Childless employee asking for flexible working

[sparechange]

I know this should probably go in the jobs section, but I would appreciate a range of views on this...

I work in a pretty small company managing a team of 2 employees. Both women, both doing the same job on a scared caseload sort of arrangement. Without giving too much away, it is following up on leads which come in, so some days are busy, others are quieter, depending on what has been passed to them by other people. They can't generate their own work when it is quiet or duck it when it is busy, if that makes sense.

Colleague A has a 3 year old daughter and when she came back to work after ML wanted to work 1 day a week from home, which she does.
We are all aware that she doesn't get much work done on that day, but her work is generally done each week, so no one minds too much.

B doesn't have any children, but has come to me to ask if she can have the same arrangement - working 1 set day a week from home. My initial reaction was 'no', but she has challenged me on it.

Her argument is quite simple - if there is no impact on the business by A working from home, then there should be no impact on her working from home as well.
Or if there is an impact, she should get a payrise to reflect that she does more work.

I'm stumped! We have a one-man band HR here, but she is more admin for things like payroll so I won't get anything more than her opinion.

How do I respond to this? I think she has made a good point, but I don't want this to blow up into something bigger, and am worried it is indicative of a bigger issue between A&B.

Help!

It's all about negotiation I think.

Would you just let B go, if she in effect said
"Give me A's conditions or I'm leaving." ?

Sounds like A is slightly more efficient, getting her work done in 4 and a bit days.

Yes, but B is doing part of her job in answering phones from the office when she isn't there, and thus B has less chance of doing her own work.

I dont agree with B that she should be given flex working just because A has it. The circumstances are totally different, under family friendly rights, A has a legal RIGHT to request flex working and for it to be considered. B does not as she has no children. That may or may not be fair but its the law. However, B is clearly cheesed off that A doesnt actually work at home - she is looking after her child. So really, A should be working a 4 day week. If she wants to work at home she should work and put her child in nursery or whatever (presumably like she does the other days)

but then altinkum - if you take that approach with how you reward employees, what's to stop someone demanding to work a 3 day week, be really efficient, and have a long weekend every week?

It's fine if you pay as per output, as has already been said, but normal offices don't work like that in my experience. If I get through my alloted customer caseload, I'm expected to work on professional development, industry reading, helping a colleague who is behind, being proactive at training others, etc.

True Lance, but if it's a "leads" type business won't this give B the opportunity to snaffle some juicy leads on that day ?

It's down to B to negotiate I feel.
If she's worth it she'll win.

I think you should have a frank discussion with B. I wonder if she actually wants to work from home, or just to maket he point that she thinks A gets a paid day off.

It might be her least preferred outcome to actually get the day working from home. I would think she's angling for a pay rise to be on 25% more than A because she "works" 25% more than A.

Totally agree she ought to have the same access to flexible working as A, despite what the law says. In terms of selling it to the managers you could point this out - e.g. "so what you're saying is that we deliberately discriminate positively for people with children? what's the business reason for that?"

Perhaps a better solution would be some sort of tracking mechanism to prove to B the workload is fair. Same number of cases of similar complexity sounds good to me. Maybe both could have flexible working and achieve this - so if B does want a day working from home that's fine, but if she wants an "easy day" of not really working whilst being at home then maybe compressed hours is a better solution.

If I was you I'd focus on the number of cases you expect a person paid full time to get through, and the requirement for someone to be in the office to take calls and queries. If B can meet those requirements she should be allowed to work as flexibly as she likes. If A has been given flexible working as a way of decreasing her caseload by the backdoor that's not fair - which I suspect is what B thinks.

Good luck! :)

I don't think you should allow her to look after her child on her working from home day.

I work my half day from home; because DH is there to look after DS2 (DS1 at school) My previous manager looked after her children whicl she worked from home (2 full days a week - she used to go to toddler groups and take her work mobile and got in trouble for it; she was given a fixed amount of time in which to make a permanant childcare arrangement.

I used to have a flexi work arrangement that allowed me to work from home on a Friday. Boys went to nursery which was near our home and I got loads of work done! I was also available to go into the office on a Friday if there was something urgent to deal with/cover for absence.

We relocated (stayed with same Company) but child care is now close to work not home and so it was not possible for me to work from home - would have wasted loads of time commuting to and from day care or had DS under my feet! Have now rearranged my hours so that I work longer in the week and have Friday off (33 hours rather than 37.5). I'm sure my colleagues would love to have every Friday off as well but can't

I work in a Company where they are family friendly and will consider requests for elder care responsibilities etc not just statutory but you can't have everyone picking and choosing their hours as the business won't function and you'll all be out of jobs.

You do need to address the work done by A at home - people need to feel that they are being treated fairly.

Our admin compressed her hours and it is great - she has an hour either end of the day when she can do the stuff she needs peace and quiet for.

But how can anyone work while looking after a child. The two are mutually exclusive unless you work in childcare/are self employed, I would have thought.

I am very surprised that A has been granted the right to work from home on a day where she is also the carer.

All of my friends who have requested a change in their working hours after returning from ML have either a) officially dropped to 4 days per week, for reduced pay b) are doing 5 days in 4 or c) are officially working a day from home, but must not be the carer and must be fully available by phone and email during the usual office hours. (They still benefit from that as they are home and near the childminder/nursery, so it's much easier to do the drop off and pick up.)

In all cases they were fortunate to have it granted because, as others have stated, employers have a duty to carefully consider their request, but no duty to automatically grant it. They could have said "this is the job, take it or leave it."

