Real support at work means time off when you need it most

Hi and welcome to Working It.

I’m Bethan Staton, deputy work and careers editor, standing in today and next week for Isabel. 

The heatwave has finally broken here in London — for now at least. I’ve been preoccupied with thinking about how hotter temperatures will change our working lives: from dangerous conditions faced by workers globally to hot-weather hits to productivity. My climate colleagues wrote a great piece about this a couple of years ago. But how are readers now being affected? Share your thoughts with us at [email protected]

Elsewhere in the world of work, the UK government has been forced into a U-turn on benefits — piling scrutiny, among other things, on efforts to get more disabled people into work. Ministers had packaged the changes as part of a bigger drive to increase the proportion of people in employment, but there are other ways to do this — not least thinking about how we can more creatively fit work around our lives. More on that below.

Time off for life events relies on a flexible boss

Last week, I came across a concept for improving work-life balance that got me thinking about time off.

It’s called “life leave”: a few extra days or weeks of paid time off, offered to employees on top of annual leave, to deal with the everyday obligations, inconveniences (and sometimes even enjoyments) life throws at you.

You might need to drive your mum to the doctor, wait at home for someone to fix the fridge, or go to your child’s sports day. Clarion Housing Group, one of the few employers I came across that offers the benefit, gives staff five days of life event leave: “fully paid, flexible” time off for “significant personal events” such as moving house, taking exams, or simply when the unexpected happens. “We want our people to feel supported in every aspect of their lives,” said Catrin Jones, Clarion’s chief people officer. That “means going beyond traditional policies to create a culture where they feel trusted, empowered and valued”.

Sounds great. But I also wondered whether this sort of leave really is so unusual. Isn’t allowing a hard-working team member the morning off to deal with an exploded washing machine or unwell parent just being an understanding boss?

The same thought has occurred to me when reading about specific, vogue-ish kinds of leave such as grandparents’ leave, heartbreak leave, or time off to grieve a pet. They all sound lovely at first. But would it be better to offer flexible working policies, and a culture of understanding, support and trust so staff can decide what happenings merit time out of office?

According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, many employers think so. In a 2023 report, it found almost two-thirds of organisations offered work from home on a regular or ad hoc basis, and more than half gave staff “informal flexibility”. This wasn’t just restricted to office jobs: 65 per cent of organisations gave frontline workers some degree of flexibility.

In the UK, all employees have the right to request flexible work, and annual leave entitlements. There are also a few legal entitlements to time off for things such as family emergencies, which are generally unpaid and restrictive. Though, as management professor Ellen Ernst Kossek notes, provision is much better than in the US.

Kossek is supportive of informal flexibility, and calls it an “idiosyncratic deal”, which sounds pleasing but a little unreliable. That’s also one of its drawbacks. Leaving things up to employer discretion is great for those who work in an atmosphere of trust and fairness, not so much for unfortunates with tyrannical bosses. “Organisations are lumpy,” Kossek says. “What you want is a consistent policy.”

Still, she isn’t keen on “slicing and dicing” leave. Hyper-specific policies can make some staff happy but unfairly exclude others, especially in a diverse workforce (imagine someone having paid time off to grieve a pet while their colleague can’t get the same to take a parent to hospital). Also, “do I really want my boss to know I’m going through the menopause?” 

Kossek advocates for a generous “bucket” of protected leave that can be used for a variety of things, is non-specific and available to all staff. It seems to me that life event leave adopted by Clarion actually fits that bill nicely — the company stresses that the leave is inclusive and based on trust and discretion. But it’s also only part of the puzzle.

At CIPD, policy and practice manager Claire McCartney says “embedding a broader culture of support” and flexibility is crucial to effective leave policies. That means training for managers, also but careful planning. And, potentially, spending.

As Kossek reminded me, flexibility must be “built into the system”. Colleagues have to be around to cover staff who are off — and piling on more stress for those present doesn’t make for good policy. What may be straightforward in work done from any computer at any time also looks very different in frontline services. 

Ultimately, a flexible work culture, built on mutual respect, and that makes room for the messiness of life is good for workers — and for companies that care about attracting and keeping them. But it’s not enough to just trust managers and teams to make this happen on its own. “You need more paid formal time off, but you also need to create cultures of caring,” says Kossek.

Five top stories from the world of work

1. Starmer guts UK welfare reforms to avoid Commons defeat: The government’s humiliating climbdown on cutting disability benefits means it will not save the government any money, and sheds doubt on promises to get more people into work

2. Dressing up or giving up: the trials of the hot weather commute Floaty dresses or tweed suits? For those of us who have struggled through a heatwave tube journey or cycle, here’s thoughts on how to adapt.

3. The extraordinary life and mysterious death of a carbon credits broker: This story is a wild ride, moving from an abandoned coastal mansion through questionable carbon credit deals and a death at sea.

4. See a physio, quit the fizzy drinks: employers intervene to stop an ill-health exodus Can corporate preventive health schemes stop people falling out of work due to sickness? Some employers think so — and are stepping in to help staff where government services fall short.

5. How the next financial crisis starts: This expansive and worrying long read by Pilita Clark — among other things our work and careers columnist — dives into an uninsurable world and its far-reaching consequences.

One more thing . . . 

Are young people having enough sex? In this thoughtful review of two very different books, New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino considers both the question and why we care so much. Takes on this issue can feel puritanical or voyeuristic, but this essay has a much more thoughtful take about the things we need to connect with others and feel human — things it sometimes feels, in our hyperconnected world and faced with a frail and uncertain future, might be beginning to “flicker and disappear”.