its efforts in helping working families balance the demands of career and home. We are constantly working to improve these measures, weaving the theme of family and work through seminars on human resources management for managers and employees, to explore possibilities for teleworking, identifying role models for fathers, organizing courses and seminars targeted at different stages of careers and implementing a mentoring service for all pre-docs and post-docs. 

    Dual Career Service
    Spouses can use the DRESDEN-concept Dual Career Service to find a job.
     

    Child care
    The CSBD and the MPI-CBG organize childcare for families. 35 places are reserved for staff of the MPI-CBG and CSBD at the Biopolis nursery, 20 places at the Parkhaus Kindergarten, and 15 at the Lowi Kindergarten – all within walking distance of the Institute. The MPI-CBG also provides financial support to these organizations for infrastructure and education. Moreover, we are planning to establish a nursery for toddlers for children under one year of age in the Institute’s guest house located within 100 m of the Institute. 

    We also offer a Family Room. The purpose of the Family Room is to provide a space where children can play while their parents work, for instance on days when the usual childcare options become unavailable. The space can also be used by breastfeeding mothers who wish to work part of the day while having their child nearby in the care of a babysitter. In addition to comfortable seating and a play area, the room will have desks with computers that can be used by parents or older children who wish to do their homework in the room after school.

    Family-friendly policies
    All faculty meetings and seminars are scheduled to finish before 5PM so that parents can pick their children up from daycare. We organize supervision and activities for children during MPI-CBG and CSBD social events.
    The Max Planck Society has revised its policy towards contracts requiring that all predocs and postdocs are hired on contracts rather than stipends which raises the equality and improves the finances for new parents.

    If you have any questions or comments regarding equal opportunities at the CSBD and the MPI-CBG, please contact the Institute’s Equal Opportunities Commissioners via equalopportunities@mpi-cbg.de

    Dr. Agnes Toth-Petroczy

    Gender Equality Officer
    tothpet@mpi-cbg.de

    Dr. Meritxel Huch

    Deputy Gender Equality Officer
    huch@mpi-cbg.de