Julie:  So when we're looking at people returning to the office, one of the big things that people would mention is about what impact it would have for working parents specifically. So you've covered it in general terms, you've talked a little bit about generational, what employers need to be aware of, but what do we need to think about in relation to working parents, please?

Seamus:  Well, this is the big issue, and particularly at the minute as well whenever we're hitting the summer months.

In Northern Ireland, we have a different position here in that we get lengthy holidays in relation to the summer. Most of the school-aged children will be off for around seven, some of them are off for eight weeks, and they're usually looking at sort of a graduated or phased return in and around the last week in August and things like that as well. So it can really take us up to September time. It can be a long period of eight weeks for parents to have to deal with childcare issues. And it's just particularly prevalent at the minute.

I did do an article for the "Irish News". One of the interesting pieces of information about that was that it's estimated that around 41% of employees are now working hybridly in Northern Ireland.

And then we have this aspect now whether is legislation that is coming into effect, where in England parents can get 30 hours free of childcare. And that's from children from the age of 9 months. And there'll also be an increase to childcare support available through Universal Credit.

We are not going to benefit from that here in Northern Ireland. And as everyone will be aware, employment issues are devolved matters in Northern Ireland, and we don't have our institutions that are up and running. We don't have anybody at Stormont. But I think if there's a push and if there's an element, we might get that back in the autumn. This might be certainly one of the key areas that there might be a push on.

And I think that Christine had previously mentioned in the last podcast about a group called Melted Parents NI, and I think you'd mentioned about the . . . You'd have to look at the website and what they were saying in relation to this as well.

But yeah, the negatives of a return to the office for a parent are obviously that they would have to arrange childcare. There's a financial burden with that. And it's the ability to find childcare as well. Not everyone has the ability just to get a place in a childcare facility that will look after children in the meantime. Those places are hard to come by, there aren't sufficient resources in relation to them, and they're expensive.

And I hear all the time about people saying, "Childcare is more expensive than my mortgage is". I hear that all the time. So, that's an automatic pressure on parents that would be required to return to the office on a full-time basis.

And in addition to that, then, it's also the aspect that if parents have to commute to and from work, they may be missing out on those elements of being able to . . . I'd mentioned there about the ability maybe to drop children off in the morning to school or collect them in the evenings. The longer commute, it could add anywhere up to two hours additionally to where you're traveling in Northern Ireland.

I mean, I live pretty close to the city centre. I'm only a few miles out, but it can take me 45 minutes in the morning to sit in traffic to come down, and that's all time away. And the employee might be of the view that, "I can be using that time to be working at home, getting my tasks done, getting what I need to get done, rather than sitting in a car that serves me no purpose".

So there is pressure that will be put on in relation to that as well. And again, just around the staff retention and the morale aspect of employees feeling that this is something that is enough to push them to go and look for alternative employment because it just isn't working for them.

Julie:   Sorry, Seamus, I was just going to say there that you mentioned about Melted Parents NI. They did a quick survey and they said that one-third of parents were actually considering leaving their current employment within the next 12 months because of the different pressures.

I mean, again, that goes back to, as you said about the first question about return to office, retention of staff, attraction. You want to retain those skills so that you're not going through constant turnover and trying to find more people and then having to invest in them and up-skill only for them to leave for something else.

Seamus:  Yeah, and a terrifying prospect. If a third of employees are thinking about leaving work, where does that leave employers if there's such a risk to that extent?

Now, they obviously say that people should go to the website and have a look themselves and see what it says, but if that is what they have up, that is terrifying. A third is such a significant number.

Julie:   It is.

Seamus:  But it also demonstrates the frustration that parents are feeling in and around this issue and how important it is. It is that morale point, and I think it's something that employers do need to be careful about.

I mean, I think the other side of it is that where employers haven't to date received the flexible working applications, if there was a push to say, "You have to return full time", you can almost guarantee that you'll see a significant increase in flexible working applications. And those are on a permanent basis.

There are lots of temporary arrangements that are put in place, particularly around the summer months for parents. And even in our place of work here, we have to facilitate that because we know the pressures that the staff can be under. But where it's not facilitated and where employees feel that they haven't got any alternative, they will put an application in for flexible working.

It is difficult. Obviously, you can go through all of the steps that are set out in that process, but it is difficult generally to refuse those applications. You really have to have justifiable business reasons for that.

 And even at that, I have done tribunal cases in our tribunal here in Northern Ireland where the panel have just not accepted the justifications that the business had put forward and said, "This is something that should be facilitated and we don't understand why it's not".

