The Family Business Institute places conciliation as one of its priorities. The newly elected president of the IEF, Andrés Sendagorta, in his first speech in office, has expressed the need to promote initiatives that promote reconciliation between work and family life. “I would like to ask all of you for your collaboration so that work-life balance policies are at the forefront of our business priorities”, stated the new president at the IEF members’ assembly, which this morning elected him in Madrid. Sendagorta has suggested that this balance between work and family life will make it easier for companies to attract talent.
The new president has also set himself the goal of defending the business heritage, the importance of having well-articulated, robust and modern family businesses before the public authorities. “We do not ask for favors nor do we want privileges. What we ask is that we be taken into account and that we be allowed to compete in the world without burdens or disadvantages”, he said, referring both to the Government, as well as to the autonomous communities and city councils. He has asked to defend family businesses “without retrograde protectionism, but also without dangerous naivete”, claiming attention for a sector that he considers a basic pillar of civil society.
In this sense, Sendagorta has wanted to value the term entrepreneur, which he has asked to associate “with a connotation of creating business wealth and social progress”.
Sendagorta, president of the Sener engineering group, has taken over from Marc Puig, who has held the position for the last two years. The businessman is part of the second generation of Sener, a group with a presence on five continents. Sendagorta has a degree in General Management from IESE and is also a member of the governing council of the Instituto de Estudios Bursátiles.
During the day, Fernando Ruiz, president of Deloitte, also spoke, presenting a series of data that define the IEF. These are one hundred of the largest family businesses in Spain, with a total turnover of 172,000 million euros worldwide. They have more than one million people employed in the world, of which half in Spain. With these figures in hand, Sendagorta has stated that “we have sufficient legitimacy to speak and to be heard”.
The closing of the act was carried out by the Minister of Inclusion and Social Security, José Luis Escrivá, who highlighted the pension reform that he has carried out, adding that the idea rooted in Spain of going to early retirement must be corrected. “The solution is not an early retirement and passing the costs to the public treasury”, said the minister, adding that Spain is the European country with the lowest activity rate between 55 and 65 years, something that he will try to correct with new incentives to bring the real retirement age closer to the legal one.
“There is no more effective measure for the sustainability of the pension system than postponing the retirement age,” said Escrivá.
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