The Debate: Should UK businesses follow Europe’s August shutdown tradition?
The French (supposedly) do it, so why not us? We get two writers to weigh up the pros and cons of the August shutdown in this week’s debate
YES: The August shutdown means everybody gets to enjoy high summer, while firms save on office costs
The start of summer will always bring back childhood memories of there being nothing to watch on television for the first two weeks of school holidays. That’s because I grew up in Leicestershire, where factories all having agreed to close down for the first two weeks of July meant we finished classes before children’s television took over daytime schedules.
The advent of streaming means today’s children no longer need to sit around listlessly; still, the world of work has gone backwards. As workplaces have diversified and employment rights evolved, such sensible arrangements as Leicester’s old July Fortnight have become rarer, with firms struggling along with skeletal staff as they coordinate everyone taking different weeks off for their annual leave. This inevitably creates logjams as meetings are stood down due to low attendance and projects are stalled upon waiting for people to return from their holidays.
These problems have become more pronounced as our summers have become hotter, with productivity imploding amid the stifling heat. It was bad enough to while away long summer days in a half-full office, it’s positively torture now the office often feels like an oven.
Sending everyone home for a discrete period during the summer avoids all this. Everyone gets to enjoy high summer with no arguments about who is stuck in the office. Everyone being off at the same time means the company can close its offices, saving money. Plus, if it makes it across the whole of society, everybody benefits as it becomes easier for families split across different schools and workplaces to align their holiday schedules.
Will Cooling writes about policy and pop culture at It Could Be Said substack
NO: When I took August off, I returned to a bottleneck of decisions and backlogs
There’s long been a romantic notion that August is the time to hit pause and that we should collectively pack up our laptops, set our out-of-office replies and spend the month kicking back, free from deadlines and inboxes.
But let’s be honest, in our always-on culture, the idea of taking August “off-off” feels increasingly out of touch, even if we start with the best intentions of no meetings, no emails and a total digital detox, the reality is we check in. We scroll. We reply. We can’t resist that ping.
Having taken August off early in my career, I found it wasn’t the restorative escape I imagined. Instead, I returned to a bottleneck of decisions, backlogs and catch-up calls that made the supposed “break” feel counterproductive and somewhat disconnected.
Let’s not forget the bigger picture, either: the UK already struggles with flatlining productivity, and taking a whole month offline, especially for small businesses or startups, doesn’t exactly move the GDP needle in the right direction.
Of course, August can and should be slower, it’s a good time to reflect and recalibrate, but there’s a big difference between slowing down and shutting off.
And as for the European shutdown myth? It’s increasingly exaggerated, I think. Yes, some sectors in countries like France or Italy may wind down, but even there, the rise of remote working, global clients and digital-first operations has changed the rhythm. The world doesn’t stop anymore, so why should we?
August doesn’t have to be ‘on’ in the usual way. But in a world that never quite sleeps, fully switching off might be the most stressful decision someone could ever make.
Richard Young is CEO at Self Catering
THE VERDICT: Autonomy FTW
Fact or fiction, the myth of the French August shutdown is one that easily captures the imagination: sashaying out of the office, packing up the Parisian townhouse and decamping to some fabulous, sleepy chateau for the summer. But is it actually good for us, or, more importantly, the economy?
Mr Cooling, steeped in nostalgia, says yes, and it’s likely many of his points strike a chord with workers currently trooping into half-full offices: working in the summer can often feel frustrating as decisions lag, projects stall and the temptation of nipping out for a lunchtime aperol spritz becomes unbearably tempting. Moreover, Mr Young’s objection – that his own experience of taking a summer off merely resulted in a delayed workload – is easily assuaged: for the shutdown to work everyone must take the time off.
But this, of course, is where the issue lies: we will never all be able to coordinate, nor is it likely we want to. Most of us enjoy autonomy, so being robbed of the basic choice of when to take our own holiday is likely to grate.