Child care issues and work

[AuntJane]

A colleague - who has two young children and a husband - works three days a week. Approximately once a fortnight she phones in after 09:00 to say she needs the day off as she has issues with child care.

At what point is it appropriate for the employer to say that she needs to make other, more reliable, arrangements?

Depends on the HR policy. My employer for example will make staff use holiday, which is likely what she is doing, and unpaid after that. No disciplinary involved as it isn’t sickness or unauthorized.

At my work you have to take those days as holiday - is it the same at yours? If so there isn't much you can do as she isn't getting any extra time off (albeit I appreciate it's annoying from your POV to have to pick things up at short notice).

Of her last seven scheduled working days she has worked two, and phoned in on the day five times.

In my job she'd be sacked by now pretty much unless she has a very specific reason why this childcare issue would happen so often,what exactly is the issue??

wouldn't work at my line of work. How does it impact on the business if she is failing to show up so often?

I'm sure she is very frustrated to maybe she needs support to find good reliable child care it can be tricky although if never had a problem

Depends on what the issues are. Her kid(s) could be getting ill and, depending on the setting, the childcarer may not take them. I was off for half of January last year due to DS picking up every bug under the sun!

My employer is very fair to employees. We are allowed up to 4 weeks leave for these kind of emergencies (unpaid). Feels like it isn't an emergency if it happens so frequently.
Maybe there is an issue you are unaware of child sick or grandparent or childminder ill. My friends childminder became very unreliable when her father's health deteriorated. My friend sympathised but how long could her employer put up with it? she didn't want to, but had to move to nursery. Took a while to come to that conclusion though, whole time upset for childminder and feeling guilty about work.

*depending on the illness, not setting!

We can work from home if there's a problem getting in - as long as we have our work computer at home. Whether it's trains, snow, sick child, sick dog whatever.

If we don't have our work computer then it's annual leave taken, or that's certainly what happened when a colleague hadn't got his during snow .