Is this reasonable while WFH?

But if you could and had the opportunity and your child minder let you down you would or you would consider it an option if it was possible. Parents who work have a responsibility to their kids , and op has a child minder who let her down, no fault. No wrong doing on anyone's part.. its just life. Some understand if its possible (and it sounds like it might be as a one off) is a good thing. Op just needs to talk to her boss and get the ok not mumsnet really.

So othrg people have to take calls for you because you dont have childcare, if everyone is fine with it that is up to them

But if you can't take calls how much other work can you do with children around? Basically you want to be paid the same for less work?

What a prick I bet he felt.

Yeah I couldn’t provide proof of childcare every day of the week. My youngest is in nursery 3 days a week, but spends two days with my in laws. I couldn’t prove that though, I guess I could ask them to sign something.

On the issue of men, a friend of mine used to have her toddler looked after by her mother a couple of days a week. But the mother looked after the toddler at my friend’s house (obviously took him out etc, but was based at the house). Her manager wasn’t happy about this, said her child needed to actually be out of the house if she was wfh. He backed down when it was pointed out that a few of her male colleagues had toddlers and SAHWs who they weren’t expected to kick out of the house when working from home.

Yes I think from school age, most children should be able to do it (not if there are additional needs that make it harder obviously). I’ve had to wfh with my DD there. She was in reception and there was an issue with the school fire alarm - it was just on and they couldn’t switch it off, so 10 mins before the start of school we find out school is closed. No time to find any other childcare, so she stayed home with me. She watched far more tv than I’d allow on any other day, but basically it was fine, and she was capable of being quiet for a bit when necessary. My manager was aware and fine with it as a one off, and I had the email from the school if he’d wanted to check that this was a legitimate, last minute issue that I couldn’t do anything about.

It would have been far more inconvenient to my manager for me to be completely off that day and do no work, than to be a bit less productive & responsive during the day, and make up some time in the evening.

I'm much slacker than most people on here and even I don't think this is OK without approving it first.

If you can't do the phones, can you really and truly do everything else? Surely this is more a case of "I'm going to have to take half a day off - I should still be able to keep an eye on my inbox but that's about it"

Talk to your manager. My work's pretty understanding of childcare falling through. I usually tell my manager that I'll see how I go and maybe get a half day's work done and put in for half a day's leave after. Mine is the kind of work that stalls if you take a day off and we have timeframes to meet so it's better if I can log on intermittently to push it along than just leave it undone for a day.

Missing part of your duty isn't ideal but it sounds like a small part for one day.

How on earth do you provide mandatory proof of childcare? My husband has days off during the week or he is with his grandparents....

Plenty of people do their job half arsed, children or not. The amount of chatting that goes on in a workplace probably takes up far more time.

^ this. Work is work, not paid childcare

It's absolutely a reverse.

The reasonable thing to do would have been to offer your manager the choice. "I can't take calls because of the noise but I can keep on top of emails/catch up in the be evening. Or, as I can't do all my duties, I can take the day off as last minute annual leave. Which would you prefer?"

Ah fair enough. I don't really work with anything confidential.

You are paid to work not look after your child, so either ask for the day off or find alternative childcare

its CF like you you get wfh a bad name

You need to take the calls if that's what they're paying you to do

No you take unpaid parental leave. Surely shouldn't be working with no childcare. Depends on age of child though. Would maybe be ok 10 upwards.

Any ‘solution’ that impacts your usual day to day responsibilities decided on by you individually without the agreement of your manager is unreasonable

meaning you were working from home with a child running around and shouting etc

And there would endeth your working day if you were on my team. I'd make you take annual leave until you had childcare sorted.

If I were managing someone that WFH and as a one off had to have the children at home but they were broadly able to work (eg doing office work with kids broadly occupied but might be interrupted more that day than usual). I would be ok with that…as a one off. But what you are describing is that your job is purely to login to a phone system and take sporadic calls, which you are proposing not to do at all due to the background noise of children. This is obviously not ok as you won’t be doing ANY work. Unfortunately in that instance then you’d have to take a day holiday or dependants leave.

You would be crazy to take the word of strangers on this. What is your work policy? That's all that matters.

I had to performance manage one of my team who had a baby and arranged no childcare! It was unreal that she thought it was acceptable to do this! I get that it’s annoying, but if you can’t do your job due to lack of childcare that has implications on the business..

I wonder if men are being asked to produce mandatory proof of childcare?

What does that even look like if a SAHP or relative is looking after said child?

Is this your situation or a colleges situation. If someone is unable to perform their job/duties then they need to arrange childcare or take the day off as dependency leave. Unless the manager is happy for the person to not take calls but makes sure other tasks are being done

well it would be any child needing childcare but also there are also gdpr issues. we have to work away from others and not overheard etc.

If the children are so young they can’t be quiet for phone calls then they probably need active parenting and the parent shouldn’t be WFH.

Some of our admins do their "offline" work with children around, but if they have to make calls or be on Teams, they're expected to be in an environment that is a) professional and b) confidential (it's healthcare) so that is incompatible with having children around. Ditto the trainers who do online training. If they can manage to juggle their offline work with childcare, they can do that, work flexi, etc. But if they are on calls, or delivering training for a customer, it's no kids in the background. They wouldn't show up for an on site gig with kids in tow, so its not OK to do it online.

Mostly, we trust people to be adults and make the appropriate arrangements so they can show up with full professionalism and focus when it's required.

On the odd occasion, people would cover a meeting or session if someone had a sick child or childcare fall through. But if someone perpetually just didn't make childcare arrangements and just hoped the kids would stay quiet, that would be a different story.