Or are employers being crap towards working parents?

[UntamedShrew]

I just wanted to get a sense of if my employer is being particularly shit or if others are in the same boat. There has been no adjustment in workload, in fact it’s higher than ever. I can see why and I’m happy to do my bit but...
I work part time (2 days a week) but it’s currently more like 4, as reacting to the crisis means there is more to do.
I have been asked to take a pay cut even though I’m already only earning for part time hours so earning a fraction of full time (male!) colleagues.
Not one person from HR or my boss has checked in to see if I’m ok.
Not one person from HR has checked in on my (quite young and in less secure financial positions) colleagues.
I work in the City so any cost savings won’t be used to save jobs, it’ll be to protect profits.
I feel like I’m letting my children down to slave for an unappreciative boss, as I’m having to largely leave them to school themselves - and they are too young to do so (7 and 10).

AIBU and should I feel happy to have any job frankly, or am I justified in feeling exploited and undervalued? As I said would love to know if others are having a similar experience or if any other firms have put in place any decent measures to look after staff wellbeing.

If you're being asked to work 4 days instead of 2 for a pay cut then you need to say no. Forcing you to do that would likely amount to part-time workers discrimination as they couldn't realistically ask the same of the FT staff unless they are instead taking a much bigger pay cut.
But it has nothing to do with you being a 'working parent'. Just stand up for yourself re hours and pay. They can legitimately ask if you would take a pay cut for the benefit of the business assuming others are asked the same (proportionately) or they can ask you to work extra hours for the same reason and increase the pay.
As for "homeschooling" don't get me started - there is no requirement to homeschool. I have 3 children at home (3,6 and 8) and both DH and I work full time at home so there is very little "homeschooling" going on. Which is fine!

You do realise it isn’t HR’s job to check in on your team for you? HR are currently dealing with furloughing people, unfurloughing people, understanding the complex rules around the Coronavirus job retention scheme which surprisingly isn’t just paying out 80% of everything everyone earns. HR are not your work mums. Their job is to support you to do your job, not do it for you. I understand it’s difficult for you, but maybe approach HR for some support with how to speak to your line manager about their lack of support, your concerns about your work loads a d your lack of ability to support your team. If you are feeling like you can’t support your team maybe your boss is feeling the same way?

Do you normally have set days? What have your bosses said when you’ve pointed out that you’re working on days you wouldn’t normally? Or if you’re asked to work on those days have you said that you don’t? I don’t really understand I’m afraid

It's a difficult situation all round but the other side of the coin is that EVERYDAY i'm getting dumped with loads of extra work .Moved to different locations doing work not in my job role to provide cover for parents who are getting full pay to stay at home for childcare. We are key workers so been offer child care but they don't want to send them (there choice and get that)
Not helped by a few taking the piss one guy his wife changed her hours so finishes a 2pm he's home in the morning he starts work at 2pm but can't work full 7 1/2 hour shift as wants to be home at 6.30 to put his kids to bed ( his wife is there and kids have no issues) leaving us to pick the rest of his work up .

You say you’re senior level so I wonder how that works in terms of hours. In my City organisation senior people do not have set hours as such- there are core office hours in the contract but it also says clearly that you are expected to work the hours necessary to get the job done. We don’t have TOIL or overtime payment, but work done is reflected in high pay and bonuses and people are expected to be sensible about pushing back on what can be done if it gets to unsustainable levels. It is a tricky balancing act when you are part time (I am) but it isn’t as simple as saying you’ll only work the hours you are paid for. (I’m talking about under normal working conditions here by the way). I think that is maybe why you the info you gave about extra hours has not been acknowledged. Do you mean literally ignored, or brushed off, or something else?

One thing that strikes me is that you say you don’t feel you have enough time to manage your own team effectively. Is that something you could highlight to your own direct report? My feeling is that raising concerns about your inability to do the job properly is more likely to be taken on board than general statements about hours. Similarly, can you put together a list of what you think needs to be done and what you can actually achieve in the time you have available (including marking out some home Ed time for the kids as unavailable) and then discuss with your manager? Perhaps some tasks/projects can be ditched until things go back to normal?

One final observation is that City management is heavily populated by men with SAHM wives or grown up children. It simply hasn’t crossed their minds that people they work with might have extra responsibility at home as a result of lockdown, because for them it’s all about locking themselves in the home office and the wife bringing the kids in with a cup of tea and a biscuit twice a day. Seriously, if I read one more email about how nice it is to spend all this extra time with the kids....

Some employers are being crap full stop. DH's produced furlough agreements for part timers that said they had to have permission before taking other jobs whilst on furlough, even if the job was outside their contracted hours. They just wouldn't have it that if they didn't have power to stop people working in their own time before lockdown, they can't claim it now. Eventually all the part timers refused to sign the agreements and the employers had to cave in otherwise they would have to pay a fortune in redundancy or unfair dismissal claims - but of course it's done an awful lot of damage to employee relationships which will be hard to repair.

You do need to stand up for yourself about the hours. I also agree it’s not HRs job to check on people. Can’t you arrange daily calls with the team to check in.

I realise daily calls won’t work if you do two days. But if you do four half days that would work and could work around your kids.
Equally though you have to stop working when you’re meant to.

I have been asked to take a pay cut even though I’m already only earning for part time hours so earning a fraction of full time (male!) colleagues.

So regardless of whether they have actually asked you to take a pay cut and whether you do or don't agree with that, you seem to think that its unfair that as a part time member of staff you are earning less that your full time colleagues (not sure why you feel the need to express that they are male)....? surely you don't think you should be earning exactly the same for your reduced hours....?

