To ask for another week of furlough?

[Fasttrack321]

I was furloughed at the start of lockdown and have not been working since end of March. I have been looking after my 2 young children full time as my DP has been working full time. Luckily DP's job is secure and their employer is flexible with WFH.

My furlough pay is capped at the limit of £2,500 and has not been topped up so my income has been about half of my normal pay. I am very grateful to have been furloughed rather than lose my job.

My employer wrote to me on Friday and informed me my furlough was ending and I was expected back to work on Monday. I discussed this with my DP (who is classed as a key worker, not front line) as the kids are only in part time childcare. DS is 5 and in Reception, DD is 3 and in nursery 3 days per week.

My DP is working full time 9-5 and cannot change working hours this week at such short notice. So cannot do drop off and pick up for the children (nursery and school are about 15 minutes drive apart). DP also cannot WFH and look after DD who is 3 and needs constant supervision.

This week will be impossible to juggle, but from the following week we can manage with flexible working hours and the help of a grandparent.

AIBU in asking my employer to extend my furlough by one more week? I checked the government guidance and there is a specific provision for this which allows furlough for those with caring responsibilities. I would only want this for 1 additional week.

I am incredibly grateful my employer has asked me to return and I do want to return. I have been there years and have a good reputation for being one of their top employers and managers.

My only other option would be to use a weeks annual leave, but then I'd have none left for the rest of the year and summer holidays when I would need to take leave to cover childcare again.

Most of the company were furloughed and now being brought back bit by bit.

YABU - get back to work immediately.
YANBU - take an extra week furlough to sort your childcare out.

tighter....

Ah cross post. I see this is the case. Then you’re going to have to sort out the 2.5 days somehow if your employer won’t allow you to take AL etc. Have you looked into an emergency nanny?

Wow people are really nasty in this thread. I think you should not have mentioned your income. And also people are a bit exhausted from wfh and looking after children. So have lost the ability to see things which apply to them, eg they can work in the evenings, don't apply to everyone. If you'd said you were going back to work as a hospital cleaner it might have gone differently.

As someone has already mentioned furlough is arranged in 3 week blocks.

I have a member of staff coming back into work in a couple of weeks.

As a responsible manager I spoke to her before we put the wheels in motion to finish her furlough and she had 4 weeks notice in total.

Being told on a Friday you are expected back in work full time with no flexibility to working patterns on the Monday imo is completely unreasonable.

I worked with my employee to come to to an agreement on her return date based around her childcare requirements. She's going to be working reduced hours for the first 4-6 weeks while her child gets used to going back to nursery. Like most children (mine included) her child has become quite clingy during lockdown due to not seeing anyone else and so for the mental well-being of both my employee and her child I suggested she ease him back into nursery starting at a couple of days a week and working up to his normal full time contingent. She will be on full pay for those weeks she is working reduced hours. The reason I did this and was willing to be so flexible; she's a damn good employee and I don't want another company to snap her up!

I expect a lot from my staff, they all know it, but in return I am flexible with them. I find it swings both ways, if you want happy hardworking staff treat them with the respect and understanding they deserve.

OP you appear to be a very valued employee so I do think it's worth having a chat with your boss. With any luck You may just find they are much more open to your suggestion than many on this forum would have you believe.

As for all the posters giving OP a hard time over this I hope your own employers are more forgiving than you are - it's a sad state if an employer can't be flexible in times like this.

I agree @Chathamhouserules

Op, ask for the further week of furlough - we've been bringing back employees recently as thankfully things have started to pick up & one of the considerations of their return date has been childcare responsibilities. I have some guys returning tomorrow but quite a few can't return until Wednesday or next Monday due to their children & partners working etc.

In some cases we have left people on furlough & brought other individuals back instead if we really needed them by a certain date so if you're desperate to go back be aware that that might be an outcome.

Either way, talk with your employer in a sensible way (& never mention your salary on Mumsnet !!!) & I'm sure there will be a solution there.

Posted too soon...

I think you have missed the point. You said
I can't work from home unfortunately otherwise I absolutely would do so.

The point is that your DP is WFH but can’t juggle the children. Yet you say you would WFH if you could suggesting you would juggle it.

Furlough is no longer in 3 weeks blocks, that changed from 1st July, though tbh I had two furlough extensions in June one was 2 weeks and the next was 5 days so the 3 week blocks clearly weren't a hard rule.

Ask for the extension it's perfectly reasonable for you to need a week after such short notice.

“In my place, this wouldn't cross anyone's mind. The equation would be simply would we rather have OP back next week, or an extra [however much] of furlough money.
I hate it when HR start looking behind the curtain at people's personal circumstances as it leads to all sorts of unfairnesses. Good employers try not to do it.”

@thedancingbear there’s quite a marked difference between an employer wondering and HR asking. If your business is struggling to the extent you need taxpayer funds to stay afloat then people expect that you make sensible decisions with those funds.

