In celebration of Father's Day, celebrated on the 8th, Neoenergia highlights the benefits offered to its employees in a unique moment in their families: the arrival of a child. The company, through its Diversity Program, seeks to promote diversity and inclusion in all areas and, for this reason, grants men extended paternity leave to enable them to create bonds in the first moments with their children.
Fathers can take 20 days off work, starting from the birth or arrival of the child, and this benefit can also be requested by homosexual couples and adoptive fathers, in a period that can reach 120 days. The leave is paid and does not cause any harm to the employee.
"We are concerned about supporting our employees in all phases of life, and the extended leave reinforces this care. Our idea is to promote well-being in this unique moment, in which the presence of parents is so important and can make all the difference, whatever the family's shape may be," says Régia Barbosa, Neoenergia's Organizational Development superintendent.
Employee Cassio Cardoso, who works in the IT area, requested paternity leave for his third child, born recently, in July. The baby, who came into the world by natural birth, arrived a year and a half after his second child, which was quite hard in the first days of his life. “The leave was very important for me because it made it possible to stay home with my one-year-old son and go to the hospital to assist the mother. Even at home, my wife still needed support and I stayed entirely with our other son so as not to overburden her, in addition to taking on duties outside the home such as buying diapers and ointments for the baby," says the father, who also has a 33-year-old son. "This period is essential to encourage the father to help in the child's initial moments and relieve the mother in the first days," he points out.
About the Diversity Program
To reinforce one of its main pillars, Neoenergia has the Diversity Program, which works to promote a work environment of inclusion, respect for differences, empowerment and fighting prejudice. In June, the company launched the webapp Junt+s, an exclusive platform to multiply content, with testimonials, information, diversity numbers, videos and games. In this space, the company's teams can always be informed on the subject, know how to recognize and perform good practices in the most different environments, and have access to all the benefits of promoting diversity in all fields of life.
As part of its strategy, the company plans to constantly review its Human Resources processes, to work on recruitment and selection to make selection processes more inclusive, to train its leadership in diversity management, and to continue promoting diversity actions to empower people and fighting prejudice.
Neoenergia also maintains an Equal Opportunities and Conciliation Policy, not admitting any type of discrimination based on race, color, age, gender, marital status, ideology, political opinions, nationality, religion, sexual orientation or any other personal, physical or social condition among its professionals. The initiatives are in line with the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially number 5, Gender Equality.