to think that if you work from home one day a week, you should be flexible about which day?

[MrsSchadenfreude]

And not insist on doing it the same day every week, when 5 weeks out of 6, there is a meeting that you are supposed to attend and it just gets dumped on one of your colleagues? If it was someone doing a four day week, fair enough. But if you are "working", surely you should be in the office, doing your job not offloading a chunk of it onto someone else because you are "working from home."

IME I have found as well that working flexibly and not going to those meetings means that your career stalls anyway - thats the sacrifice being made so although you are having to do that meeting for her she probably wont advance as quickly as you.

YABU.

Arrange meetings for another day. My normal work from home day was Monday - I actually worked 10 hours over the weekend and kept track of emails on my whf day. A minority of (male) 'colleagues' bitched endlessly but worked far less hours than me over the working week.

It makes no sense for a manager to allow 4 people to be off on the same day and so this is where your family member should register a complaint.

Not everyone has family support. People that work flexible hours and part time are a valuable part of the workforce.

Anybody regardless of their family situation should be work from home and be treated like an adult until proven different. It's 2011...

No reason that just because you're not physically present you can't attend a meeting. Perhaps you just need to get creative? Pretty much every team I've ever worked with has been spread around the world, and those not in the office Conference call into meetings - it's easy these days, and with webcam they can even see what's going on/you can see them.

Compo "In response to your question to me: people work from home and still have child care in place

so if I work every Friday from home so my mil can have dcs 9-3 for example then I can't swap that day to Tuesday when mil is at work and dcs are in nursery 8am to 6pm which is what happens when I'm in the office

so right back at yer"

Compo, that is an unusual arrangement. A lot of nurseries structure their fees so that it is cheaper to put a child in ft than 4 days a week. Go check their fee schedule. You might save yourself some dosh and get more flexibility.

Chunky, good point about the colleague conferencing in. She should at least be doing that.

I work from home every Monday. And yes it has to be Monday because that is the day when DH can't pick DS2 up from school.

I can see why it might be difficult for her. If you've got primary school aged children they might be signed up for child minders/ friends / sports clubs 4 fixed days a week and I don't think it would be unreasonable to WFH on the 5th (with a 15 minute school run break which you then make up) - it's entirely possible to work productively for an hour and a half while the DCs watch CBBC and have a snack downstairs.

Not sure what the answer would be in those circumstances though.

Orm/Dilys, can you use afterschool club or arrange a playdate away on that day?

I can only put this in terms of my own organisation, in which working from home is a privilege and not a right. It's a privilege that many people treat as a right and one I freely admit to availing myself of on a regular basis, but I do at least always 'ask' my boss beforehand, having been thoroughly pissed off by having had my staff 'telling' me they were going to work from home in the past. I also had to break a long-held arrangement with a member of my staff where he worked from home on a particular day a week as it was just getting too difficult to arrange all meetings with a face-to-face need around the fact he wasn't in the office. NB I suspect he has reinstated the arrangement now I've moved on - but that's between him and his new line manager, nothing to do with me.

So if this was my organisation, I would recommend the colleague's line manager terminate the work from home day and agree it would be accommodated around work priorities.

In the OP's case, unless the colleague has an agreement with his/her boss that he/she is entitled to WFH on that day, and unless there is some reason why video or phone conference would not enable him/her to fulfil his/her own obligations, the colleague should be in the office. (Sorry, that sentence reads terribly but I noticed MrsSchadenfreude the gender of the colleague in question - nor should that be relevant!)

Lots of work can be done effectively from home but meetings are one of the tougher ones. The situation needs rethinking one way or another, IMHO.

YABU to think that she shouldn't have a fixed day to work at home. I know people who do this so they can have 1 day a week where they pick their primary children up from school instead of having them go to the after school club. It's not necessarily easy to swap days on a week by week basis.

However YANBU to not want to attend her meetings for her. If this meeting is a problem then she should either phone in or reschedule the meeting for another day. If neither or these can be done then I think it would be reasonable to ask her to permanently swap to another fixed day to work from home.

Either the colleague asks for the meeting to be rescheduled and goes, gives her appologies or swaps her WFH day.

If she has some childcare in place then she might be able to come in for the meeting anyway depending on the time. No excuse for constantly passing on your job to a colleague though.

It might not be possible to be flexible, depending on childcare or things at home.
Why not move the meeting, do it over the phone, or speak to the boss and swap some responsibilities so that your colleague isn't meant to attend any more? Give him/her something else to do instead.

Doesn't matter if they have a contract or agreement to WFH that day. The issue here is that their arrangement is impacting her ability to fulfil her duties and is forcing colleagues to take on extra to cover. That's not the point of flexible working At All and YANNNBU. I would be royally pissed off in your shoes MrsS so good for you for standing up to her.

Flex working in our office is on the understanding that it's done fairly and that no-one is disadvantaged by others' arrangements. I do sometimes ask colleagues to cover things for me but the arrangement is mutual, I cover their stuff to return the favour sometimes, and it's FAIR.

It's a meeting that involves people from 30 other organisations, so not an internal one which can be served by a conference call, or one which can be rearranged to deal with someone's wish to work from home.

It's an informal agreement, not in contract.

Childcare is not an issue - his wife is a SAHM.

If the WFH agreement is for a fixed day then meetings shouldn't be arranged for that day.

If it's not then they should be coming in or teleconferencing.

Would it be possible for them to do half a day in the office twice a week, or a shorter day, if childcare is an issue/they have another commitment not necessarily related to children?

Does the WFH agreement involve core hours when they must be available or is it just a case of do it whenever as long as the work is done?

They shouldn't be skiving meetings in any case. Either rearrange if come in just for that meeting.

X-posts

Do they go away for the weekend by any chance?

I think parents should be a lot more flexible and remember that they are being paid by their employer to work for them. Any time working from home or whatever should fit in (primarily) with the needs of the business.
Doesn't seem to work like that much these days...and it can be very difficult trying to schedule meetings around people (not just parents) who WFH regularly or who have to leave early every day to pick up kids from school.

There's a lot of competition for jobs these days and it doesn't look good when parents expect their employers to bend over backwards to accomodate their needs ALL the time.

Yes I could blue and would do, have done at times. But I would be a bit annoyed if I had to do it every week. By and large though people accommodate me if possible.

Wowser. So why does this person's boss tolerate this?! Has the boss ever been challenged on it?

I think it depends on the original arrangement with the employer.

I can well imagine a situation where a parent works from home one day a week in order to fulfill a regular weekly and non-negotiable commitment with a DC - a health care appointment, for example - and this is impossible to rearrange.

His wife probably does something else that day while he does the school run. You just have to be clear that you can't cover for him - why should you? The meeting is his problem not yours.

Yes, depends on original agreement. But as the employee is still working when at home then I don't see why she can't attend meetings on those days.

Needs to be reviewed by management.

Oh, is it a he?

MrsS - out of interest, is the day your colleague works from home a Wednesday?

OP you've done the right thing by saying you can no longer do it. It is his problem to address.

I'm a bit at the people who say they have to work at home on particular days to do a school run or due to their childcare arrangements unless that has been negotiated as part of their contract.