AXA has been known as a family friendly employer for many years, and this remains one of the important pillars of our culture. To foster work-life balance in combination with pursuing one’s career trajectory, AXA has established flexible working models for various life phases, e.g. for young parents or those looking after ageing parents.

Evolution from ‘Flexwork’ to ‘Smart Working’

We started our Flexwork initiative in 2008 and are now evolving into our Smart Working initiative. Smart Working empowers our employees to choose working in the office or remotely depending on efficiently meeting our customer needs, supporting the effective functioning of their teams and their own personal preferences. Thus, it is the contribution that matters, not the place where you work.

Flexible working models such as part-time careers are an important element of Smart Working to enable a variety of career trajectories throughout the different life phases of our employees. We believe everybody can be at their best if both work and life are balanced.

Initiatives establishing part-time to equal full-time career opportunities

To value the contribution of our people during times where it is important to spend more time with the family, we took the following measures to establish part-time careers equal to full-time careers:

• We are signatory company of both the Advance Charter and the Work-Smart Charter.
• We advertise all positions with a workload of 80% to 100%.
• Senior Management positions are possible with a workload starting at 50 percent.
• We offer various flexible retirement models, from gradually reducing the workload to part-retirement.
• We offer extra-mandatory benefits with respect to both maternity and paternity leave.

Moreover, we offer our employees various opportunities to continually develop into new positions at AXA and adapt their workload according to the stages in their life, e.g.: part-time work during paternity phase, followed by full-time work to focus on one’s career, part-time work to adjust to retirement-life.

The success factor to establish part-time careers equal to full-time careers was constant communication internally, workshops for our employees to ask questions and most importantly our culture, which values individual contributions and respects personal needs of our staff.

results we are proud of

Today we are proud to present the following outcomes which reflect our results in the Advance Gender Intelligence Report & St. Gallen Benchmarking:

• A culture of flexible working established at AXA Switzerland: 35% of our employees, both male and female, work part-time.
• In Senior Management positions, 24% of our male and female leaders work part-time. Even one of our male Executive Members works part-time.
• Chances for promotions are equal for full-time and part-time employees.
• Based on the benchmark, AXA Switzerland promoted the highest proportion of part-time employees within the industry.

We would like to encourage other companies to follow our example. Fostering part-time careers creates a win-win for everybody. Not only part-time careers but also home office and a hybrid working culture will become increasingly more important in a more hybrid world, which will also demand new forms of leadership and new forms of collaboration. Thus said: the future of work is smart.

We would be delighted to share more information if you are interested in our Smart Working strategy. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at diversity@axa.ch.

Read more here: https://www.axa.ch/en/about-axa/jobs-career/what-axa-stands-for/workmodels.html

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