WFH & home internet breaks down

[37KAT]

A friend is WFH due to Covid. Today her home WIFI developed a fault and is scheduled to be repaired sometime on Wednesday.
She contacted her boss at work who told her she would need to book the next few days as annual or unpaid leave. It was also suggested she could work at her next door neighbours house

She offered to go to the office, they said no. She asked for a dongle, they said it would take 3 days to organise.
HR were copied in on the reply.

I told her IMO this sounds unreasonable. Because CV is so new & they've not WFH before it sounds like a manager winging it.

I am currently WFH too for the first time so it's got me interested.

Would she be unreasonable to expect them to be supportive & realise IT issues occur at home too and she should not be forced to take unpaid leave or use holiday?
She has suggested solutions!

Is your friend a trade union member?

"She offered to go to the office, they said no. She asked for a dongle, they said it would take 3 days to organise.
HR were copied in on the reply."

You are correct in that she has offered solutions and her employer has rejected them so they cannot reasonably force her to take annual leave or unpaid leave.

I suppose she could try asking her internet provider to compensate her for loss of earnings while her internet is down, but i doubt they'd give her a huge amount if anything.

Are there any cafes near her that have reopened and have WiFi?

At our place you’d get paid special leave in these circumstances. Why wouldn’t they let her go in to the office?

@AnotherEmma I doubt the service provider would pay compensation as I would assume it's not a business service.
She says there isn't a union.
I thought about a cafe too however due to the type of work she does it would be GDPR risk.. she could put it to them though as another possible solution.
Pleased that it isn't just me that thinks they're unreasonable!

I am going to raise this with my employers in case I find myself in this situation too!

@Calic0
Hi, they've got everyone WFH and it is closed apparently.

I think it would be reasonable to make up the time rather than take annual leave.

I think it would be reasonable to make up the time rather than take annual leave.

For three days I'd just top up my data package and work online using my phone hotspot. Far better than having to take annual leave or make up hours. And not massively expensive either, why doesn't she do that?

I can see it from both sides. On the one hand, how different is it from other issues outside of anyone's control that causes us to miss work and take annual leave: snow, family emergencies, sick children for instance. Has her office fully opened up yet? Are they just being difficult by not allowing her to come in, or do they have to strictly limit the number of people in the office for safety?

@rosesinmygarden
Great suggestion. Not sure she thought or if she has a hotspot, I'll suggest it..

Where I work, if the computers go down, people end up working evenings or weekends to make up the time because we are on a billable hours system. So when wfh, it works the same way. Just work extra once the internet is back up.

It’s an unpleasant system, but it’s been this way at every post university job I have had. B

Does she have a work phone she could use as a hotspot? Or work pay for extra data?

At the start of working from home my computer died. I had the time off as paid as it was the company’s equipment that failed. My friends internet went down and they gave her the option of unpaid/ make up time or annual leave because it wasn’t their fault.

Ask how much data she gets per month, figure out when the cut-off date is, then take it from there. I know in principle she shouldn't be using her own mobile data for work, but I'd rather have that than having to use up annual leave. It's only from now until Wednesday when the repair is scheduled.

For the cut-off date, tell her to log into her provider's account, go to billing, and it will tell her when the cut-off date is. It's not the same date as the billing date. The cut-off is when the data usage resets back to 0.

@rosesinmygarden

For three days I'd just top up my data package and work online using my phone hotspot. Far better than having to take annual leave or make up hours. And not massively expensive either, why doesn't she do that?

I couldn't do that as I live rurally and the mobile signal is shite. Think dial-up speed (on a good day).

We've paid for extra phone data when that's happened for our staff. They sort the upgrade and claim on expenses. Luckily it's usually sorted in a couple of days.

@37KAT I'd have thought it's the simplest solution.

I run my own business full time online and regularly use my hot spot when our rural internet goes down.
But then being self employed, I have to take personal responsibility for any losses caused by not working my normal hours.

Surely the small cost will have the payoff of not losing annual leave and not making up hours plus your friend will be seen as someone willing to put themselves out a little bit and be creative and willing to get their job done when redundancies possibly happen later this year, rather than being the person who goes running to HR when they aren't immediately given what they want. I expect the company can't afford for her to sit at home not working and they don't have a office open for her to go to. Perhaps they'd be open to her claiming the cost of the data though?

Are they even paying for her internet access?

@concernedforthefuture that's a real pain, hopefully that's not the case for the lady in the OP though.

Does she have a local library nearby? She might be able to book a desk but I don't know how long you can stay there for.

If they've closed the office it's not her fault if the internet goes down but I agree that using phone data is a good plan.

I work for the local authority and on one occasion last month I was unable to work all day because the AOVPN was down, on another day my WiFi was playing up. I contacted my boss and explained that I'll have to make the time up and she responded that I didn't need to because Covid and working from home was new to most people and employers were required to be understanding and flexible as these things were expected to happen.

[quote 37KAT]@rosesinmygarden
Great suggestion. Not sure she thought or if she has a hotspot, I'll suggest it..
[/quote]
If she has an iPhone she has a hotspot. I assume most andriod phones can do this too.

Just to add that our AOVPN has glitches here and there and it can go off for an hour or so several times a week. We are never asked to make the time up. I do sometimes work in the evenings anyway off my own accord to ensure I catch up on any work but its never expected of us.

Most places I know it would be annual leave or unpaid leave - don't think what they're asking is unreasonable at all.

@NeonPink I must admit when my computer went down for half a day my boss had a similar view, was understanding. Must be lucky having a reasonable boss on that occasion.

Just remembered something else sorry! - My boss also told us that whilst connection has been lost and we're sitting there trying to re-connect i.e. restarting the computer etc, then that was also classed as working.