The online shop Otto has opted for a uniform regulation as far as part-time management positions are concerned. What was previously individually agreed now applies in general: the company is now also advertising all management roles on a part-time basis, but this should be “close to full-time”, i.e. 80 percent or more.
The new standard applies to all directors and heads of division and department and should mean that in future employees who do not work full-time (i.e. 37.5 hours) can also take on any vacant management role if they are suitably qualified.
“Currently, every fifth Otto manager works part-time, most of them women. The current 40 percent quota of women in management positions is to be further increased with the help of the new job advertisement regulation,” explains Otto in a statement on Thursday.
More women in management positions
Katy Roewer, who has been 80 percent of the Otto Division Director for Service and Human Resources since 2015, can draw on her own experience: “Successful management and a part-time contract are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary: We are firmly convinced that managers are efficient and convincing above all when there is a right balance between private and professional life.”
“I know from my own experience that a job with managerial responsibility is also intense, which is why the minimum of 80 percent of full working hours has become the basis. With the new regulation, we are creating framework conditions to increase gender diversity at management levels, i.e. above all to increase the proportion of women in management. After all, many women want managerial responsibility, but the prerequisites for this are often lacking,” adds Roewer.
Core working hours with the teams are important, and Roewer answers a question on LinkedIn how these are regulated in specific cases: “We work flextime and the teams decide for themselves in communication sprints how they get together on campus. This goes hand in hand with great flexibility.”
Job-sharing tandems already exist, in a few cases; an area that holds “a lot of potential” for Roewer. The company also offers its employees psychosocial support with regular lectures and workshops, for example on the subject of elder care.