Bring Your Child To Work Day - yes or no?

[MumsnetJobsTeam]

Many companies have Bring Your Child To Work Day, where parents can show their children where they work and give them some experience of the workplace.

On one hand, these days can be an opportunity for children to learn, as well as find out more about their parents' lives. They can also make parents feel more supported in the workplace as their children are positively acknowledged and encouraged.

However, some say Bring Your Child To Work Day could be challenging for those who have lost a child, or are struggling to conceive. There are also some who think the practice isn't worth the potential drop in productivity - particularly for childless colleagues who are distracted, whether they like it or not.

We'd like to get your thoughts on Bring Your Child To Work Days. Are they a fun, useful opportunity, or something that should be approached with caution? And if so, what could companies do instead?

God no. Work experience, yes, very useful.

Everyone piling in with babies, toddlers and teenagers? No.

Yet another reason to be happy I now work remotely.

I think it's good for children to see where their parent(s) disappear off to everyday. My company does this but it's only part of the day and there are age restrictions. I was ttc for 8 years but for me personally, I had no issue with colleagues bringing children as they used to talk about them so much (had photos on desks etc) and I felt I knew them a bit already.

Nope, not for me.

I recently had to go down to our head office and had DS2 off from school on a training day. He came along and behaved beautifully, charmed the directors, giggled while he played on a spinny chair, drew a couple of pictures for people to pop on their walls and made everyone coo over his lovely manners. That kind of miracle wouldn't happen again in a million years so I'd never risk it again.

Not something I'm in favour of, in part because of the name, surely it should be take your child to work.

I'd love it! However my job involves visiting lots of other organisations, who might not want children bringing in.

No. It would be massively disruptive. No work would be done that day and non parents would be required to entertain or be unable to work in open plan offices due to disruption.

Many parents including me have adult children. So a bit irrelevant. Nothing against work experience or teenagers visiting of shadowing - my org does outreach visits to schools about our work (large Govt dept).

Back in the 90s when I was growing up there as a national "Take your Daughter to Work day", I think as a means of encouraging girls to think about careers.

Same for me. Except it fell completely flat on its face as my Dad was unemployed at the time. School organised for me to go on a group trip to the HP factory.

My current role doesn't really lend itself to me bringing them in.

I take my kids in the office to say hello and see where I sit for 5 minutes at the end of the day sometimes. That's all I can do really. I'm a sw in cp - I can't exactly show them the families I work with though in some ways I wish I could. They can see my desk but it doesn't tell them much.
I soeak openly about neglect and how some children can't live witv their parents though

I would have quite liked it in my old office, and it would have been quite appropriate - media work with a focus on children's issues. We could definitely have got them working on something, whatever age they were. I wouldn't have minded overseeing it actually.
Right now, "bring your children to work" would involve me ushering them through the kitchen into the backroom where they could watch me typing and making phone calls all day.
I can understand the difficulty though, it is quite divisive - there will be many jobs where it is hard to accommodate children and many children will have parents in those kinds of jobs, or parents who aren't working, or increasingly parents who work from home. And on the other side in the workplace there will be lots who are not parents who will find it annoying.

Also, just to add, it doesn't do much for social mobility - the type of jobs children will be learning about are the jobs their parents do.

No. With the exception of work experience for older children. I can't think of anything worse than bring your child to work day - work is my break from parenting. I would much rather have better attitudes towards caring responsibilities and flexibility if your child is unwell than a token day of "acceptance"

DS (2) is lovely and adorable, but I would never bring him into a corporate environment for anything other than a brief handover (DH works in the same building).

I haven't worked anywhere that has done this but I did go to work with my Dad when I was a kid and it was really good and definitely something I'd support. I think the productivity argument is a bit daft - it's only one day (or half day). The PP whose company offers work experience pre A level sounds fantastic.

Not suitable for DH's job (driving instructor).

I'm sure they'd be able to find stuff for DS(14) to do where I work. Lots of facilities / post room / admin work he could do.

An excuse for a half day in my experience.

Turn up, children get bored, parent can’t work - so after introductions and a walk around etc they Leave for a very early lunch or just head off

My office are having a bring your parents to work day although they did say you could bring someone else if you don’t have parents .

It suspect it achieves nothing more than antagonise colleagues who don’t have children or didn’t bring theirs in

I sometimes wish they'd have a 'bring your partner' to work day, because my husband thinks my job is much easier than it actually is.

I’d be right up for a bring your dog to work day if it meant I could play with the dogs

It doesn’t work on a personal basis. Bring your child to work - unless you don’t have a job, or work from home, or your job isn’t suitable ... DH and I work in the same place, we couldn’t take DD to work. Doesn’t work for society - as others have said, you’re just going to perpetuate inequality, sending privileged/underprivileged kids to see what their parents do.

What our work does do though - for individuals, family days every now and then at weekends when kids (and partners, parents etc) can get a peek; for society - loads of outreach stuff.

I’m all for more organisations getting involved (or doing more) with things like insight days, work experience and internships. ‘Bring your child to work’ sounds like an insight day, but seems pointless. It is your own child - they will get to know a bit about your work through you anyway, whether or not they ever actually go to your place of work. So if you have a senior professional role for instance, they already have that benefit. It will be other children not exposed to those careers in their personal life that will benefit from seeing a different environment. Likewise in other ways, eg children seeing all manner of different roles, vocations, sectors etc.

Basically if I take my children to work with me in my public sector office role (which I wouldn’t want to do!), they just get to see ‘live’ a bit of what they can already learn from me. Whereas their experience would be broadened by being able to also find out about roles in engineering, medicine & healthcare, education, banking... and so on.

Also, plenty of children will have parents who are unemployed or whose employers would not entertain this - I find these types of things tend to be done by large corporates and some public sector organisations. So again, only really of ‘benefit’ (in a manner of speaking) to those whose parents are in these jobs anyway. It could make another child in different circumstances feel negative.

My DP used to work at L'Oréal and they did this very well. Took a whole floor over with a magician, play area, movie and party food. And as you might expect the most amazing face painters ever.

My only gripe was they gave my 3 year old a long lasting lipstick which she used herself. Ended up looking like the joker for about 3 days 😀

It worked well to bring a bit of the wider person to work and helped everyone see each other beyond ' work persona'. Also sent a good message of inclusivity to parents, in a workplace that was often not family friendly.

God no, sounds like an absolutely awful idea. Disruptive for everyone in the building - the parents will do very little all day and everyone else will just be distracted by the kids

God no. I'm childfree which doesn't help but I just don't get the point. Work experience for teens, yes, but not just kids hanging around the office.

Tbh if my work did this I think I'd take annual leave