On The Horizon – June 2025

We have just launched our 2025 UK Work+Family Snapshot. This is research carried out each year with employees of the leading employers we partner with. You can download the report and within the report you can also download a whitepaper version (with charts and further info) by clicking through at the end.

The report starts from the pressing priorities on the minds of employers. We polled our clients who attended a research launch webinar and the order of priority for these themes was: 

Supporting mental health and wellbeing  

Managing costs and ensuring productivity  

Talent retention and attraction  

Engaging our workforce in ‘Return to Office’  

Mental Health & Wellbeing 

This is a strong focus for employers in all our conversations. Encouragingly, our findings show practical support for parents makes a tangible difference to wellbeing (as well as to performance at work).

For example:

• Back-Up Care users: 91% say it reduces their stress; 89% say it eases the mental load; 86% says it enhances their overall wellbeing. 
• Parents using our Workplace Nurseries: 77%% say it reduces their stress; 69% say it eases the mental load; 76% says it enhances their overall wellbeing. 
• Parents using Back-Up Care to access Virtual Tutoring for their children and young people: 78% say it reduces their stress; 84% say it eases the mental load; 88% says it enhances their overall wellbeing. 

The Snapshot research also found that the workforce is continuing to have a rethink about the role of work in our lives. Among younger employees aged 18-34, 57% say family is now a higher priority than before while 42% say their career ambitions are stronger than they were. Further, 54% of 18-34 year-olds say they are reflecting more on their overall direction and sense of purpose than they used to. The best employers are constantly exploring how best to meet the priority of family with better support and policies, employees’ ambitions with career development opportunities, and the ongoing rethink with shared values and a sense of purpose and social contribution. 

What’s in the news relevant to wellbeing? 

Carers: Importantly, it’s Carers Week running 9-15th June with the 2025 theme 'Caring About Equality'. May’s issue of On The Horizon, carried insight on this, including the way our other annual research, the Modern Families Index shows carers want more than time out. We had asked about Carer’s Leave, and important as that is, fewer than 1 in 5 had used Carer’s Leave and found it helpful. What else are carers asking employers for? Financial help with care needs (37%), Help with finding care solutions (35%) and Back-up care to cover gaps in care (30%).

Sleep: Alongside the launch of CBeebies Parenting online community hub, the channel commissioned a survey of 3,000 parents of children aged up to six. This finds parents are spending the equivalent of 15 days per year to put their children to sleep. "Two thirds of respondents said that their child’s sleep routine disrupted their own sleep or ability to relax at least once a week, with 12 per cent experiencing this every evening. The results also suggested that 40 per cent of “sleep-starved” parents were surviving on three to five hours of sleep a night". Many employers make a resource such as our Work+Family Space available to employees to find both personalised content and 1:1 advice on all matters relating to combining work and family including the core need of sleep. 

Politics & Legislation: Apart from the main political news of the Spending Review this week, family-inclusion discussions are going on. 11th June also sees British fathers urged to join “the world’s first Dad strike” in Whitehall outside the Department for Business and Trade campaigning for longer, enhanced paternity leave. And MPs are keen to listen: the APPG (All-Party Parliamentary Group) on Flexible and Family-Friendly Working has relaunched at Westminster, backed by business sponsors Zurich UK, law firm TLT, and construction group Wates, with Nottingham University Business School as academic partner. You can sign up for updates. 

The meaning of work: Isabel Berwick’s ‘Working It’ in the Financial Times recently included a book review of 'The Work We Need: A 21st Century Reimagining', by Hilary Cottam, setting out "six principles of “a good working life”, which she summarise as: “basics, meaning, time, care, play and place”. Cottam urges: "I would say that everybody who employs people should think that every worker is also a carer". The FT article and the book explore evolving work structures and the importance of meaningful work in all our lives.

Productivity and focus on costs  

If the post-pandemic era was characterised by a C-Suite focus on ‘doing what we need to do support our people’ and stemming the ‘Great Resignation’ of the time, today’s conversations are more likely to hinge on the business case for any new supports. Among great employers, the mindset is clear that investment in people is key, though with many competing calls and increasing costs, supports must demonstrate Return on Investment up front. On 12th June, we hear from Bright Horizons’ client and leading employer Marsh McLennan in a webinar hosted by HRreview on what best practice looks like day-today, combining practical supports with an empowering culture, and how this rives high performance. 

So, in further good news, while family supports are highly valuable for wellbeing, as described above, the bottom-line justification is also strong. Family-friendly business supports enable people to perform well at work. The Snapshot stats are again encouraging: 

• 9 in 10 Back-Up Care users say it helps them focus on work during working hours. 
• 91% say Back-Up Care means care breakdowns are less likely to impact their ability to work. 
• 89% say Back-Up Care has a positive impact on their productivity. 
• 86% say Back-Up Care has a positive impact on their performance 
• 84% said Back-Up Care had enabled them to work on days they would not otherwise have been able to. 

