If you WFH with DC present....

[Partedinsurprise]

....how is your employer supporting you? Are you furloughed? Flexible hours? Just expected to work your regular hours? Reduced hours for reduced pay? Annual leave?

I work in HR for a charity and obviously we are all home based for now (we did a lot of home working pre covid too). Almost all our staff have school aged children and we are essentially operating a "do what you can" policy where we are not expecting anyone to "make up" their hours at weird times or reduce their hours and get paid less. Last lockdown plenty of us including me did things like working 6am-10am and then 7pm-11pm or similar to get our "hours" in but it just isn't sustainable any more. I feel at burnout stage even with an extremely flexible and understanding employer so I am interested to know how others whose employers are less flexible and understanding are coping?

My husband has no flexibility. He has to work his hours and be logged into the system for allocated times which they monitor. No starting/finishing early, no being able to take 5 minutes to see to the children.

My company are treating me a bit better. As long as our allocated work is completed and we attend key meetings (tend to be less than three a week) then it's up to us how we organise it.

I'm not supporting others quite as much as I would normally because all my built in project flexibility is being eaten up by interruptions but I haven't failed any of my deadlines yet.

The message to us was to do your normal workload, plus extra due to not having the commute to the office.

My organisation were incredibly flexible last time around. The amount of staff in the office was halved. If you had taken up a keyworker space then you could finish at 3pm when the schools finished. There wasn't really any expectation for those working from home with children to do much. Also, the office opened until 8pm so it meant someone always had to 9am-8pm if it was the parents turn.

This time around there has been a kick back from the other day. A lot have pretty much refused to do the extra hours and the extra work. They have said they were stressed previously, it was unsustainable and their mental and physical health couldn't cope this time around. This means that almost all of that flexibility can't be offered this time.

There is no expectation to make up hours or take annual leave or unpaid leave to look after our families.
It's a very small business which was set up by family focussed blokes who run it as such. As long as the job gets done and the company isn't suffering, then we can just do what we can when we can.

My DH is wfh full time. His employer is fairly flexible but he does need to do all his hours I work part time and need to be alone in a room on the phone the whole time to do my job. So cannot home school at all on those days. I could tell my employer I can't work but then I would get zero pay. I can't get furloughed either. It's very frustrating as I actually work for the government (HM Courts & Tribunals Service) but they say I am neither employed nor self employed so I got no help for 2 months without work last year and couldn't / can't get furlough.

Husband and I both WFH. Kids are both KS1. Employers favourite phase is ‘we look after our staff’.

Reality is - we do our jobs as before, jobs get prioritised over kids, we work 12-14 hour days to ensure job gets done, we juggle the kids/work as best we can, we both burnt out last time and utterly dread it this time. Oh and we still have Covid pay cuts.

We’ve both had furlough requests refused.

He's letting me cover my 35 hours any time during the week. It's all in theory as I'm expected to be on slack during working hours.

We had an email saying 'do ask for flexibility if you need it, but we cannot guarantee'

It's a brand new job. I've obviously not asked for flexibility, pretty stressful.

Our public sector organisation is making staff well-being a priority, encouraging flexibility etc etc, but there is zero reduction in workload, especially if you are in a management position. I am the most junior member of the team that is overseeing the response to covid and the senior team are woefully ignorant of how the situation is really impacting on parents. I have given up speaking up about it because I fear being seen as a complainer. I have been catching up on work this afternoon as there’s no way I could do it last week and I will be starting at 6am tomorrow.

I’m a key worker for the NHS so obviously have to work my hours as normal.
DH works for a bank and they’ve said work what you can, in reality he’s working FT and trying to homeschool our 3 DC. I’m usually around part of the day to either start them off with work or help them send it to the teachers.
Our eldest had spinal surgery on Thursday and is still in hospital, DH work still made him attend meetings in between holding me up on the phone as I had to wait on my own in hospital as only one parent is allowed to be there. I’m furious as he asked for the day off and they said no. Last lockdown they were much more flexible with his hours.