‘Invest in your workforce and reap the rewards’

I DON’T have young children, so I shouldn’t be concerned that flexible and affordable childcare is not a priority for the States right now.

Yet I am concerned. Very much so.

These are challenging times, I get it. Budgets are constrained and we all have tough decisions to make to get through the next few years.

I have talked about our need to be more ambitious (16 January) and there really is no time like the present. Having invested money on behalf of clients for more than 15 years now, I can testify that investing is a long-term activity. It is occasionally exciting but should overall be an uneventful and steady process with one goal in mind: improving your current position. The sooner you start, the better the outcome in the long run. It is rarely smooth sailing and at times you will wonder if you made the right decision but it always makes sense to invest. This is especially true when you notice that you might not have enough money to retire on, for example, or you anticipate you might have greater care requirements than others later in life. Planning ahead pays off, always.

In relation to our imminent population crisis (there just won’t be enough young people to go around) and our current economic growth concerns (there is not enough of that either), we need to invest in many creative and not always obvious ways in order to change expected future outcomes for the better. We can improve things, we just need to do something about it sooner rather than later. There is much talk of continuing to push out retirement ages and cutting services but very little talk about how we plan to drive growth instead and how we might fix our problems in more positive and arguably kinder ways.

Providing parents with good quality, affordable, flexible and accessible childcare, of whichever kind suits their needs, not only allows them to make choices freely and confidently about their own jobs and careers but should also encourage some families to have more children as well. This is something we desperately need as a small community and right now there are very few incentives for thoughtful parents to expand their brood. Anyone wanting to grow their family needs significant additional income and a very supportive extended family.

We also need to look at maternity leave. Guernsey is way behind the UK and Jersey in terms of benefits for new parents and it is not only a huge disincentive to having children, it impacts the health of our children and parents too. Depending on when leave starts, we could be expecting a mother to go back to work while her child is just four months old under the current system here. In the UK and Jersey, the maximum period of statutory leave is twice as long.

Leave is much less flexible in Guernsey too. As its name suggests, the focus is on the mother using the leave, rather than more than one parent where applicable. It is possible for a partner to use the leave instead but this is then removed from the mother which makes it unaffordable for many families.

Giving all parents more time to recover and spend time with their children so that they can choose the right balance of work and home life while their child is young, is critical for parents, children and society as a whole.

Employers also need to embrace the benefits of happy families rather than focusing on the disadvantages of parents taking time off. By investing in your workforce, they will reward you with loyalty and hard work and you will attract the best talent while also inspiring the very children you are indirectly supporting.

Forcing mothers back into work too soon, spending a fortune on childcare that does not necessarily meet the needs of parents or children in terms of flexibility, is not good for anyone. Some parents want to spend more time at home with their young infants and this should be supported. Parents who make active and considered choices for their children, whatever they choose, are parents we should be encouraging. We want well-cared-for and well-adjusted children, looked after by happy parents. The knock-on benefits for society are well-documented.

Not everyone wants to work while their children are young but many would like to work some of the time, to maintain their careers and keep up their skills. They just cannot access the flexible support they need to do so. Some, eager to get back to work, don’t bother as it costs them more to work than it does to stay at home once the cost of childcare is taken into account. Others struggle on, working full-time as they are unable to agree part-time arrangements with their employers or their local employment licence requires full-time work. Both situations are bad for parents and children and drive them elsewhere, when a flexible approach could keep them here.

Other families are prevented from buying houses due to the drain on their income from the cost of childcare, having to struggle for years until they can afford to buy a stable home. Mortgage lenders penalise borrowers who are paying for childcare, lending them smaller amounts which in a difficult housing market, can be a real issue. Innovative mortgage products, perhaps with lower payments in these earlier years and higher payments later on, could be one creative solution to this problem. It is something we could easily fix.

When we think about what we need for Guernsey, we have to start with joined-up thinking. It is not an easy task raising a family, the many benefits of having children notwithstanding. I for one am grateful to everyone who is doing it. We need to grow our population and we want more of our children to choose to build their futures here when they leave school or university, so we need to invest accordingly.

Further down the line, there are already innovative employers on the island offering to fund students through university if they agree to come back to Guernsey to work for a period in the future. These are simple and effective ways to help our young people and families, grow our skills base and support one another to build a sustainable future for the Bailiwick.

If we want families to choose to stay or move here, we need to support them to do so. That starts with childcare and parental leave and open-minded thinking from employers.

One of the biggest mistakes investors make is selling when the going gets tough, when they should be staying put and ideally investing more. This is a costly mistake and one we would be wise to avoid when it comes to childcare and supporting families.