There was a time when offering a ping-pong table and free snacks was enough to make candidates feel genuinely excited about joining your organisation. That era is firmly behind us.
In 2025, Australian talent, particularly the highly skilled, experienced working parent cohort that every organisation is competing for, has very different priorities. They want to know whether your organisation genuinely supports their life outside of work. And increasingly, that question gets tested immediately: do you have a plan for school holidays?
The Shifting Australian Employee Value Proposition
Post-pandemic, the employee value proposition (EVP) has fundamentally shifted. Flexibility, wellbeing, and genuine family support have moved from ‘nice to have’ to ‘table stakes’ for talent in competitive industries.
But here’s what many organisations are missing: flexibility policies and family support benefits are not the same thing. The ability to work from home doesn’t solve the school holiday childcare problem, it just moves it to the employee’s living room. Candidates who are parents know this. They’re not looking for flexibility; they’re looking for practical support.
73% of Australian employees with children say that family-friendly benefits are a significant factor in accepting or declining a job offer (Diversity Council Australia, 2024). Yet fewer than 15% of Australian employers offer any form of structured school holiday support.
The Talent Segment You Might Be Overlooking
Working parents, particularly those with primary school-age children, represent one of the most experienced and capable talent segments in the Australian workforce. They’re typically in the 30–50 age bracket, which maps almost perfectly onto the senior individual contributor and management level roles that organisations find hardest to fill.
This is not a niche group. Approximately 40% of Australian employees are parents of school-age children. Competing effectively for this talent pool requires a benefits offering that addresses their actual day-to-day reality, not a generic ‘we’re family-friendly’ statement on your careers page.
School Holiday Support as a Recruitment Differentiator
Here’s the competitive advantage in plain terms: if your organisation runs a corporate school holiday program and your competitors don’t, you have a genuine, meaningful point of difference in the talent market.
Working parents share this information. They talk in school pickup lines, in parenting WhatsApp groups, in LinkedIn comments on your EVP posts. ‘The company I work for runs school holiday programs in the office, it’s been a game-changer’ is a referral that money can’t buy.
Canva, ANZ, Toyota, and other high-profile KidsCo partners have featured their school holiday programs in employer branding materials and received overwhelmingly positive responses, both from existing employees and from candidates researching whether to apply.
What to Actually Say in Your Recruitment Materials
This is where many HR teams get a bit lost. They know the benefit is valuable but aren’t sure how to communicate it without it sounding like a small add-on at the bottom of a long benefits list.
The framing that lands best positions the school holiday program as part of your broader commitment to supporting employees as whole people, not just workers. It connects to your culture story, your DEI commitments, and your genuine investment in employee wellbeing.
Language that resonates in job ads and EVP materials:
- “We run structured, teacher-led school holiday programs onsite because we know life doesn’t pause when work does.”
- “As a family-friendly employer, we provide school holiday programs to help working parents thrive, not just survive.”
- “Our school holiday program is one of many ways we invest in supporting our people as parents and carers.”
Retention: The Other Side of the Talent Equation
Attracting talent is only half the challenge. Retaining it, particularly through the school years when the childcare pressure is highest and competitor organisations are constantly recruiting, is where school holiday support earns its keep most decisively.
The data is consistent: employees who feel genuinely supported by their employer during stressful personal periods demonstrate significantly higher loyalty, discretionary effort, and tenure. School holiday programs create those moments of genuine support four times a year, every year.
In an environment where replacing a senior employee costs an average of $20,000 to $60,000 in direct costs alone (and considerably more in lost institutional knowledge and productivity), the investment in a KidsCo program looks less like a cost and more like an insurance policy on your best people.
The Employers Who Get This Are Winning
The organisations that have embraced corporate school holiday programs aren’t doing it out of charity. They’re doing it because they’ve calculated the talent acquisition and retention ROI and found it overwhelmingly positive.
Essential benefits evolve with the workforce. In 2025, school holiday support isn’t a luxury, it’s becoming the new baseline expectation for organisations that take talent seriously.
Want to make your organisation the one working parents are lining up to join? Talk to KidsCo about building your school holiday program.
