Summer holidays: Alleviating the impact on your people and business

Working parents need support and flexibility year-round, but during the six-week holidays, the issue becomes exacerbated.

Navigating the summer holidays presents working parents with additional challenges and expenses. It’s a time where work-life balance and salaries get stretched to the max, but it’s not only the working parents in your business who will feel the pain.

Helping families thrive during the summer

Pluxee’s eBook, Families that Thrive, tackles the expenses working parents face, including childcare, essential purchases, school uniforms, and equipment.

Many parents are racking up debts and taking unpaid leave from work just to make it all work – all while trying to create fun summer memories for their children, according to HR Grapevine.

Parents, predominantly women, use their annual leave to cover childcare during the school holidays, and many take unpaid leave. The stark reality is that it can be more affordable not to work for the whole of August.

There are implications, though.

One working mother told Pluxee UK: “I took all of August off last year to look after my two children, and it took me two months to recover financially, after going too far into my overdraft.”

Whether or not to work is a decision for employees to make, but that’s only if the employer can spare the employee for such an extensive period.

Financial implications

The BBC recently reported that the average cost of summer holiday clubs is £1,076 per child. When you consider that the average monthly take-home salary is between £2,297 and £2,960, it’s understandable why so many parents choose to take unpaid leave.

Cost of care isn’t the only consideration. When children are home, they eat more, and when parents aren’t using clubs, they must provide the entertainment.

Pluxee UK’s eBook provides employers with examples of the positive impact an employee benefits package can have on working parents, offering the savings they need to create more ‘yes days’ – more memories without stretching their budget beyond what’s affordable.

Burnout and wellbeing

If working parents take additional time off over the summer, either paid or unpaid, you may be inclined to believe that they will be more rested. Think again.

Your working parents aren’t resting and recuperating. They’re parenting.

Parenting tests our resilience. It’s perhaps the most important job in the world that doesn’t come with a manual. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that it comes with multiple manuals, and they must decide which works best for them.

Combine this with the need to complete the same amount of work each week in less time, and you’ve got the recipe for poor wellbeing brewing.

The impact on the wider business

While most of the burden falls on the parents, the rest of the business will feel the pain. This article is written by a mother of two who won’t be working a full week until September.

It’s a balance between the leave she’s entitled to and the needs of teammates, some of whom are also working parents doing the same thing – taking one day per week or more as annual leave to cover childcare gaps, save money, or spend time with the family.

From a business continuity perspective, our manager must balance our requests with business obligations, managing expectations during a period when the team will be operating at a more limited capacity.

Employees have the right to use their annual leave at a time that suits them. However, for working parents, who are restricted to taking holidays at set times, managers must plan for having fewer hands on deck during the summer months.

While it’s vital to ensure working parents have the support they need to be and give their best, they must also consider the wider business impacts and plan accordingly to reduce workplace stress and lessen the impact on productivity.