This means employers can put in place practical support which eases the mental load and enhances wellbeing while also saving costs on unplanned absences and benefitting from enhanced performance. 

What’s in the news relevant to costs and productivity? 

HR Grapevine reported "A new study shows that people who proactively reorganise their family routines, such as adjusting childcare schedules or redistributing domestic responsibilities, are more likely to demonstrate adaptability and innovation at work”. The study, published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, was led by the University of Bath’s School of Management. As the study found that “employees who take initiative at home carry the momentum into their professional lives, becoming more resilient and forward-thinking”, it would follow that employers that enable employees to manage work and life successfully, by providing tools to manage the balance, may well benefit from more agile and innovative thinking overall. Certainly our coach team and the consultants who support our Speak To An Expert advisory service are all very familiar with the elevated thinking that develops among people balancing work and family and how finding ways through challenges in one area frees up energy for others as well as shifting mindsets to more adaptable and solution-focused thinking. 

Further on the business case for paying attention to family, there is an upcoming webinar on 1st July to explore how workplace nurseries contribute both to cost savings and wellbeing, featuring Aberdeen’s Robert Gordon University describing the positive impact of their on-site nursery. In the Snapshot research, three-quarters (74%) say their employer-sponsored nursery helps them focus on their work during working hours and over 7 in 10 (71%) say their employer-sponsored nursery has a positive impact on their productivity. 

Talent Retention and attraction 

In our wider population survey the Modern Families Index, employees’ perception of support from their employers has fallen sharply in the last two years from 77% approval in 2023 to 68% in 2025. However, in further affirming findings for those employers investing in support, the Snapshot research reveals that 9 in 10 (90%) Back-Up Care users rate their employer as supportive of family in 2025: 22 percentage points higher than the UK average. And this has held steady (2023: 93%, 2024: 92%) despite the Return to Office trend and numerous other pressures and shifts in emphasis over the last two years. So for those employers committed to family-inclusive supports, this is confirmation that their employees notice the difference and appreciate their employer’s recognition.

When directly asked whether family supports make them more likely to stay with their employer, 79% of Back-Up Care users are more likely to stay (or 80% among those using Back-Up Care to access Virtual Tutoring) and 85% of workplace nursery parents say they are more likely to stay with their employer as a result of having access to the service. 

What’s in the news relevant to talent retention and attraction? 

Amid 56% of UK professionals actively job hunting, these findings provide compelling insight for UK employers. Tangible evidence of back-up care as a ‘sticky benefit’ was shared during a session hosted at our US colleagues’ On The Horizon client summit in the New York Stock Exchange in May. Our US colleagues in the Horizons Consulting Team had looked at talent retention figures within a health care setting, among others. According to official figures (2024 NSI National Healthcare Retention & RN Staffing Report), the hospital turnover rate stands at around 21%. For the client in question, they already had a lower than average voluntary turnover rate at just under 10% but for the Back-Up Care users, turnover was only 4.3%: less than half their overall voluntary turnover rate. This is a powerful ROI argument for supporting working parents and carers and seeing them stay loyal as a result. 

Navigating Return to Office 

The 2025 Snapshot found that, as in 2024, nearly two-thirds (65%) of employees at leading employers are now working at least half their time in an office or central workplace. Since last year, there is a small shift in those fully onsite, seeing a 3 percentage point increase. 

The good news for family-inclusive employers is that the supports they have put in place for their workforce are credited with powering the Return to Office. 

Many see Back-Up Care as indispensable for in-person working: 

• 95% say emergency childcare is important to facilitate return to office, and 85% of these said it was ‘very or extremely important’. 
• Of the 83% who say emergency adult/eldercare is important to facilitate return to office, 75% of these said it was ‘very or extremely important’. 
• Nearly three-quarters (74%) agree their workplace nursery or employer-sponsored childcare helps them attend their office/workplace. 
• Of those who used Back-Up Care for pets, well over half (56%) report that it enabled them to fulfil work commitments on 5 or more days. 

Research by King’s College London revealed that “just one in three (33%) mothers with young children say they would comply with full-time office mandates” among other concerning findings about reluctance in response to the drive toward in-person collaboration. This sits together with findings reported previously that employers are keen to ensure their employees can find the childcare places they need given the issue of 'childcare deserts'. When the fuller offering of 30 hours of funded care rolls out to eligible parents in September "an additional 70,000 extra places and 35,000 staff will be needed to cope with the influx of families wanting spaces and more hours". So, in order to support the required return, there is a need to enable employees to access childcare and to know that the upheaval from their hybrid working routines is a serious one.

In terms of broader tips on enabling return to office, People Management magazine carried an article by Kerri Haseman, Bright Horizons’ Head of Client Relations where Kerri shared tips on making the workplace engaging, inclusive and attractive for workers, including - naturally - the provision of Back-Up Care. Also, Bright Horizons Work+Family Academy Manager Emma Willars and I were live, discussing what employees tell us they need for a sustainable return to the workplace in our HR Grapevine webinar on 21st May.