So it can be very difficult, and I think that it is probably better from a flexibility point of view to try to agree on those arrangements. Whether they're interim arrangements over the summer months or whether they are arrangements that lever on a more long-term pattern, I think it's maybe better from a flexibility approach to do that rather than having to go down the line of a flexible working application, which will take time, which takes a lot of resources.

Julie:   Yeah, it does.

Seamus:  The employer needs to investigate and look at the options and all of that. So those are sort of the negatives of it.  I think from an employer's point of view, being alive to those risk issues for employees with young children where they're told, "No, you need to be back in the office next week full time. There's no alternative to it", that's going to create issues. And it's better, I think, that those are explored through open discussion and frankness.

Julie:  We just have a question for you about those concerns that employers might have if employees are working at home, but they're also minding children, and kind of what considerations. Maybe you have seen things like a drop in productivity, maybe you can't always reach the person when you want, so how do you balance, again, being reasonable, being fair, being supportive, but also, people are there to do a role and you need key productivity targets met as well. 

When you're talking about childcare, when people are working from home and then they're also minding their children or their children are home, what types of things would you look at?

And I would say, again, as an employer, perhaps you have concerns about that, or perhaps that person is almost using, "Yes, I have caring responsibilities, so I can't come in", or, "I'm having difficulties doing this".

Seamus:  I mean, certainly what I get a lot of and what comes across in my desk is a lot of employers will say to me, "Look, it's not reasonable for someone to say they're minding their kids and working from home at the same time". It is a difficult proposition, it's challenging, but I don't think the employer should just assume that because children are going to be off, the work isn't going to get done.

It's about looking at that aspect of, "Well, are there two parents in the house? And does it facilitate for one to be able to work earlier in the morning from 7:00 until lunchtime, for the other to do the afternoon shift, and for some additional work to be done later on in the evening?"

And again, that may or may not be able to be facilitated, but there is an issue certainly around it. I mean, I think we're all really aware of that one, of the employee that says, "No, I need to work from home because my children are off", and you're thinking, "Well, how are you managing both?"

And it's not credible, I don't think, to be able to do the both if you're simply saying, "My children are going to be running around and I want to be working at the same time".

All the more difficult in the summer whenever there are outside activities and the ability to watch children and things like that as well. But again, that has to be a conversation that needs to take place, and I don't think the employer should shy away from that conversation to say, "Well, look, how is that going to work practicably if we need to call you?"

Julie:   All right. And somebody's just asked . . . We also have a question about what if the child is sick and they want to work at home. So again, almost that working from home perhaps instead of taking unpaid leave or perhaps using that family emergency leave as well. That can also be a dilemma, can't it?

Seamus:  Yeah, absolutely. The classic one is that the employer might say, "Well, look, take that as unpaid leave, or alternatively take it as a holiday". And you might get the employee that says, "Either I don't have the holidays, or I have already got the position where the holidays are taken up because I've time booked off later in the year", or whatever it is.

But all of those options could and should be looked at. I mean, certainly, they should be given consideration. They mightn't all work, but I think from the employer's point, they do need to be given consideration.

Julie:   Okay. Great. I think that you were also going to go through with us a little bit on what maybe employers can do to help any parents who are struggling with cost-of-living dilemma, and either they have increased energy costs at home or perhaps they have commute costs whenever they do come into the office. So I think you had some practical steps.

Seamus:  Yeah, I think a lot of the stuff that we have covered previously . . . I mean, the big one has been that there have been employers that have given salary increases to recover the cost-of-living matters that have arisen. Some have given vouchers in relation to the purchase of oil and gas and things like that as well. So, you have those sorts of perks that have been given.

I mean, the salary increase one is certainly . . . Even with all the strike action that has gone on, there is an expectation that there is an acceptance out there that salaries have had to increase as part of this process. And there's an element of taming the beast with that because, again, you want to be going back to your contract of employment and what the contract of employment says about salary review, when it will happen.

It usually says, "Don't automatically assume that there will be an increase". And often, a lot of the time, the increases will be based on performance of the individual and performance of the business as well. So there are those elements.

We did see a lot of the one-off payments that took place as well, where there was a cost of living payment that was made to help employees during those difficult times.

I mean, I think that by the sound of it, we're going to have another difficult autumn and winter coming through as well with interest rates. We know that the price of our utilities is going to come down, but it doesn't look like it's going to come down until after this period of autumn and winter that we have.

