On The Horizon – May 2025

Action on Paternity Leave

Have you heard there may be strike action focused on the needs of half the population on June 11^th? British fathers are being urged to join “the world’s first Dad strike” in Whitehall outside the Department for Business and Trade. While perhaps not industrial action in the usual sense, fathers plan to assemble with their children to call for improvements in statutory paternity leave, which currently stands at 2 weeks with £187.18 statutory pay per week: a level which many parents cannot afford to take. So we know what’s actually wanted for Father’s Day then.

The Dad Shift, organising the protest, is also one of 18 charities, academics and rights groups calling for a comprehensive review of parental leave. The coalition, co-ordinated by Working Families, includes the TUC, Save the Children, Pregnant then Screwed and the Fatherhood Institute.

What might particularly cut through is the work done by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Centre for Progressive Policy, exploring what better paternity leave would deliver for Britain. They conclude: "Drawing on evidence from 28 studies across 16 advanced economies, our new modelling finds that offering six weeks’ paternity leave at 90% of average earnings could deliver a net economic gain of £2.68bn per year. The reform is expected to generate £5.5bn in additional annual output from women—easily offsetting the £2.8bn lost while fathers are temporarily away from work. The net cost to the Treasury, once higher tax receipts are factored in: just £220m". The report also points out that: "Countries offering more than six weeks of well-paid, reserved leave for fathers tend to have lower gender wage gaps as well as increased labour force participation when compared to those that don’t".

The Financial Times reports that MPs have been urging Chancellor Rachel Reeves to extend paternity leave, so momentum is gathering. In any case, the Government has already committed to a review of parental leave (though did not include Baroness Lister’s amendment on this in the Employment Rights Bill).

Meanwhile, the competitive push to more enhanced parental leave continues among leading employers. The UK’s largest automotive employer, (and Bright Horizons' client), Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), as well as being in the news regarding the US-UK trade agreement, has continued to set new standards in parental leave. The manufacturer has extended its 52 weeks of fully paid maternity leave to cover adoption and surrogacy. The 52 weeks’ maternity leave at full pay has been in place for more than 20 years. The extensions now recognise “that the journey to parenthood takes many different routes”. JLR also provides a neonatal care leave policy with full pay for 6 of the statutory 12 weeks and also 4 weeks of fully paid paternity leave, alongside, of course, its onsite nursery.

Return to Office

Many of the employers we partner with at Bright Horizons have now increased their office-based working to encourage greater collaboration, mentoring and culture-building. According to the Sunday Times, “Before Covid, fewer than 5 per cent of UK employees worked from home; now more than a quarter do for at least part of the week, according to the Office for National Statistics”. However, the trend is reversing and Facilitate magazine draws on Irwin Mitchells’ Office Occupiers Survey 2025, to highlight that many employers let go of too much office space during the pandemic-driven shift in working: “64% of businesses admit they over-downsized owing to Covid-19”.

Now media stories cover the pressure for prime office space in the City of London, as employers compete to ‘earn the commute’ with the most attractive workplaces. Of course, childcare is a key consideration, whether workplace nurseries or back-up care to keep day-to-day options flexible when care needs change. Our 2024 survey of client employees (Work+Family Snapshot) showed three-quarters (76%) of those with increased Return to Office said they had upped their childcare use as a result. 17 out of 20 (85%) parents using our clients’ early education settings said it helps them attend an office or place of work.

That Sunday Times article quoted above covered the ‘perks’ (from gyms to golf) being deployed to ‘lure’ workers back to the office, claiming “nearly 40 per cent of companies are now offering workers incentives to work in the office”. Bringing people back to the office is a bigger change than many employers expected: employees changed their caring arrangements while working from home, making the return now a bigger transition. Offering childcare at work, then, is not a ‘perk’ so much as a vital part of infrastructure enabling parents to keep their careers on track and continue participating in the labour market. It is also attractive given the savings in tax and national insurance (NI) through salary sacrifice schemes.

Some employers are also 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". One concern is that smaller, local nurseries are struggling to cope with increases in operating costs from April, including statutory wage increases, changes to NI contributions and rising utility bills. Employers are therefor looking to the ways they can fill the gaps.

