By Annie Hayes, HRZone Editor

The recent Pre-Budget Report brought sugar-coated offerings for parents in work all designed to lure mums and single parents back to work but in all this election wooing it seems as though Brown may have forgotten that birth rates are actually down and the workforce is ageing; the biggest work/life balance of the future may actually therefore be eldercare not childcare.

I recently attended a lecture by the prolific and thought-provoking speaker and author Kjell Nordstrồm in which he said that one of the greatest social revolutions of our time is the erosion of the family unit as the basic building block of society.

In Stockholm, where Nordstrồm is from 70-88% of inner cities are comprised of single households. Figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) support these findings and show that the pattern of partnership formation has changed over the last 30 years. The proportion of married people has fallen, while the proportions of single and divorced people have increased.

The statistics also show that the UK has an ageing population. The population grew by 6.5% in the last thirty years or so, from 55.9 million in 1971 to 59.6 million in mid-2003.

Continued population ageing is inevitable; say the ONS. During the first half of this century, the number of elderly people will rise as the relatively large numbers of people born after the Second World War, and during the 1960s baby boom, become older. The working age population will also fall in size as the baby boomers move into retirement, as relatively smaller numbers of people have been born since the mid-1970s.

Despite these demographics, Brown has focused his policies on improving the picture for working parents. Among the liberal scattering of family-friendly measures are:

You’d be hard pushed to find a working parent who would scoff at the bonanza-style offerings announced in the PBR but hasn’t the Chancellor forgotten that the era of Bridget-Jones is alive and well?

What may result from all these measures is a division within the workforce and a growing resentment between those with children and those without.

Last week on the question of allocating Christmas leave a survey found that employees with children were favoured over their single colleagues. The Croner Consulting research found that four in ten employers give priority to those with children or dependants while in small businesses the discriminatory treatment is rife with just over half (52%) admitting they favour family workers over singletons when dishing out Yuletide leave.

Of the findings, HR expert, Richard Smith said: “There is a growing ‘Bridget Jones generation’ of younger people who are choosing to develop their professional career before getting married and having children, and employers are telling us they are finding it hard to dish out holidays without upsetting singletons.

“We advise our clients that, whether an employee wants to spend Christmas with their children, or partying with friends, neither should be given preference when granting holiday requests.”

Easier said then done perhaps. Work/life balance issues, however, will continue to be a shared goal for workers whatever their status or responsibilities.

Martin Raymond, Director of the Future Laboratory told HRZone: “It is the 25-35 year old male and female groups who are most likely to put pressure on employers for more time whether it is for leisure or to pursue their own projects. This group of predominantly single and well-educated people are not often targeted by politicians because they don’t traditionally fall into an obvious vote winning category and it is very difficult to pull them into work related policies.”

Workers are also united in their responsibility to care for their relatives.

As our parents survive longer then their parents before them did how will their working children be afforded the opportunity to look after them when they reach old age?

A spokesperson from Age Concern told me that the charity has made specific calls on the next incoming government to introduce a fairer deal for carers.

In their recently published General Election manifesto they say: ‘The current system is unfair and complicated. The new deal for carers could include the right to ask for flexible working arrangements (as is the case for those with parenting responsibilities) as well as a new ‘carer’s credit’ which links better with earned income, for example, when people are only caring for part of the year. At present those who have to take time off to care miss out on building up their credit and miss out on their full entitlement to the state pension.’

A spokesperson told HRZone: “We need a new deal for carers. Employers can support carers of older relatives and partners enormously by ensuring they can ask for flexible working arrangements when they need them as parents can.

“All carers must be able to work and meet their caring responsibilities and good employers should be able to help their employees do this.”

What may result is a workforce dominated by single persons which is in desperate need for eldercare flexibility and support but instead gets a raft of parental leave benefits.

Management guru Peter Drucker sensed the issues long before many of us caught on but his message still appears to be ignored by those at the top:

“The dominant factor for business in the next two decades, absent war, pestilence, or collision with a comet, is not going to be economics or technology. It will be demographics.”

What will be needed to plug the eldercare gap is to improve the case for remote working. If workers were freed from the constraints of working in a physical office then they could better manage their obligations and responsibilities with improved work/life balance enabled by technology.