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

This. Totally this.

It's great that my employer allows us to work flexibly and is happy for parents to do school runs during working hours etc. It's not great that that impacts on people who don't do school runs (or anything else) during working hours and are therefore picking up more of the slack in external (client) meetings that take place during those hours.

Sure, as long as the employer doesn’t expect the employee to be flexible with work either 🤷‍♀️ my job would be literally impossible without me being prepared to make some adjustments to my working hours, they’d have to employ two people and have one cover out of hours I suppose.

The team I work with reasonable adjustments’ are met with a sense of entitlement to the extent that in order to schedule work I have to take account of who is doing which school run.

I said "childcare". I meant "after school childcare" mid afternoon. I know you can't really work and supervise a young child and I wouldn't recommend trying.

Thank God my manager did not think like you after I was the victim of a serious sexual assault.

Kemi is that you? Less accommodating work places will have a disproportionately negative impact on women so we should offer as much flexibility as we can.

Your home life is a matter for your employer if it is affecting your work. Caring responsibilities for example.

I absolutely agree. And it's so often to the detriment of other staff. Oh so and so always needs this that and the other because she has 5 children and her DH can't take time off from his oh so important job. So you will need to cover. Fo.

Hard to say a definite yes or no without any context or specific examples, what do you mean by people’s personal lives? Do you mean recognising that someone going through a divorce or bereavement or similar hard time might not be able to give 100% to work or do you mean letting someone whose hobby is live music leave early every other Friday because they want to go to a gig?

People aren’t robots and you can’t expect people to leave every aspect of their personal lives at the door, if you’re going through a tough time it’s not always emotionally possible to put that aside during work hours 100% of the time. If you have dependants such as children or elderly parents you can’t always guarantee something which means they need you won’t come up during working hours. If you have health issues you can’t guarantee you won’t have a flare up on a work day or that you won’t have a doctor or hospital appointment which can only be attended in working hours. Obviously people should be professional at work and some aspects of people’s personal lives don’t need to be discussed or considered, but there are some bigger things which will inevitably be hard for people to leave at home sometimes.

Some shocking managers / wanna be managers on here.

Staff who feel appreciated and treated with humanity are more productive and more loyal - a much better business model than the 80s throwbacks.

Have we had ‘my husband the CEO says’ yet - they always pop up on these threads and always have zero understanding of the modern workplace, very little work history and a thirst for punishing working people that’s clearly the only way they can feel important in the world.

You might not be at a stage in your life where you appreciate the flexibility yet.

Many employers, who can, support work/life balances and they find it works very well for them in terms of employee motivation, productivity, two way goodwill and retention.

What are your specific issues with it?

I work to live, I don't live to work.

If employers want go keep their staff they need to accept that most people are the same.

It needs to be balanced. You can 'get too much of a good thing'

For example sometimes it's helpful to allow a team member to wfh and video conference into meetings because she has no childcare on day a Thursday.

Providing that doesn't mess up anyone else.

It would be different if she covered say the reception desk physically in work and her not being there meant the other staff couldn't EVER get a Thursday off on annual leave or to go to a medical appointment say.

That wouldn't be fair.
I would expect there to be further discussion on this around coming in on particular Thursdays when the MIL could watch the child or whatever the employee could do to come and go a bit.

Is it fair to allow someone to work from home permanently because they bought a lockdown dog which has separation anxiety and landlord says neighbours are complaining...prob not, start training it.

I agree to a certain extent.
I don’t bring issues into work however there are times (flexible working patterns etc) that it’s helpful to the employer and employee. I can get more work done when I work flexibly but if I had set hours I’d have to drop to part time. (Just an example)

I manage a team,

For every request I ask myself, is this reasonable, can this be accommodated. We rarely have vacancies. Staff are unbelievably flexible for the company because it is for them.

It's a win win.

So many of these vague posts with no nuance expecting a yes or no answer, lately.

It’s the same as all the others. There’s nuance. Don’t accommodate people’s actual lives and it’s shit for both employers and employees. Take it to the extreme in other ways it can also be bad for employers and employees.

Hi Kemi 👋🏻

Tell us you don't understand disability (to name but one possible factor) without telling us you don't understand disability. 🙄

Let's hear some examples then, OP.

I think a lot of the public sector organisations would come to a grinding halt if they did as OP suggests. A lot of staff are only there for the flexibility/family friendly policies (sure as hell not for the crap salaries anyway)

Don't be ridiculous. You sound resentful of a colleague whose needs your employer is attempting to meet.

The whole person comes to work; it's impossible to separate being an employee from being a person who inevitably experiences "personal issues".

Obviously there are shades of more and less reasonable in terms of what both employees and employers might feel entitled to expect. But largely YABU.

If we could go back to the 1800s when employees had no rights at all at work, you'd be first in line to volunteer, right? No, didn't think so.

If employers don't accommodate personal needs, they will lose employees to those employers who do. Increasingly, people are less interested in pay (once the package is attractive enough) and more interested in work/life balance, so if employers want to be competitive, they need to offer a great all-round package that takes into account individual personal needs.

On balance, no.

I used to work for someone like you. I had a fortnight of working all day then rushing over to the hospital to be with 4 year old DC, and trying to sleep in a chair by his bed. I couldn't take leave because we were allowed only 5 days "compassionate leave" in a year and I needed that for when he was discharged.

(I would add this was was 30 years ago and I don't think it would happen now)

Whilst I am loath to respond to drop ambiguous comment and go threads, I'll bite.

Enjoy paying for me to be on benefits instead then. I can only work because my employer is flexible. One of my children is currently unable to access their right to education because there is no suitable school in the area to meet his needs. We are battling the authorities to get suitable provision and are met with denial and delays at every turn. I would love to be able to turn up to the office and do 9-5 every day,but life didn't turn out that way. If I have to leave, I should be entitled to carers allowance and universal credit while paying no tax.