@Fasttrack321

Yes that's what I did. As parental leave could only be taken in one week blocks. So taking unpaid leave for a week booked later in the year, frees up some annual leave to use in unexpected situations like this.

Also gives time to plan ahead for drop in income

Can I also add that I believe that women will be most seriously impacted by this crisis? Of our 32 employees, two thirds are male, many with children. Not one of them has said they can't work because of childcare. I'm a director on the board of other companies - same story there.

It's not right, it's not fair, but childcare issues still land on women.

Does gauging opinion here really help?
I can tell you now which managers in my big company would say, “of course you can! (stay on furlough) This whole thing is a ball ache, isn’t it!” and which would say, “all staff were expected to keep a rolling plan of childcare cover, it isn’t Fri to Mon notice, the notice that you could be asked back ANY Monday has been out there for weeks.”

No-one here knows your company and line manager attitude better than you.

You’re not unreasonable to ask - purely because it’s within the rules to stay on furlough, whatever anyone here thinks of the morality of that.

I think complaining about having no annual leave if you take a week now... well, I think suck it up if that’s the case. You’ve just had a 3 month holiday 🤷🏻‍♀️ and if you’ve got almost none left - does that mean you actually took leave before all this started? If so, again - you’ve had leave this year. It’s an unusual year - it won’t kill you to not have any after this week. There are a lot of us not getting holiday at the sane time as partners this year!

You’re lucky to have the financial option of unpaid leave, taken now or later in the year.

So - extend furlough, taken parental leave, take unpaid leave, take annual leave and unpaid later, take annual leave and just accept that’s it gone. You have 5 options there. Only you know which would go down best at work.

What I’d actually do, is put pressure on your girlfriend - can she really not even get a day off? Ask grandparents, ask friends.

As a manager, I’d be more impressed if you said, “this week is a shit show, but I can do Mon / Tue morning from 09:30, and all day Fri” and let me decide to just give you another week.

I agree that if you don’t ask you don’t get. Also that giving such short notice when childcare needs to be arranged isn’t fair; finances don’t really have anything to do with this. For all anyone knows, you could be paying for 2 lots of care home fees from your wages or anything. Nobody but yourselves know so if you’ve deemed it that you’re unable to sort out childcare at such short notice, nobody who doesn’t know you can disagree with that.

Ask for the furlough, it’s there for a reason. Hope you get it!

@Fasttrack321 you are just experiencing what many of us experienced back in March when schools and nurseries closed without notice. My husband and I have worked full time throughout with three kids at home. Our jobs are not in any way easy to do alongside looking after children but we've had to do it as have had no other choice - for THREE MONTHS!! that is why you are getting little sympathy on here.

I think you would have got more helpful and supportive posts if you wouldn’t have mentioned your salary. Lots of jealousy and bitterness is coming across in many people’s posts.

Speak to your employer, explain the childcare issue and I’m sure you can come to an arrangement that suits both you and them.

Is there a reason why you have concealed yours and your partners sex?

And to add to that, we have only just started being able to use grandparents for childcare according to government guidelines. Before that it was mostly the ipad babysitting while my husband and I were busy working from home in jobs that couldn't be furloughed due to us being needed in our respective businesses. Your three year old will just have to watch a lot of TV for the week.

I agree you've not had much notice. You do have options, as @Ellisandra has summarised. But if none of those work out, you'll just have to accept that your DP is going to have to juggle it for the next week and be thankful that it is just a few days of an impossible situation rather than the few months that the rest of us have had to cope with.

I hope you get it sorted.

The UK has slowly been returning to work since June. You must have known at some point you'd get called back in and needed things in place.
Yes, its was limited notice, but at your level have you not had any contact with your workplace to find out there RTW plan at all prior to Friday?
I'm amazed youve just sat back and let this happen.

Your husband needs to suck it up this week! You’ve a cheek. You’ve been furloughed from end of March and he’s been able to WFH. Others had had to WFH for 16 weeks, home school kids and look after kids.

😂😂 Perhaps it would be more reasonable to complain to the school and ask why in hell the children are not at school.

They haven't really given you sufficient notice to get childcare arrangements in place, but at least you have options many others wouldn't as not all kids can go back to school yet.
I don't think its unreasonable to ask for a week to sort out arrangements particularly if you explain everything as fully as you have here. If extending furlough isnt an option you could ask for annual leave.

You and your husband need to manage the childcare between you and work from home. Why should your employer furlough you because your husband cannot make time? You have had months to plan for this.

Her child is at school per her postb

The only reasoned I mentioned the income is because the OP has the advantage of "buying in" help.

Your DP should cover and stop belly aching about not being able to rearrange his precious man job, a woman would manage.

So sick of entitled men on lockdown thinking women or the government should cover their childcare responsibilities

Sorry you lost my sympathy when you posted about your income.

Pay an emergency nanny, take annual leave and stop whinging.