HR FOCUS
lost hours of productivity every day and the company estimated that last year’s summer holidays cost home businesses around £658 million collectively.
• Women (62%) are the biggest advocates of a new school holiday schedule that benefits budding entrepreneurs who have families.
• 25 to 34-year-olds (59%) are most in favour of a reformed system.
• Staggered term times are causing problems for many small business owners in 2016.
• Direct Line Business estimated that the summer holidays cost home businesses £658 million in 2015 - our experts offer five tips to help start-ups through this difficult period
scheduling of school holidays is causing unnecessary difficulties for the owners of start-up businesses: “It’s impossible for the education system to accommodate the needs of all entrepreneurs, but the lack of consistency in the way holidays are scheduled from school to school across the country is clearly putting many start-ups on the back foot.
“As you can see from the preliminary term dates outlined by the EU, there are many regional variations across England and Wales. The biggest problems occur when schools within the same area introduce different holiday periods - something that we saw happening in certain parts of the UK this Easter,” she commented.
Research conducted by Direct Line for Business in 2015 showed that 60% of the 844,000 UK-based home business entrepreneurs who have children have to down tools to some extent during school holidays. This results in four
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Piers Chead, CEO and Founder of The Formations Company, stated that having greater clarity over exactly when holidays will take place will make it easier for parent business owners to plan ahead. “Aside from bank holidays, there is no ‘set time’ of certain [school] holidays, [which can make] childcare a nightmare. Consistency is key. With consistent holidays, working parents can schedule their business calendar at the start of the year with confidence that they can achieve their business goals.
“Perhaps splitting [holidays more evenly] across the year could benefit parents, allowing them to tailor their schedules around the children’s time off, rather than forcing them to take an extended amount of time off from work,” he remarked.
As we prepare for the six-week holiday in 2016, the team at ava have offered some handy tips to help business owners to negotiate this difficult period:
1. Don’t be too proud to seek help from a third party - Whether it’s answering calls from customers or taking care of your accounts, don’t take on too much yourself. Get help!
2. Keep things professional - Make sure your children are aware that certain areas of the house are out of bounds. Maintaining a clear divide between your home and business life is key.
3. Make every minute count - If the school holidays are causing you to lose four hours of productivity a day (as per the aforementioned Direct Line for Business stat), you need to make sure your time is used wisely. Cut out unnecessary admin and save it for a week when you have more time to play with.
4. Build a network - Sometimes you can feel like the only person who is trying to launch a successful business while raising a family at
the same time. You’re not! Network with other home business owners; learn from them where possible and try to help each other out.
5. Always have a Plan B and C - Even during term times, there will be days when your children have to unexpectedly come home from school for whatever reason. Have a Plan B and Plan C in place to ensure your business can continue to operate as normal.
While we’ve already established that it’s simply not feasible for the education system to completely revolve around the needs of small businesses, there’s surely room for a degree of compromise in order to make life easier for entrepreneurs?
“53% OF BRITONS BELIEVE THE UK’S SCHOOL HOLIDAY SYSTEM SHOULD BE
CHANGED TO MAKE LIFE EASIER FOR BUSINESSES.”
The first step towards a satisfactory resolution would be to improve communication and increase transparency. Rather than giving parents a rough idea of when their children’s schools are going to be closed - based on which region they are based in - they should be given exact term dates much earlier than present; affording them more time to make plans.
This will relieve a lot of the strain and could enable business owners to schedule their own holidays (everyone is entitled to a break, no matter how busy you are) to coincide with their children’s. Of course, there’s an entirely separate debate about the cost of family holidays during the summer holidays, and whether or not it’s fair to fine parents who take their children out of school in term time in order to save money. It’s yet another complication to add to business-owning parents’ problems.
www.iamava.co.uk TOMORROW’S FM | 59
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