And there are pressures then certainly on employees and risks for employees as well. I mean, I've had it also where employees have said, "Look, I can't afford to work from home because I have to heat my house when I'm at home, and I'm balancing that off my transport costs to get into work and all of that", and looking at all those sorts of things.

 There is a really helpful one as well there. I'm not sure how much knowledge is out there about this, but there is a tax-free childcare scheme that employers really should be advising their employees about. And it allows eligible working families to claim 20% of their registered childcare costs.

If you go onto NI Direct, you can get the full details of it on there. You can claim up to £2,000 per child per year, or if you have a disabled child, you can claim up to £4,000 from HMRC on that.

So there should be helpful conversations, I think, happening between the employer and the employee about what is out there for the employee and the benefits that they can have.

Just on that tax-free childcare scheme, for a family to be eligible, both parents need to be working, or one person in a single-parent household, and you need to be earning between £152 per week . . . that's the minimum, and that's equivalent to 16 hours on the national minimum wage . . . and up to £100,000 per year. So it's not that it stops for a means-tested benefit where people under the threshold only get it.

So for example, that would mean that a household where each parent is earning £95,000 with a combined income of £190,000 would also be eligible. So there is a good benefit there for that.

And there's also an element where self-employed parents are eligible for tax-free childcare in totality. And I know that we have this element where in GB they're going to get a lot more than what we're getting, but at least this scheme is in place there to give some assistance and help. But it's worthwhile looking there.

And I think that where genuinely, in a HR role, if you know that you have employees that are struggling or that they're really worried about it, and even where they're coming to you to say, "Look, I can't afford to come to work any longer", I think if you have this knowledge and information available to them, that could be really helpful.

You can have it on your intranet or you could have it in your kitchen or your staff room or whatever it is also. But it's a tax-free childcare scheme, and if you look at NI Direct, you'll see the details of it.

Julie:   Okay. Great. Thank you. And it was nice that you mentioned about how there are some measures coming in elsewhere in the UK and just really where that stands. So what types of things are coming in? How really does childcare support differ in NI from GB where they have all these new incentives that have been announced?

Seamus:  I mean, certainly two important pieces of legislation. Again, they don't extend to Northern Ireland. I feel like the grim reaper today in relation to this. But we have the Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Act 2023 that has been given royal assent in June, and it's now law in GB. And it's expected that it will be implemented in and around April 2025. For the first time, families in GB with a statutory entitlement to paid leave for work if their baby needs neonatal care. So there's a benefit there in relation to that.

There's also The Protection from Redundancy (Pregnancy and Family Leave) Act 2023, which will come into effect in July, on 24 July this year. And it's a law that gives those who are pregnant or recent returners from parental leave priority status for redeployment opportunities in a redundancy situation. So you can see the rights are being extended out in relation to that.

And then there's a general one there. It's the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023, and that makes it unlawful for employers to withhold tips from staff. So if there are people working in hospitality, there's always a bit of an issue arising in and around that. This makes it illegal, and hopefully staff will be able to benefit from their tips that they receive.

And then, obviously, the big one and the big distinction for us is Jeremy Hunt's budget, where there was a major extension for families in England in respect to childcare. That isn't effective in Northern Ireland. But effectively what it means is that working parents of 2-year-olds will get 15 hours of free childcare from April 2024, and children from 9 months will get 15 hours a week of free childcare from September 2024. And all under 5 get 30 hours of free childcare from September 2025.

So we have time to catch up on this, Julie. Hopefully there'll be something done in relation to it, but it is a significant break for our counterparts in GB.

Julie:   It is. I mean, that would be fantastic for parents over here. And then I think as an employer or HR professional, I'd be especially interested about that protection from redundancy as well. As businesses are looking at streamlining, as costs are getting higher for employers as well, that's interesting to see that it's coming in basically later this month. And I know that at the moment it's not coming in, in NI, but usually we wouldn't have been too far behind, would we, Seamus?

Seamus:  Yeah. Look, I think we should be hopeful that we might see that being replicated here sooner rather than later.

I mean, we have a number of people in our office here who start very early in the morning, they take time out to take the children to school, they come back, they work a different pattern compared to what we work in the office, but they cover core hours. So, there's not an issue with it and the work gets done and we can see that it's getting done.

So, it's a quick one to jump to the conclusion to say, "No, no, no, you can't do both", but there are ways around that that can be worked and facilitated. Or it could be that I can drop them off at the summer scheme in the morning. I don't need to pick them up until 4:00. I'd be working during those hours. I make up the remainder of the time because I start earlier, or in the evening I work later instead.

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