I find it really odd that someone who (seemingly from the post) is a senior manager, is on Mumsnet asking what is/isn't fair...….
Speak to HR, speak to your boss...… if this is your reaction to a work issue, before you have even tried to speak to anyone at work, im surprised you have made it to the lofty heights of 'senior management'!!!

Just work the hours and days you usually do, check up on your team yourself could just be a quick email. Don't even look at anything work related when you're not working if bosses mention it remind them you don't work Tuesday etc

Mine are generally excellent with policy for working families etc. They have kindly highlighted the various existing options for flexibility. There is loads of support ( unfortunately in form of extra grp calls though) so it's good effort....
Take pay cut/hr cut - not really possible
Take unpaid leave - same as above
Work flexibly - hooray I thought - but caveat is to do it inside core hours.... what does that mean!

So if you are solo parent there is effectively no option.

Due to depth/ quality of work I can actually achieve ( every hour probably counts as 30 mins if I'm lucky) I have to spread my day over 13 hrs to get any where near enough done. Makes it worse for my young two boys and it's fucking exhausting. I have pre-existing MH issues too. I will be lucky to survive this alive tbh.

Sorry I wasn’t clear - I do daily calls with my team, I just don’t feel I know how to handle the mental health thing well / properly. Obviously I ask if they are ok etc but I’m not the best at this kind of thing!

I was interested if this was representative of others’ experiences with the hours / pay / contact issues. Thanks for the constructive replies.

I have been asked to take a pay cut even though I’m already only earning for part time hours so earning a fraction of full time (male!) colleagues

Sounds more like old fashioned institutional sexism.

wife bringing the kids in with a cup of tea and a biscuit twice a day. Seriously, if I read one more email about how nice it is to spend all this extra time with the kids Can I just say that has not been our experience in video meetings with clients at a senior level. The kids often make an appearance, with lots of "stop doing that" "get down" - man moving off camera appearing back 5 minutes later, nightmare stories about toilet training, moving meeting times because of family juggling, this is the norm for some people - these are mostly with men, not women because it's a male dominated industry - if you have small kids - the current situation is going to be very challenging. The work still needs to get done though.
According to the people at Freakonomics - the most important thing you can do whilst everyone works at home is check in with your team everyday.

Can I just say that has not been our experience in video meetings with clients at a senior level.

Same here both in my own global corporate and our clients (fortune 500 mostly).

Children and pets are regular features of meetings, also in a male dominated industry.

I have worked for my employer for over 20 years and I have 2 DS 4&8 both at school.
I work to pt 27 hours per week to work around school hours. My boss is the best you could ask for, DS4 had cough week before lockdown. On 16/3 I then had to keep both off school for 2 weeks. Office busy, food industry. I was just about to go back and DS8 got the cough then DP. Ended up taking 5 weeks off and I wasn't even ill myself. It was a horrible time though thinking they all had it. Very worrying. They may have done I will probably never know. Anyway I got full pay the whole time, I offered to wfh but they said no look after your family. Now back going to the office with great social distancing we work 2 days one week, then 3 the next split into 2 teams -,still on full pay. My boss checks on us regularly to make sure we are happy. I am so lucky. My DP is furloughed but when he is recalled I know my boss and I will work around childcare. Long term there is worry if business starts to slow but for now it's good. All bosses and companies should all work like ours. They are richer for looking after their staff.

I'd only be working 2 days. They can't make you do 4 days worth of work without paying you for it.

"unless you've told them that your working extra hours, then they won't know."

Really? Is it secret work? If you're on email or any internal system, people will see you're logged in and presumably receive emails of phone calls from you so would know when you're working. If the work is less communicative, then surely the output would show when someone's working twice as much.

Our HR are available for advice but wouldn’t be ringing people. That’s a team leaders job.
We are treating people well, I think. Plenty of opportunities for people to offer skills outside the immediate organisation, but entirely voluntary.
Volunteering hours counted into workload despite us being very busy due to Covid.
Flexibility around child care - some working very flexibly with nobody counting the hours. Just a minimum level of staying in touch and administration required.
Contact group calls, professional interest and learning calls, the odd quiz and chat call, all optional.
Activities for children such as weekly story time and bake off, again optional. Tutoring in some subjects by people with specific expertise such as sciences and maths, a French conversation group for staff and families.

We’re mainly homeworkers anyway, so have good infrastructure and experience of what the issues can be.

"You do realise it isn’t HR’s job to check in on your team for you? HR are currently dealing with furloughing people, unfurloughing people"

How do you know OP's work is doing that?
I agree that it's the line manager's role though.

V tempting to stand up for myself and only do my 2 days but the threat of redundancy is looming. It’s difficult.
I personally like seeing the kids and pets in the background on calls, for light relief! But might like to see fewer calls full stop...

Weve had to take on extra hours, we are getting paid for the extra hours.
Were also being given an extra full weeks pay.
Everyone's direct manager has to make contact with them once a week to see how they are doing. Very senior people are making sure this is happening by sending an email out across the board where we have to vote to let them know the level of contact we have had.
Regardless of all of the above, we are still being put under massive pressure and a colleague was allowed to take time off this week (paid) and she was really struggling.

This sounds very unfair and as if they want you now to work full time for less than 2 days pay. Is it the sort of company, which will only address things if pushed in their faces?

Wow cherry pavlova that sounds amazing - what sector if you don’t mind me asking?

To answer furlough question, there haven’t been any.