School’s Out? Psychological Safety During the Summer Break

We often talk about the challenges people face in the winter: short days, festive pressure, tight deadlines. But we don’t talk enough about the impact of summer, particularly the school holidays. For many working parents, it’s a time of significant emotional and financial stress.

Despite the longer days and occasional sunshine, the school holiday period can place immense pressure on households. Parents are left navigating six weeks of childcare, disrupted routines, and mounting costs; often while juggling work, meetings, and team responsibilities. And yet, this pressure is rarely acknowledged in workplace culture.

As an organisational psychologist, I’m interested in what workplaces can do to better support people through these periods. And time and time again, the answer comes back to one core concept: psychological safety.

Understanding the Stress

According to Coram Family and Childcare, families in the UK are now facing summer holiday childcare bills of over £1,000 per child. With limited availability and sky-high prices, many parents are forced to take unpaid leave, reduce their hours, or struggle through a patchwork of care arrangements.

It’s not just about money either. There’s an emotional toll too. Juggling work and childcare can lead to overwhelm, stress, and burnout. And if your workplace isn’t open, flexible, and psychologically safe, that stress becomes invisible. People mask it. They say they’re fine. But performance may dip, mistakes might increase, and engagement can drop.

Why Psychological Safety Matters

Psychological safety is about creating an environment where people feel safe to speak up, ask for help, and admit when they’re struggling without fear of judgement or consequence.

Amy Edmondson, who coined the term, defines it as a “belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes.” It’s a critical foundation for inclusion, wellbeing, and high performance in the workplace. (Harvard Business Review)

This is especially important during periods of heightened stress. When employees feel able to say, “I need some flexibility this week,” or “My capacity is lower because I’m juggling more at home,” they’re more likely to get the support they need and stay engaged with their work.

Without this kind of safety, stress compounds. People feel they can’t speak up. They push through. And often, they burn out.

What Can Organisations Do?

If we want to genuinely support our people, we need to move beyond surface-level perks and policies. That starts by asking:

• Do our managers model openness and support?
• Can people speak honestly about their needs and limitations?
• Have we built structures and systems that allow flexibility, especially during more challenging seasons?
  

Practical steps can make a real difference for working parents- but only if they’re backed by a culture of understanding and psychological safety. Based on guidance from Working Families, here are some actions employers can take:

• Offer flexible working options such as hybrid working, part-time hours, term-time working, or compressed hours.
• Communicate clearly about employees’ rights to unpaid parental leave, carer’s leave, and time off for dependants.
• Normalise flexible requests and ensure managers are trained to respond with empathy and fairness.
• Support access to childcare by signposting local holiday clubs, offering childcare vouchers (if eligible), or exploring partnerships with providers.
• Plan ahead for peak stress periods, including school holidays, and encourage team planning around leave and workloads.
• Check in regularly with working parents and carers! Don’t assume they’ll raise challenges unprompted.
• Lead by example: if senior leaders visibly use flexible arrangements, it sends a powerful message that support is safe to access.

By building an environment where parents feel able to speak up and ask for support, businesses don’t just reduce short-term stress but they retain valuable talent, maintain engagement, and build the trust that makes teams thrive. And that’s psychological safety in action.

At Mindset, we work with organisations to build psychologically safe cultures that make a real difference. Through leadership training, HR consultancy, and individual coaching, we help businesses move from assumptions to action.

A Human-Centred Approach to Performance

It’s easy to assume that a dip in performance is down to disengagement or lack of motivation. But so often, it’s something else: unmet needs, unrecognised stress, or an unrealistic workload.

Performance issues during summer aren’t just a people problem. They’re a systems issue. If we want people to perform well, we need to create the conditions that allow them to thrive.

Summer might seem like a slower time for business, but for many working parents, it’s anything but relaxing.

Let’s not wait until winter to check in on our people. Psychological safety is year-round. And the summer break is an important time to put it into practice.