To think that workplaces should be less accommodating of personal lives?

If home life shouldn’t affect work life then work life shouldn’t affect home life. So zero working late, no weekends unless it’s your normal days. No emails or calls outside of any working hours, no nothing outside of that 8-5pm.

Or you flex. Dh can leave early to do the children’s dentists appoints, come out for school events without using leave, during the holidays because no school runs he can arrive a little earlier. Often his a little later home by half an hour or so. Flexible. Works both ways and actually 9/10 still works more in works favour.

Half an hour even once a week working longer it’s more than leaving work 1 hour early every six months or arriving late by half an hour twice a year too. Or that phone call he will answer during annual leave because he knows it’s important otherwise they wouldn’t be bothering him.

N one on my work team can WFH, but at the managerial level above us, it's possible for some.

Of the three that do regularly, one, the CEO, seems like a hard working guy. The other two we all suspect are taking the piss, playing video games and smoking weed. Any time we ask them to do stuff, we can't contact them.

We know there have been attempts to disapline them but they try to claim they are being discriminated against.

Bad management of course but nothing we can affect.

God I would never want to work somewhere where they cared nothing about me as a person, nothing about my personal life. That sounds so horrific! As others have said a sustainable healthy business is one that does really great HR so it also makes a lot of business sense to care about your employees wellbeing. What a bizarre and unpleasant view you have.

I’ve 25 years in person-centric HR and I couldn’t agree more.

If you have a problem recruiting and retaining staff, then it's not enough. If you don't have any recruitment or retntion problems, then you're doing enough. It's really as simple as that.

It's give and take in my opinion, however I have noticed that at my work, it is the same offenders who seem to just take and that's where issues lie when you don't have management strong enough to push back.

Bereavement, urgent childcare issues, being able to quickly nip out to take your car for an MOT for example or attend a GP appointment are all things I think employers should be flexible with.

However we had someone at my work who asked for a few days off because her 'chicken' had died and it was granted. Funny world we live in.

Don’t you mean:-

“need to wfh over summer holidays because summer camp has shorter hours than wrap around provision but I will actually wfh and not spend from
3.30pm pretending to wfh and dealing with children”.

I’ve seen too many “oh I’ll log off at 3.30pm and then log back on at 5pm” and they either forget or their day really does end at 3.30pm in their mind and they don’t log back on.

Had an ex colleague of mine earlier this year who had a chronically ill child (which I sympathise with) but whenever you wanted her after 3.30pm, even though I had deadlines to meet, she couldn’t be around then but would be later, she sometimes was around later but often not. Chronically ill child was used as an excuse if they were off sick. After the zillionth time of her ill child being discussed a lot, during our catch ups I was quite pleased when my contract came to its end date.

People can be really black and white about this but it isn’t realistic to expect to have a perfect wall between the two.

I certainly think people have a right to privacy and to not be forced to involve themselves in lots of work social stuff if it’s inconvenient. But I see no harm in employers trying to foster some social cohesion and playing a pastoral role if their employees have a difficult home life.

There was a thread recently about someone whose boss had invited them over for Sunday lunch at their house and some posters were suggesting it was a gross invasion of family privacy bla bla bla.

But this is probably the same people who dislike having any interaction with people outside their household.

Totally agree
I've worked in HR for 20 years the level of expectation is out of control.
No recognition that people are employed to do a job there's no endless pot of money and shareholder's to answer to.
We have phenomenal flexibility, benefits, wellbeing and health care options, higher than average annual leave, sick pay and its never enough

Flexibility works both ways. If a company can't be flexible with employees, then employees don't go out their way with additional hours etc in an emergency. Luckily I work for a fab company, been there 12 years and never intend to leave!

This is something else that often strikes me on these kinds of threads.

You get a lot of people commenting from what seems like a professional or maybe paraprofessional, office type of workforce.

Not all workforces are like that. Some are made up of people who are much more likely to be problematic employees.

My partner, until he got sick recently, worked in the building industry, painting, drywall, tiling, that kind of thing. He was really reliable and a hard worker, and a perfectionist, so in high demand. That was not especially common among other guys in the industry though. He was able to work with a small group of guys who got paid a fair bit more than the going rate, and never needed to look for jobs. They had a bitch of a time finding reliable people though.

When I was running a business, I didn't especially care about profit.

A healthy margin to invest and secure the business, yeah. But mainly I wanted to run a business that:

A) made clever things that were useful and needed, and,
B) had a happy bunch of staff who were a good, productive team and who didn't take the whole thing too seriously.

Most people take business rather too seriously.

I'd say it just screams 'slow news day for a journalist with a gap to fill'

@TempestTost This resonated with me. I've had some very difficult times in past years where I was the only person, or only one of two people, on the team who didn't have caring responsibilities. That did mean that the flexibility I could be offered was marginal, the workload I was taking on was increased, and we were all at top of grade so I couldn't be paid more. It's only improved because of staff changes meaning that the team is now balanced out and there are more of us who don't "need" accommodations.

