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Human Resources
30 August 2024 - 5 min read
With over 75% of mothers and 92% of fathers working in the UK, it’s likely that your workplace has a number of employees who are parents and who have caring responsibilities.
For working parents with children between the ages of 4 and 16, the end of the summer means one thing – their children returning to school. Widely known as ‘Back to School’ in UK society, this seasonal phenomenon presents a number of challenges for employees to navigate when it comes to juggling their working lives with their family commitments.
In this article, we’ll be exploring more about the effects that the return to school can have on parents when it comes to the world of work. We’ll also cover some helpful ways that employers can help ease the transition.
‘Back to School’ refers to the seasonal routine of children returning to full-time education after the summer holidays.
In the UK, school terms feature an extended summer break. Around mid-August to early September, children start to return to full-time education in schools. The exact dates that children return to school depend on what country you’re based in, and often, on what region you live in. Confusingly, these dates can often change too. In general, schools in Scotland tend to go back a few weeks earlier than schools in England and Wales.
Whilst many exhausted parents greet the return back to school with a quiet sense of relief at not having to juggle childcare commitments with work ones, the mass return to school still often causes widespread disruption to workplaces and the working schedules of employees. It can also have a number of other subtle effects on the workplace.
Younger children in particular will need to be taken and dropped off at school between 8am and 8:45am and picked up at the end of the school day, around 3pm to 3:30pm. As you can tell, those times don’t match up very well. Parents whose children are going to school for the first time can often struggle with finding, arranging and paying for childcare to cover the school pick-up and drop-off times too.
Arguably, the world of work is still based on outdated structures and assumptions about family life, designed for a time where only one parent was expected to work (usually a man) whilst another would stay at home and take on most of the childcare duties (usually a woman). These days when the majority of parents work – and are actively expected to – employers need to reinvent how the workplace responds to the needs of parents in order to create workplaces that are truly accessible.
A lack of flexibility in the workplace ultimately affects accessibility and retention – if parents aren’t given the flexibility to respond to situations that uniquely affect those with childcare responsibilities, they will likely look for a role that does allow them that.
Children returning to school and mixing again just happens to coincide with the return of colder, wetter weather as autumn and winter approach: a perfect cocktail for supercharging the spread of germs and viruses.
As young children have developing immune systems, they’re more prone to picking up colds and viruses. In the vast majority of cases of course these aren’t not life-threatening. They are illnesses that are easily transmitted to parents though. When parents go to work, they can easily spread illness to other employers. Before you know it, this can lead to a massive surge in colds, flus and general illnesses in the workplace, affecting people who aren’t parents.
It’s no surprise then that the return of children to school can coincide with spikes in employee sickness which can have a knock-on effect in the wider workplace.
In addition to sickness, the return to school can often see a spike in requests for emergency leave and unpaid time-off, as parents respond to unforeseen circumstances where they need to provide care to a child.
Being a parent means that you’re ultimately responsible for the care of another human being. That’s a huge responsibility and it’s one that never really stops. Parental responsibility doesn’t respect the hallowed hours of 9 to 5. It isn’t fussed if you need to get those meeting notes to Sandra by the end of the day. It doesn’t care if you’re in the middle of an important meeting. When a crisis happens that needs an immediate response, you have a duty as a parent to respond as quickly as possible. That means that parents may be more likely to request flexible working arrangements in order to deal with ongoing, long-term situations related to childcare in some way.
Parents might need to request flexible working for a whole host of reasons: normally though, it’s related to essential things like taking children to medical appointments and providing care in some way.
The Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Act 2023 gives employees the right to request flexible working. Many parents use this act to request flexibility in their working arrangements.
Recent additions to this act this year mean that from 6th April 2024, employees have had the right to request flexible working from day one of employment. Of course, the employer doesn’t necessarily have to grant that request for flexibility but, if they choose not to, they need to consult with employees about their reasons for not allowing the request.
Flexibility is crucial when it comes to being a parent, so, as an employer, showing flexibility in how employees can complete their work is an extremely effective, practical way to support employees with children. Consider how you can make your flexible working policy more effective in meeting the needs of parents in the workplace.
Leading on from the previous point, looking at how you approach employee absences can also help to improve the inclusivity of your workplace for parents.
Some employers can unwittingly adopt quite a draconian approach to absences in an attempt to control productivity and improve stability in the workplace. This approach sees any absence as something that needs to be investigated and interrogated as thoroughly as possible. Under this view of the workplace, employees are inherently untrustworthy and can’t be trusted to really be honest about the reasons – and the need – for their absence.
This approach harkens back to a time when the workplace was a lot less flexible. Whether or not employers like it, the COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed the way that we, as a society, view our work and our work-life balance. Employees now expect flexibility as a basic part of their job.
In reality, employees are just people – so are parents. For the most part, people are honest and hard-working and will only take time off if really necessary. Parents in particular have a huge amount of mental and physical strain placed on them by their caring commitments and the nature of raising a child means that they need to have a degree of flexibility in their schedule to respond to emergencies.
Consider how you can improve your organisation’s offering to employees when it comes to absences. Could it be tweaked to make it more attractive or flexible? Enhancing how your organisation approaches absences and requests for unpaid/ emergency leave can help to build a much more inclusive workplace culture and enhance your retainment of skilled employees.
In fact, research suggests that there is an increasingly worrying culture of employees downplaying sickness unnecessarily and not taking the sickness leave that they’re entitled to. Recent research by MetPoll, cited in People Management, found that 59% of employees hadn’t taken time off of work for sickness when they needed to do so, with some expressing guilt about taking time off.
Improving the culture around sick leave at your organisation is one of the best ways that you can support parents in your workplace. Sick leave isn’t just an excuse for employees to not work – it’s a vital way of looking after health and wellbeing – and by extension, productivity. It's an extremely obvious point, but if someone is sick, they need time to rest to get better.
Whilst you might offer sick leave, if you don’t make it clear that employees can take it, they won’t. Eliminating the guilt that many people can feel when it comes to taking sickness leave or time-off when they’re ill is an essential task for employers who want to make their organisations more accessible for parents – and employees more generally.
We’ve explored a little bit of this topic in a previous point, but understanding how the school year is structured will really help you to better tailor your support to parents in your workplace.
In the UK, term dates vary depending on the specific country you’re in and the specific region that you’re in too. If your organisation is in England and Wales, you can check the term dates for your area using this online, government tool.
In general, the UK school year is split into three terms, running from mid-August or early September to the end of July. They usually coincide with the seasons, autumn, winter and spring. There are a range of holidays and short breaks built into the calendar too.
Research the exact term and holiday dates for the region that you’re based in and be aware of key dates that could impact the capacity and availability of employees.
Ultimately, the best way that employers can support working parents during the Back to School transition is to treat them with respect, understanding and flexibility. Parents have huge pressure placed on them that can often impact other areas of their lives, besides just their domestic one. Showing sympathy and empathy towards this and their situation as children return to school will help you to build a better, more inclusive workplace culture that’s accessible to parents.
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