OTOH, a colleague of mine requested that she could leave at 4 PM two days per week (we close at 5 PM), using up lieu or staggering holidays. They would only grant one day as it was deemed too disruptive to the team for her to regularly leaving early and for others to do all the last minute work that inevitably rolls in at 4:45 pm (IE meaning we'd all stay til 5:30) and closing up duties as well. She was cross but understood.

It is simply not possible to properly work from home and look after a young DC.

I think A should be either be told she must have the child in care, or else work 5 days over 4, or officially drop to 4 days.

Also A could do more telephone answering when she's there to balance her day off at home.

If it were my company, I would be inclined to:

a. clarify the working from home versus flexible working policies, as others have identified.
b. make it clear that I had legal obligations to consider flexible working for those with dependants, but that any other arrangements were going to be made on a discretionary, ad hoc basis.
c. Say to the employee that she could make a formal application with a plan of what she was going to achieve in work terms, and how, and I woudl consider it.
d. Say yes as a means of hanging onto her, subject to her getting through a specified amount of work.

At the end of the day it's actually a perk if there's no legal underpinnings, and that needs to be made clear.

PS Perfectly possible for calls to be redirected to someone's home, by the way ...

Babyheave makes a very good point. Company needs to tackle the A issue as well as the B issue.

I would let the childless employee have a day as long as it is a different day to the aprent.

WRt to the working from home bit- personally (and we do have a business) if the output was eual i would assume that employee is working at full throttle evenings or other times and let it go; should the output drop I would jump on it immediately though. If you ahd her if the office and her output dropped becuase she cut back on the 'extras' you'd be no better off and would likely lose an employe who must be OK as she was worth fidning a compromise to retain.

I 'work' (my MA wrting) with kids in the house and can manage it fine- it's a PITAA but the only person who suffers that is me.

Agree with everyone else. I think you need to find out urgently what the company's legal responsibilities and liabilities are for the employee who is "working" from home whilst looking after her child. This is a) absolutely not fair and b) I'm almost certain she won't be insured - what about her health and safety risk assessments for her desktop/computer/chair etc? You need to have a frank meeting with A and either offer her compressed hours, so that her day at home is actually a day off, or offer B the same working from home deal. Professionally I'd say go with compressed hours for A - she's currently taking the piss and you need to deal with it.

"Why would B do plenty of work from home, if A does no work from home and still gets paid woahwoah?

B isnt stupid. If you read between the lines of her argument shes saying 'give me a pay rise or give me the day off like A'"

And to be fair it's hard to disagree with her.
B's going to be in the office so she'll be the one who has to pick up any little bits of extra work that are unforeseen or seen as too minor to be considered when awarding A flexible working. She'll be the one answering the phones for her department etc.
If I had to be in 5 days a week and my colleague was essentially afforded the right to get her work done in 4 days and then have a day off I'd be really fucked off if I wasn't given the same option.

In dealing with A, the Company is on a surer footing when talking with B

Sparkle:
Professionally I'd say go with compressed hours for A - she's currently taking the piss and you need to deal with it.

But perhaps A has (sensibly) changed her contract to the current arrangement.

ie She has taken the piss.:o

I am that anyone works from home with a 3 year old there. I work from home 4 days a week, I work while DD is at school and then finish up anything that needs finishing when she is in bed. I am on call 24/7 though so do have to make phone calls/send e-mails while DD is at home.

I think A definitely needs to be pulled up, if I were B I'd be very pissed off that my colleague was getting a doss day every week and being paid the same as me. Seems grossly unfair.

Wow, thanks everyone!
I didn't think I'd get so many replies in the short time it took me to get a sarnie...

I think you are (nearly) all right.

This needs to be tackled is 2 sections. We need to do a review of A's working arrangements and have a frank chat with B about her motivation for asking for this. The more I think about it, the more I'm wondering if this isn't just a roundabout way for her to draw attention to the situation and make us look at it properly.

I also think I need to have a better chat with the powers that be, because I would be amazed if we had anything like a formal working from home/flexible working policy as to my knowledge, A is the first person to do anything non-standard with her hours.

Thanks again for all your input. It has helped me make some sense of a very situation

Glad it helped.

The thing about compressed working hours reminded me of my last employed job.

basically they got a bit tired of everyone having flexible and the oike but equally only employed [parents (parenting charity, not a weird policy at all- though aprents was rightly an inclusive definition in practice).

Anyhow what happened is we all got a day off a week but our workloads stayed the same and they ahd to be completed whatever. Non of us were allowed the same day off, so there was always someone about for emergencies but it didn;t fall on any one person, and if someone was off we had to so our share of making up the cover: so in a team of 2 A would have to cover b's day off wehn she took AL, and vice versa.

In practice it worked well- happier employees, all covered Al and of course we had a reduced entitlement to AL as well (not that it mattered if we weren't in anyway). Equally though we all knew if dropped the ball all the others would lose too.

Worked very well indeed

^Would you just let B go, if she in effect said
"Give me A's conditions or I'm leaving." ?^

I'd like to know the answer to that question too.

Does 'B' have elderly parents she is caring for.

Or maybe she just needs a bit more flexibilty with her days worked.

I have to say if A is 'working from home' then she needs to be doing so, not looking after her child.

I don't think it matters what B does with her time - to me it's about fairness.

If A does a week's work, and one of those days she gets to spend at home and not answer the phones, why shouldn't B get to spend one of her days at home and not answer the phones, as long as she gets an equal amount of work done over the week?

Equal work for equal pay, no?