The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company isn’t just the world’s biggest producer of chips, its family-friendly working practices are yielding another important output: babies, writes Phoebe Arslanagić-Little
The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is a globally crucial business, the world’s leading manufacturer of semiconductors and producer of nearly 90 per cent of the most advanced chips. TSMC is often discussed for its geopolitical importance but has recently found itself the subject of conversation for a very different reason: babies.
Though TSMC employees make up 0.3 per cent of Taiwan’s population, they are responsible for 1.8 per cent of all babies born in Taiwan. In every fifty Taiwanese babies born, one has a parent employed by TSMC. Hsinchu – which hosts the area known as Taiwan’s Silicon Valley and where TSMC is the biggest employer – is the only area of Taiwan where the under 14s outnumber the over 65s. This baby boost does not appear to simply be an effect of more people of working (and therefore of parenting) age being concentrated in one place. Hsinchu County has the highest child dependency ratio in Taiwan, meaning it has more children per 100 working age adults than in any other region.
This is particularly notable because Taiwan is one of the world’s ultra-low fertility countries, with a Total Fertility Rate of 0.87 children per woman. To put that into context, at 0.87 children per woman, we would expect every 100 Taiwanese people to have a total of only eight great grandchildren between them.
What is it about TSMC that makes their employees more likely than other Taiwanese people to have a child?
A family-friendly workplace that walks the walk
For one thing, we only know about the higher fertility of TSMC employees because TSMC themselves proudly announced it. TSMC says it strives to be a family-friendly workplace and it walks the walk.
Childcare is offered to employees from 7am to 8pm. Each of the company’s four campuses have a preschool, boasting a curriculum that includes “immersive food and agriculture education”. There are even half-day science camps on the weekend and charming photos on TSMC’s website of employees’ children learning how to make kumquat tea and visiting a dried persimmon factory. For the parents of babies, there are flexible shifts on offer and lactation rooms.
So perhaps TSMC’s employees have more children because their employer has successfully made it much easier for them. Yet also powerful may be the culture generated by such policies. TSMC policies mean that employees are more likely to know more parents of young children, more likely to see colleagues combining work and parenthood without difficulty and so simply more likely to see becoming a parent as achievable and positive. That makes people who would like to become parents more confident, less likely to delay and more likely to have the children they want when they want.
UK businesses should sit up and take note. So many businesses jostle and compete to tell us about their green credentials, waste-lowering policies and sustainable mindset. That’s great, but might hearing about how they support the parents who work for them be an even stronger signal of social consciousness and positive impact?
After all, in the UK we have a ‘birth gap’, meaning women are having fewer children than they want. At the same time, our birth rate is declining year on year. A future with fewer children not only means more people locked out of family life, it also isn’t good for our society or the economy.
TSMC shows that forward-thinking employers can be an important part of closing the birth gap. They can help more people to have the children they want by thinking creatively about how to build a self-propelling culture of parenthood among their employees. That doesn’t need to mean visits to the dried persimmon factory (though there must be a fun UK equivalent). But it must mean thinking practically about the needs of parents and sending strong signals that they are valued and supported in the workplace.
Phoebe Arslanagić-Little is a columnist at City A.M. and head of the New Deal for Parents at Onward