64 Days of School Holidays. 28 Days of Leave. What Happens Next?

When you set 64 days of school holidays against roughly 28 days of annual leave, there’s an obvious gap, and it tends to show up in much the same way each year. If you’re managing teams or delivery, it often becomes visible through shifting availability, changing plans, and the added effort required to keep work on track across the summer period, so how is your organisation preparing for it?

What happens when the gap appears?

As term ends, patterns begin to emerge, with time off requests concentrating around similar periods and availability gradually becoming less consistent across teams. Working parents are balancing professional responsibilities with childcare, often rearranging working days or adapting availability in ways that can be difficult to map in advance.

These changes begin to influence how work moves. Handover timelines adjust, meetings are rescheduled, and delivery plans evolve to reflect who is available and when. Managers may need to revisit priorities or redistribute workload, while colleagues step in to maintain progress where short-term gaps appear.

Individually, these adjustments can feel manageable. However, when they start to happen across multiple teams at once, the effect becomes more noticeable. Coordination takes longer, collaboration becomes less straightforward, and decisions may slow as availability no longer overlaps in the same way.

Over time, this series of practical changes can reshape how work flows across the organisation. The pace may shift, dependencies become more visible, and maintaining momentum can require more active effort, even when everything remains on track.

This pattern is consistent, familiar, and linked closely to the structure of the school year.

The impact beyond summer

There is often an expectation that everything returns to normal once the holidays end, yet the effects can carry into the months that follow. Projects that slowed over the summer may take longer to regain pace, and delivery timelines adjusted during July and August can continue to move into the next quarter.

Teams that absorbed additional pressure may still be recalibrating, which can influence focus and overall capacity. When attention has been directed towards immediate priorities for an extended period, longer-term activity can temporarily move further down the agenda, including planning, development work, or new initiatives.

These shifts can build gradually. Work may take longer to progress, or previously deferred tasks begin to accumulate, creating a backlog that takes time to resolve. This is hardly the result of a single decision, but rather the outcome of multiple adjustments made to maintain continuity during a period of reduced availability.

Because this continuation is less visible, it can be easy to underestimate. In many cases, it is where the broader business impact sits, influencing how quickly teams return to full capacity and how effectively momentum is sustained.

A predictable challenge

School holidays follow a consistent pattern each year, and while the dates may vary slightly, the gap between childcare needs and annual leave remains largely unchanged. This consistency creates an opportunity to approach the summer period differently.

Rather than responding to pressures as they emerge, you could begin to view this as a fixed point in your operating year, something that can be anticipated earlier and planned for in advance. Some organisations already take this view, looking ahead to periods of reduced availability, identifying where pressure may build, and considering how support for working parents is positioned before the holidays begin.

This does not remove the gap, but it can influence how it is experienced across teams, shaping how work is distributed and how consistently delivery is maintained.

What leading organisations do differently

When summer feels more controlled, it is often the result of preparation rather than chance.

Organisations that navigate this period effectively tend to approach it with greater visibility and awareness. They plan ahead for changes in availability, review team capacity before peak holiday periods, and consider how working parents might arrange childcare earlier in the year. There is also a more consistent focus on how workload is distributed, helping to avoid pressure building unevenly at key points.

The aim is not to eliminate disruption, as that would not reflect the reality of the school calendar, but to reduce its secondary effects. Work can continue with greater consistency, teams experience fewer interruptions, and managers are less reliant on short-term adjustments to keep plans on track.

Often, the most noticeable difference is simply how early these considerations begin.

Planning can make a difference

There is evidence to suggest that this approach can have a measurable impact.

73,000+ working days were protected in Summer 2025.

This represents time that might otherwise have been affected by reduced availability, rescheduled work, or competing demands on employees’ attention. It highlights the connection between reliable childcare and sustained focus, suggesting that when working parents have clearer arrangements in place, the wider organisation can benefit from greater consistency.

The gap between school holidays and annual leave remains the same, but the way it affects day-to-day operations can shift significantly depending on how it is supported.

So, what happens next?

School holidays will continue to shape how working parents organise their time, and those choices will always influence team availability, timelines, and overall capacity. What tends to change is how that impact is absorbed.

You could continue to respond as each summer unfolds, adapting plans as new pressures appear, or you might explore what earlier preparation could look like, whether that involves reviewing support, improving visibility of childcare options, or identifying where additional pressure is most likely to emerge.

There is no single approach that applies to every organisation, although there is an opportunity to move from reacting to anticipating, using what is already known about the summer period to create a more consistent experience.

The numbers may not align perfectly, but the outcome is not set in advance.

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See how planned childcare support could help protect productivity during the school holidays.

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So as the next summer approaches, how prepared is your organisation to manage the impact of that gap?