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

study after study shows that employees who are valued, feel they belong, and are looked after are better at their jobs, more productive and more likely to stay therefore removing costs of recruitment and additional training.

Complete flexibility with my team, which means I always get the best out of them and vice versa.

This post sums it up perfectly!

I now have a reasonable adjustment agreed due to a long term health condition I developed and my employer is flexible. If my work was suffering my line manager would tell me, additional burden is not placed on my team as a result.

I could get paid more elsewhere but the flexible working and how good they are with letting me manage my condition means that this falls into a work benefit. A bit like a company offering free pizza on a Friday or an extra days annual leave etc.

Employees weigh up benefit packages for what is best for them as work is also a contract.

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

I'd love to work, but i am a Carer to a young adult with ASD/ADHD and i need to be present at home for him, so I'd need a job that not only accommodates HIS needs regards my availability and time, but also MY disabilities and needs... that being i have to work from home and be allowed flexibility to work as/when i can around my responsibilities and needs.

How can an employer be flexible and provide adjustments and accommodations if they're not aware of your personal issues and home life?

That's interesting, what does that look like in practice do you think? Are you someone who manages staff? If say someone was upset at work and you established that it wasn't work that was the cause do you just ask them to stop talking if they start to say my husband has left me so I am a bit fragile?

I think it's unprofessional in some ways to let home stuff affect work stuff.

But it depends on the severity of the home stuff as well.

If an employees mum just died, a bit of flexibility is of course expected.
If they just lost their favourite Budgie, maybe not quite as much.

If you're dealing with customers though, you kind of should put your private stuff away. I don't know, I think it's nuanced.

I do t know how I'd react if a till worker started telling me about their divorce and such.. it's not that I don't care.. it's just that I want to go home and eat me Pot Noodle..

AIBU to think that employees should be less accommodating of micromanagers and ungrateful employers who fail to recognise the value and hard work their staff members put in. Not to mention the profits they help them make.

No. Because typically they're accommodating when they very much need and value the person and know if they were less accommodating the person would leave, so it wouldn't be beneficial to them. Employers don't tend to accommodate personal needs due to altruism. It's either to avoid falling foul of the law or as a pragmatic step to keep staff.

I agree it affects more women. But I’m always careful to make sure I consider men’s requests on equal (not better, just equal) terms, eg if they need to flex around childcare or other caring responsibilities.

What I won’t do is run my whole team around someone’s husband’s preferences, eg “I need to change my working day in a way that inconveniences others / affects the whole team because my husband xyz” - your husband’s work doesn’t take precedence over my team! (This could also read wife, but it happens less when the other spouse is female)

Totally agree.

I completely disagree. This attitude also affects women more than men who are more likely to have caring responsibilities. I am really happy to allow flexibility where possible to good employees. Happy people work better!

Very good.

Also true. I wonder what some managers think they’re being paid for - you have to do the work of balancing people’s needs and treating people fairly. Not just accommodating those who shout loudest.

Plus it’s not unreasonable to say to someone who asks for part-time after interview “yes but due to business needs, your working days have to include Friday”

Exactly this. It's the free market at play. Employers who offer the best packages (pay, benefits, flexibility, other accommodations) will generally retain the best employees, and if they cut back on those then they'll gradually find that higher calibre staff leave to work for other companies.

However the free market works both ways, of course: if offering too many accommodations to staff starts to affect the organisation's ability to provide goods and services to its customers, then it will swing back the other way.

Every company will find its own sweet spot according to its own circumstances, or will fail. There's no moral aspect at all; no "should" or "should not".

This is basically the answer to every "my employer is forcing us back to the office" thread ever.

Well exactly - like most things, it’s about balance. And there will always be some people who want to take the piss. A good manager knows the difference!

Many employers provide flexibility to some by giving none to others, this does not lead to a happy team. There does need to be flexibility but managers need to manage it and can't have some employees constantly covering for others ( picking up more office days as others demand constant wfh, or having difficulties getting Fridays off as no part time staff want to work Fridays)

I agree. And you often recruit better employees by accommodating some flexibility in their working lives, when these don’t affect their ability tondi the job.

Plus I agree with another pp who points out that people tend to vote with their feet and leave jobs that don’t acknowledge that they are people with personal lives.

It's about tolerable limits. At my work we supported a colleague through his terminal brain cancer. It was important to him to come into work, even though the standard of that work dropped. I think this was the right and human thing to do.

We did not, however, grant compassionate leave to a woman who asked for three days off because her sister's cat had died.

It's completely unrealistic to think personal life will never affect work, just as it is completely unrealistic to think work will never affect personal life.

I guess it depends.

If you want employees that will be flexible within the business in order to cover changing business needs, then you need to be flexible with them.

If you want employees that just do what is asked of them in their contract, and no more, then not taking into account personal circumstances is absolutely the way to go.

Erm? Which workplaces and in what sense?

The OP just screams "Someone in my office just got the afternoon off for a personal issue and I didn't".

That you had to 'pick up' is not the fault of these other working mothers – it's the fault of your employer, for not a) compensating you appropriately b) not ensuring workload is met by other means and c) not listening to your unhappiness about it if you did indeed report that that you were unhappy about it (if you didn't then that's on you). That you had a DH at home to pick up the slack also has nothing to do with these other women.

Parents are legally entitled to leave for unwell dependents, and your employers inability to cope with that without impacting you is not the women's fault. It's your employer's fault.

Op whatever is happening to you today- you really shouldn’t be giving employers on here the idea that it is in any way better for them to not make allowances for people’s bereavements, illnesses, caring duties (kids or wider family) family issues etc. Whenever I hear of horrible employers that aren’t sympathetic to someone taking time, I think ‘good luck to you keeping anyone longer that two days’. Have heard awful stories of people back in work the week after a close family member died for example. Treat people with respect and go above and beyond for you and they’ll go above and beyond for your company (for someone who had to leave two jobs due to total inflexibility around children)