In People Management magazine, Kerri Haseman, Bright Horizons’ Head of Client Relations shares tips on making the workplace engaging, inclusive and attractive for workers, including - naturally - the provision of Back-Up Care. Bright Horizons Work+Family Academy Manager Emma Willars and I will be live, discussing what employees tell us they need for a sustainable return to the workplace in our HR Grapevine webinar on 21^st May.

Carers Week: Caring About Equality

Are you ready for this year’s Carers Week running 9-15^th June with the theme 'Caring About Equality'? It aims to highlight “the inequalities faced by unpaid carers, including a greater risk of poverty, social isolation, poor mental and physical health”.

Sarah Jackman of Dentons urges readers of Employee Benefits magazine to reword policies to make clear they recognise all forms of caring, beyond early parenthood; to ensure internal networks expressly welcome carers of adults; and to consider enhancing statutory Carer’s leave.

In our 2025 Modern Families Index (MFI), among carers of adults, less than a fifth (19%) said they have used statutory Carer’s Leave and found it helpful. Over 1 in 10 (12%) say they have used it, but it is not enough for their needs.
What else would help according to our MFI research?
• 37% - Financial help with care needs
• 35% - Help with finding care solutions
• 30% - Back-up care to cover gaps in care

Carers are indeed increasingly looking to their employers for practical support:
- Help in finding care and navigating the options (our Speak To An Expert consultants consistently hear how they have saved many hours and reduced the level of stress, enabling professionals to be more present to their work).
- Back-Up Care - which has a range of uses e.g. when adjusting to coming out of hospital (when the expert carer coming in for a day can give useful advice as well as care), vital support to those who are caring at a distance when they just can't get there with business travel, or even as a day of respite for one older parent looking after another, easing the load for the working son or daughter who would otherwise be making a late evening dash to offer some support.
- Webinars and coaching that help carers know they are not alone and offer timely reminders on self-care, building a network of support, or addressing the varied emotions that come up in caring. For example, can we be loving and resentful at the same time? It can be a great relief to find others have travelled a similar emotional roller-coaster. Our webinar speakers know that it normalises the experience and frees up energy for new perspectives.

Celebrating Bright Horizons’ influence and community contributions

Last month, Bright Horizons became the first early years sector employer to gain CIPD People Development Partner status celebrating Bright Horizons’ “exceptional, people-first approach, demonstrating a holistic, sustainable commitment to embedding world-class people practices across every level of the organisation”.

Separately, Melanie Fisher was featured in a Guardian article about raising kind children. Melanie who is Wellbeing and Early Help Specialist here at Bright Horizons, says children’s demonstrations of empathy can be largely inconsistent until they are about six. “This isn’t selfishness because it isn’t yet conscious behaviour,” she says. “The part of young children’s brains in control during ‘stressful’ moments is the emotional/survival brain. They do not have the ability to think first then choose their behaviour. In distress, children are only concerned with their own feelings and do not have the capacity to show kindness or care for others. This isn’t selfishness – it’s survival.” Mel goes on to describe how kindness can be nurtured in age-appropriate ways. Bright Horizons’ unique Nurture Approach is the educational philosophy that blends holistic learning with support for children's emotional wellbeing. This evidence-based method is delivered by our dedicated practitioners and seamlessly woven into daily nursery life. It nurtures the whole child, sparking curiosity, fostering emotional resilience, and building a strong sense of self alongside practical skills.

It is striking that a recent report from Ofsted highlights the importance of practitioner experience and qualifications when caring for under-twos, finding that those with greater experience and a higher level of qualifications had better knowledge of child development. Child development is core to the ongoing programme of learning at Bright Horizons, alongside the leadership development and many other facets of personal and professional development that fed into the CIPD recognition.

Finally, Directors on the Rocks was a recent huge achievement by three Bright Horizons directors who took on the Three Peaks Challenge (summiting Ben Nevis, Scafell Peak and Snowden / Yr Wyddfa) to raise funds for the Bright Horizons Foundation for Children. This registered charity creates Bright Spaces: trauma-informed environments, designed to support recovery and resilience for children and their families, located in domestic abuse refuges, police child protection suites, prison visiting areas, hospitals, hospices and homeless accommodation.