Had those changes not been made, I think I would've left, which would've been a loss to the organisation as I'm very experienced and reliable.

I agree that accommodations should be made but it's often the case that employers pass that on to employees, whether because they can't be arsed to manage it or because of the reality that if you have 12 team members who need accommodations and 2 who don't, the 2 will be carrying more than the 12 (and if they go on to request accommodations, they won't be able to be accommodated themselves).

I remember when a close relative passed away, I needed time off to attend the funeral. At the time I was working tow part time jobs. One employer I just asked my line manager face to face, who immediately said of course, have compassionate leave, let me know if you need anything or if you need a chat or a break. The other line manager told me I’d need to submit a request online for annual leave. Nothing else.

guess which employer I’m still working for 5 years later…

I think it depends on the circumstances. My workplace is very keen on bringing your whole self to work. Absolutely fine if it means it's ok to mention your same sex partner but I'm considerably less keen on Frank being comfortable saying he's a furry and he and husband are swingers. Kinks should stay on a need to know basis.

In the building industry, you pray your employees leave whatever crap they’ve got going on at home at home. Inevitably though, you hear about all of their problems (and then some) asked to sub them money, told multiple excuses of why they had to leave early /call in sick, take various phone calls on site, demands for pay rises to pay their child maintenance … the list is endless.

I think the devil is in the details, as someone said in a pp.

Not workplace can manage people without being accommodating about some things. But also - some work is much less flexible than other work by its nature. These are both just facts that we have to deal with.

I do think it's possible for workplaces to be too accommodating. And not just with people who are being drama queens or whatever.

In my experience, the real difficulty comes because often, the more flexible they are for one employee, the more that put on the other workers. And it doesn't always balance out in the way people think. For example, on my workplace team I recently hired someone who needs a certain amount of accommodations around physical work. It's certainly possible to do that and he has other talents that he brings to the team.

It means though I couldn't necessarily hire another person with similar limitations though, or if another team member developed something like back issues, it would be tricky to accommodate. One or two team members would be responsible for all the physical labour, it would make it difficult for them to take time off, and also increase the risk they might injure themselves.

It's similar with things like accommodating WFH, or adjusted hours. Often you can do it for some, but not all, and then that can seem very unfair. If I tell Jon, sure you can work adjusted hours permanently so you can manage school pick up, and then Marie has a temporary issue where she needs to adjust hours, I am in kind of a corner as a manager and Marie gets screwed over.

The other element of this is that it is not uncommon that you end up with certain employees (Jon) who are always the ones who need these accommodations, while others (like Marie) always make a serious effort to meet the terms of her employment. You end up pissing off some of the most dedicated employees who see others making their lives easier. It's especially difficult in scenarios where there isn't really any differential pay or room to move up, so Marie isn't likely to be really rewarded for being diligent.

I have an extremely flexible, accommodating employee who allows me to take my disabled child to medical appointments during work time, or to take time off when he’s unable to go to school due to his health needs etc. In return I go above and beyond at all other times. If they weren’t accommodating, I would have to quit, and they don’t want that as I’m a consistently strong employee.

Context needed. There is a big difference between, for e.g.

• great employee who needs to come in at 10am each day because they need to visit their elderly parent before work and get them up for the day;

and

• rubbish employee who regularly comes in late because they're too disorganised to get their DC to school on time.

How many workplaces do you currently have to know how all workplaces operate?? I assume you are unhappy of a situation at your current workplace but you can’t really judge everyone based on that. From my perspective I have been grateful to have line managers that are supportive. Through family illnesses, miscarriages, flexi working for childcare pick ups. It makes me much more loyal to the company.

If the government want more people back in work, like folk with disabilities and illnesses, then employers need to be MORE accommodating

Definitely agree with this. Much less of the RTO nonsense, please. It's much better for people to work at home and pay taxes than have to give up work because eg they can't drive to an office due to being visually impaired.

And before anyone makes any daft comments, you can see well enough to use a computer and work, but still not be allowed to drive.

My work has been absolutely fantastic about my son being autistic. I assume this is because they value me and want to keep me as an employee, and that they're decent human beings.

Without their support and understanding it's very likely I'd have had to leave. As it is, I'm a committed and loyal employee who will go the extra mile.

Why should I work to make my employer richer, far far richer than I’ll ever be with the wages they pay, if they won’t accept and accommodate the fact that I am human and have a life outside of earning them money?

I am not keen on the "bring your whole self to work" thing. I do not need to know the ins and outs of my colleagues' personal lives.

However, if you are managing someone, and they have a problem which is going to have an adverse effect on their work, they need to be able to tell you about it. There needs to be an open enough atmosphere and no judgment. It's also good to know about the nice things which may affect their work, like winning a competition and so wanting a day off work to attend an event.