School Holidays and Childcare for Employees

When schools break up for the Summer, employees are more likely to face issues with childcare. What can you do to help?

You could allow employees to work from home if they are able, however, this approach may only provide solutions for employees with older children, who do not require as much direct supervision. For those who have younger children, they may be unable to still carry out their work duties from home, as their childcare would get in the way. For these employees, you could consider granting them leave, which could be in the form of paid annual leave, special unpaid leave or unpaid parental leave (provided they have been continuously under your employment for at least one year).

You may also allow the employee to temporarily operate under flexible hours. This could help them to work within the hours that they can receive childcare from someone else (e.g. weekends or evenings), or to have shorter hours to help them to be able to have time to meet all of their childcare commitments.

Employees should not usually be able to take their statutory unpaid time off for dependants (also sometimes known as “emergency family leave”. This is because the summer holidays and childcare arrangements for them should be expected and planned for by the employee, and therefore should not be considered an emergency. The only time that this leave would apply is if childcare arrangements made by an employee were disrupted, e.g. a childminder cancelled a session.