On The Horizon – January 2025

The UK Modern Families Index 2025 is out, and this month’s focus is on all the implications of that.

The UK Modern Families Index carries some red flags for employers

This survey of 3,000 randomly-selected UK parents and carers was published on 13^th January and makes compelling reading for employers with its many warning signs:

• Working parents are feeling high levels of stress. Nearly a third are feeling very stressed. Of those, 80% find it hard to focus on work.
• All the post-pandemic gains in satisfaction with employers’ caring attitudes have been eroded. Perception of support peaked in 2023, with the number of employees describing their organisations as “highly supportive” now dropping by 31%.
• Parents also have rising concerns about their children’s educational development and mental health. Over half (51%) are concerned or very concerned about their children’s mental health, and 50% have similar concerns about educational development, both a sharp increase on last year.
• Around two-thirds of fathers and mothers (65% and 62% respectively), reported childcare breakdowns affecting work in the last year.
• Similarly, among those with adult caring responsibilities, 79% of men and 80% of women experienced a care breakdown clashing with work.

Thanks to Employee Benefits, HRreview, Personnel Today and HRDirector, among others, for coverage. 

The strong business case for action

What can employers do about the challenges highlighted in the MFI? For a start, the findings help employers compile a strong business case for taking action to support working parents and carers in these cost-conscious times.

• Care breakdowns clashing with work: This is a clear case for Back-up Care. It’s important to know that the business case for providing care has been demonstrated in research conducted by Boston Consulting Group: “The results debunk a widespread perception that employer-sponsored childcare benefits are strictly a cost center.Instead, we found that all five companies obtained a positive return on investment (ROI)—from 90% to as high as 425%”. The research was exploring the impact of a combination of regular childcare and back-up care.
  The strong need for support among carers of adults is also striking, calling for similar action with back-up care, help in navigating the care maze and coaching to manage work-life blend.
• Parents’ concerns about their children’s mental health and educational development: this can be supported through access to advice for parents and direct support made available to their children. Bright Horizons’ clients offer their working parents a range of practical and emotional supports, such as tutoring support for children and personal advice, webinars and content to address parents’ specific concerns.
• Nearly three-quarters (73%) of working parents consider their employer’s support for family life before accepting or applying for promotions or new roles. Whatever you have in place to support families, make sure it is well-promoted and known, including among new and potential hires.
• There is much other actionable advice in the report.

We will be discussing the MFI in detail with Personnel Today Editor, Rob Moss, in a webinar on 25^th February.

Return to Office (RTO)

Support with care breakdowns is vital to employees being present, productive and engaged, whether they are working onsite or remotely. The 2025 trend suggests the office is increasingly the location of choice for employers: that only ramps up the need for support.

When asked in the MFI how employers could best enable office attendance, parents & carers’ top five responses were flexibility of hours per day (39%), flexibility of days (38%), help with childcare costs (29%), help with commuting costs (28%) and childcare cover (23%).

Last summer, ResumeBuilder had predicted that nearly 9 in 10 (87%) companies would have returned to office by 2025. Certainly, the flurry of RTO mandates is continuing at pace: the Economist reflects on how the move back to cities is affecting the property market including less interest in large, rural homes with extra office space.

A focus on collective working with the creativity, mentoring and sense of belonging it offers is present among many of Bright Horizons’ clients. This is unsurprising since we work globally with 1,300 of the world’s leading employers including banks, legal and professional services firms, tech businesses and other similar employers.

What marks out our clients’ return to office mandates from the situation described by the randomly-selected UK MFI population is that our clients have practical solutions in place to enable their people to address family life, such as help with ongoing care, back-up care, coaching, advice and helpful content. And when supports are in place and routinely used, the culture also adapts so that combining work and family is seen as the norm – as this client story from Citi demonstrates. When there is no support and no recognition, then managing family life looks more like a regrettable hidden struggle as seen in the MFI.

Last year, 10% of the MFI population said that their role or employer did not allow for flexible working. This year it is 20%. Prioritising the office as a work location does not signal an end to flexibility: long before the pandemic changed everything, we talked about agile working, enabling choice over how and when things got done. There is value in being together as a workforce and it can be done with flexibility of hours, days and with practical support.

The purpose of sick pay

It's sometimes a hidden aspect of sick leave just how often it is used to cover for childcare or other care issues. Recently-released research from the Access Group has highlighted this concern: “Childcare emerged as the most common reason for sick leave in the UK in 2023, up by 183% for parents and carers. Potentially due to staff returning to more office-based roles into 2024 with less ability to be at home.”

This is also under the spotlight the Modern Families Index report. When care breaks down, and there is no other support in place, 29% of the MFI parents resorted to short-notice annual leave and 14% took sick leave. Among carers of adults, this is 25% and 13%, and among those with pets, it is 23% and 11% who will be off at short notice when care needs clash with work.

Not only can this disrupt team harmony and productivity, but it means that stressed employees then miss out on using annual leave for more restorative breaks.

Another question for employers to consider is whether use of sick leave as a last resort may rise in future when the Employment Rights Bill comes into effect. Not providing a ‘plan B’ does result in employees using systems that were designed for other purposes.

Helping time-poor parents to manage their personal brand

The MFI found that 3 in 10 (29%) of UK working parents and carers are very stressed, rising to a third (32%) when we look at women’s responses. Recently, Harvard Business Review highlighted how parents are often highly disciplined when it comes to managing time and presence at work. Often, they may miss out on networking opportunities in order to maximise time with children: not so much as a luxury but as a necessity.

This is a clear need when there is concern about children’s mental health, which is rising in this year’s MFI to include over half of parents. The BBC ran an in-depth piece exploring the mental health ‘crisis’ among children and young people. “One in five children and young people between the ages of eight and 25 in England are now thought to have a mental health disorder, according to official figures. Unsurprisingly, the NHS is struggling to keep up.”

Again, among the employers Bright Horizons works with, there is creativity and foresight in looking to support. There is coaching for parents and virtual tutoring for children among other supports.

The UK Modern Families Index 2025 makes challenging reading in terms of its headlines, but it is encouraging to know that there are many employers that see the value and indeed the business case for anticipating and supporting the needs of family life.