Comune di Milano VP/2018/005/0096

The European Programme for Employment and Social Innovation EaSI (2019-2021) IT, BE, NO

MASP – Master parenting in work and life in a new “work-life synergy” perspective – is a project proposal aimed to reconcile work and private life, support a more equal share of care responsibilities between women and men and encourage a higher participation of women in the labour market. The project will develop and test an innovative work-life balance strategy focusing on a different culture of parenthood. The main purpose is to change the perspective of work-life balance, moving to the concept of “work-life synergy”, highlighting the synergy between “personal” and “working” dimensions of individuals and the importance of the different roles of a person.

In order to foster this “work-life synergy” perspective, the project has to make the key actors involved aware on it and implement a mix of innovative measures targeting citizens and enterprises. In particular, MASP will address: companies and employers; public and employment services’ staff; unemployed pregnant women; employed new mothers and fathers. The project is based on two positive Italian experiences: MAAM and Family Audit. The two experiences will be integrated in a complex urban policy, improved and tested on different contexts, as well as completed with other activities.

First of all, they will be enriched with new elements and inputs coming from the research activity (WP2) and the exchange of experience and best practices with other countries (WP3). Secondly, a training programme will be developed aimed to make aware the different key actors on gender issues, work-life balance measures and on the importance of parenthood for the individual and professional growth. Finally, MASP will develop and test two programmes: the first one dedicated to unemployed women, aimed at promoting their employability; the second one targeting the enterprises and their employees. MASP will be implemented in two territories – Municipality of Milan and Autonomous Province of Trento – but it is easily replicable in other contexts.

The main general goal this project tries to address is to change the perspective of work-life balance, moving to the concept of “work-life synergy”, highlighting the synergy between “personal” and “working” dimensions of individuals and the importance of the different roles of a person. In order to achieve this ambitious goal, MASP will focus on the following specific objectives.

1. The consortium aims at developing and testing an innovative work-life balance strategy focusing on two programmes: one dedicated to unemployed women; the second one targeting the enterprises and their employees. The action will facilitate the access to the labour market for women with children up to 3 years and the return to the labour market of employed women with children up to 3 years and to improve the work-life balance. At the meantime, MASP will transform the parental experience in an opportunity to develop soft skills useful also for the professional career and incentivise the family-related leave for fathers.

2. The consortium wants to improve capacities and knowledge of the key actors involved in the process of reconciliation of work and private life (companies and employers, public and employment services staff, management consultants) in order to make them aware on work-life synergy perspective and give them tools to implement MASP innovative measures.

3. MASP aims at developing a sustainable multi-level partnership model in order to create an integrated urban policy in the territories participating to the project (Municipality of Milan and Autonomous Province of Trento). The multi-stakeholder approach will facilitate the implementation of innovative work-life balance strategies in the workplace an in the society as a whole.

4. MASP wants to foster knowledge and experience-sharing between different countries – in particular Norway- and companies already implementing successful work-life balance strategies, with a strong emphasis on the need to involve more men in care duties.

5. Finally, the consortium wants to facilitate the access to information about social protection rights and entitlements trough the realisation of “parental kits”, which will include: factsheets on social protection rights, services and incentives dedicated to parenting; MASP guide for users; credentials to access to MASP digital platform and digital programme.