All rolled into one? Balancing family and career
Anyone who has children will likely agree that finding the right work-life balance isn’t always easy. To support employees with children, ETH Zurich offers a whole range of services that can make balancing family and career easier.
Where can I find a childcare place?
If you would like to have your children looked after outside the family, Hello Kids! is a good first point of contact. This in-house ETH service point provides extensive information on the topic of childcare, helps members of the ETH community to find extrafamilial childcare, and gives advice that is tailored to people’s childcare needs. If you have any other questions regarding issues related to work and family life, Hello Kids! can put you in touch with the specialist department in charge.
When it comes to actually securing an external childcare place, members of the ETH community can apply for one through the external page kihz Foundation as well as at some childcare facilities in the university area. ETH provides financial support here. For further information, visit Finding a childcare place.
Support in the event of care bottlenecks
If you need to have your children looked after outside the family only for a short time, then perhaps external page kihz Flex is a good idea. This kihz Foundation service offers flexible, needs-based temporary childcare with professional carers at the Flex Zentrum, irrespective of the parents’ working hours and without a long-term contractual commitment.
Anyone who spontaneously needs qualified extrafamilial childcare for their child can benefit from a current pilot project: members of the ETH community who need a solution very quickly when they are pressed for time can now turn to the specialised service provider external page profawo for an emergency childcare placement service. During the pilot phase, ETH will reimburse a portion of the costs incurred by the parents at Application. For further information, see the Emergency childcare information sheet.
My child is sick – what do I do?
No matter how well you have organised care for your child outside the family, if they are sick, then going to daycare is out of the question. And you as a parent face an organisational challenge. According to Art. 52 Personnel Ordinance (PVO-ETH), you will be credited with up to three days of working time per occurrence for the care of sick persons in your own household or of your own parents, provided that no other care option is available. And as a parent, you will also be credited with five days of working time per calendar year for handling important school matters and medical examinations for children under 16.
Questions concerning money
It’s no secret that, compared to other countries, extrafamilial childcare in Switzerland is expensive. For example, a non-subsidised nursery place for a toddler costs around CHF 130 per day, while the daily rate for a baby’s nursery place can be up to CHF 180. Depending on your family income, you can apply for government subsidies.
However, since the entitlement to such subsidies is calculated on the basis of tax data, many families won’t be entitled to them. Nonetheless, ETH offers two other kinds of financial aid to all members:
The family allowance is a periodic monetary benefit paid out to help ease the financial burden of having one or more children. It includes child and education allowances. Apart from the statutory family allowance, ETH Zurich pays out additional benefits. For further information, see the Family allowance information sheet.
Extrafamilial care for a baby is often more expensive than care for a toddler. ETH therefore provides financial support for baby’s nursery places and reimburses the difference in price to a nursery place for a toddler. For further information, see the Information sheet on financial support for baby’s nursery places.
Even more support services
In addition to the arrangements mentioned above, ETH offers other support options for members of the ETH community with children. These include a free Coaching/consulting service on how to best balance family and career, grants for extraordinary childcare to support conference attendance or a business trip (Robert Gnehm grants), as well as the regular With family at ETH Zurich information events.
A good overview of all support services at ETH as well as information on the Swiss school system is also provided on the “Family” website.
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Info portal for employees with the key information about what’s going on at ETH Zurich.