School holidays have a way of sneaking up on everyone. One minute it’s a regular Tuesday; the next, half your team is juggling childcare, school-age visitors to the home office, or last-minute leave requests. For most leaders, this period raises a genuine question: how do you maintain momentum while genuinely supporting people through what is, for many, a logistically demanding few weeks?
The good news is that navigating school holidays well doesn’t require grand gestures or expensive initiatives. It mostly comes down to being a thoughtful leader, and making a few intentional choices.
The Reality for Working Parents
It’s worth naming what’s actually happening for many of your people during school holidays. Research from Macquarie University’s Social Inclusion Research Centre highlights that school holidays can create real friction for working parents, particularly because the number of school holiday weeks typically outstrips the annual leave most employees receive. That gap has to go somewhere, and it often lands in the laps of parents quietly managing the tension between being present at work and being present at home.
A 2024 study found that 70% of parents report having put their career on the back burner at some point to manage caring responsibilities, and 2 in 5 say they’ve missed out on work opportunities because of it. When leaders don’t acknowledge this reality, people feel the need to pretend everything is fine. That pretending takes energy, and it comes at a cost.
“When people feel seen in their whole lives, not just their work lives, their engagement goes up. It’s that straightforward.”
Flexibility Is Only Part of the Answer
Flexibility matters, and the research backs it up. Studies consistently show that employees with access to flexible work arrangements report higher engagement and better performance. But flexibility on its own can actually add pressure if it’s not supported by the right culture.
Research published in the Journal of Industrial Relations found that high use of informal flexibility can be a sign of a genuinely family-friendly workplace, but it can also mask a culture where people are expected to ‘make it work’ without the team covering for them. Working from home while managing a school-age child at the kitchen table isn’t the same as being genuinely supported.
The leaders who do this well aren’t just approving leave requests or allowing remote days. They’re actively talking with their teams about what the next few weeks will look like, redistributing workload where it makes sense, and creating space for people to flag when they’re stretched.
What Leaders Can Actually Do
Here are some practical approaches worth considering as school holidays approach.
Have the conversation early. A check-in before school holidays start, rather than during them, gives people the chance to plan. Ask who has care responsibilities coming up. Ask what they need. This doesn’t require a formal process; it can be as simple as raising it in a team meeting or one-on-one.
Be honest about what’s flexible and what isn’t. Ambiguity about expectations during holiday periods often creates more stress than clarity would. If certain deadlines are fixed, say so. If there’s genuine flexibility in how and when work gets done, make that explicit too. People can work with clarity; they struggle with guessing.
Look at your workload distribution. School holidays can expose cracks in how work is shared across a team. If one person’s absence puts pressure on everyone else, that’s useful information. It’s worth asking whether workloads are sustainable and whether the team has enough shared knowledge to cover for each other.
Don’t assume everyone’s experience is the same. Parents and carers are navigating school holidays in very different ways depending on their family situation, their access to care, and their financial circumstances. Some people will need leave; others will need flexibility around hours; others may need very little. Ask, rather than assume.
Model the culture you want. If you say flexibility is available but you’re visibly online at all hours, your team will notice. If you take a couple of hours to be with your own family and mention it without apology, that gives others permission to do the same.
“The leaders who navigate this period well are the ones who create psychological safety around it. People aren’t hiding the juggle; they’re talking about it.”
The Bigger Picture
School holidays aren’t a disruption to work. They’re a recurring part of the calendar that good organisations plan for. When leaders handle this period well, the benefits extend well beyond those two or three weeks.
Research consistently shows that employees who feel supported during challenging personal periods are more likely to stay, more likely to go above and beyond, and more likely to bring their best thinking to work. One long-term study found that workers with a strong sense of work-life balance show 21% higher productivity than those without it.
Looking after your people during school holidays isn’t just about being a decent human being, although that’s a good enough reason on its own. It’s about building the kind of culture where people genuinely want to show up, even when things are complicated.
A Note for Leaders
You don’t need a formal policy or a new initiative to get this right. You need curiosity, a bit of forward planning, and a willingness to treat your people as whole humans who have lives outside of work.
School holidays are a good test of that. And the teams who come out the other side feeling seen and supported tend to remember it.
If you’re thinking about how to better support your team through busy periods, or want to strengthen your leadership approach more broadly, get in touch. In our work with leaders across Newcastle, Sydney and the Hunter Region, these practical, people-first challenges come up all the time. We also offer leadership development programs that help leaders build the skills to navigate moments like these with confidence.
Stacey Kelly is Director at Seed People Consulting, a boutique organisational development consultancy based in Newcastle, Australia. Seed People Consulting works with leaders and organisations on leadership, team effectiveness, and culture. seedpeopleconsulting.com.au
