To insist my staff have childcare in place?

[willandgrace]

Several of the staff I manage have young kids, we've supported them all year to WFH with kids at home. We are still primarily working from home but as schools/childcare are now open I have said that people need to have appropriate childcare in place while working from home, the same as they would have if they were office based (as they all were previously) - some of the staff are not happy about this but AIBU?

I don’t think it is as black and white. I don’t think it is unreasonable to say staff should have childcare in place unless they have a good reason not to and if they don’t to have a timeline to when it will be sorted. However, I think you need to be willing to support those isolating.

The after school period is a bit of a grey area for me. Lots of children could be picked up and entertain themselves for a few hours without disturbing the working adult. Likewise older primary age children during school holidays.

@MrsWobble3

Just to add another perspective. My 26 yr old dd is furious as she has a new project manager who has children so has decided to spend 2-6pm each day doing the school run, having tea and supervising homework. She then catches up by working 6-10pm. This is fine for her but the rest of the team, including my dd, are not happy with having work calls scheduled for 8.30pm as they want to have logged off by then. I don’t think it unreasonable to expect someone to take into account what works for their colleagues and clients as well as themselves.

Have you suggested to your dd that she raise this and have a discussion with her manager about it rather than just getting furious?

Something to take into consideration (if you want) is the feelings of those who do pay for childcare and those who do not have childcare responsibilities. Is there a chance that they could become resentful/dissatisfied?

But there are people who DO pay for childcare, or would, but it isn't available. It isn't a case of wont.

@TheJerkStore

I know what indirect discrimination is. I was pointing out that the op hadn't said she was only asking women.

That’s what makes it indirect.

I would say the expectation is that they have childcare, but that if this is proving difficult then they can discuss with you. And be prepared to mean it, too, not just assume they're obviously slacking to save on the childcare.

Mine are back in school and childcare now but the school breakfast club isn't running, so there's a couple of days a week I can't do my usual working pattern. My employers are reasonable about letting me flex my hours around that. After months of them expecting us to carry a heavy workload with children at home and schools/nurseries closed, I would be fairly pissed off if they weren't at least trying to show some flexibility on their side now when childcare availability is still not back to normal.

@ivfbeenbusy

Lots of employees are using WFH to save money on childcare...... no one is productive with primary age and younger Children at home

I'd be staring all employees return to the office

Grandparents are largely vaccinated now and childcare bubbles have always been in place so there really is no excuse

My mum died last year from dementia, my dad is an alcoholic and PILs are too busy providing childcare for their golden grandchildren. Any other helpful suggestions?

We have one child in reception and one in nursery. Obviously school hours in term-time fine, but after-school club is only open for essential workers where it is an emergency and there's currently no holiday club.

Luckily I'm part-time and DH does five days in four and we both have quite generous A/L so we're mainly covered. However there is the odd day in the holidays where we're splitting the day and catching up in evening if necessary.

I think we have all exercised a good degree of tolerance over the lockdown, and as a matter of policy my firm will continue to do so until we are all back in the office. We have been really clear though, that in the normal course of business, childcare must be in place. Days working from home mean just that. The tolerance for meetings being interrupted (particularly if they are client meetings), is going to evaporate very quickly. More flexible working means the ability for us all to drop kids off and pick them up, for me it does not mean that work has to allow you to time to parent and work during the day at the same time. In any instance this will be exhausting.

YABU, when you work from home I feel you basically become the office manager, albeit of the smallest office possible, so you get to decide whether there are kids allowed etc. If the work is suffering that's something you can demand improves but as long as they give the right amount of work of the right quality the employees should be able to decide if they need childcare or not.

To suggest a parent can safely and adequately care for (young) children at home whilst working is crazy. It’s dangerous for one as without supervision who knows what they’re up to? Plus interruptions mean a person simply cannot commit to their role fully during the working day.

@willandgrace The nature of the organisation it's not just a matter of 'managing productivity' client calls need to be done at particular times, there's nothing I can do about that and the nature of some people's roles is primarily client call focused.

It can still be a question of "are they doing the job you're paying them to do or not?"

The conversation can go along the lines of: "I noticed that you're being interrupted frequently on client calls/unable to answer client calls. [You don't need to bring up why.] Of course we've been flexible during the pandemic, but we're looking to transition to a new WFH model that's more sustainable for the business for the long term. WFH permission will need to be contingent on people having a suitable environment to work in, which means [no interruptions, good internet, whatever - this is a great opportunity to revamp your policy - look up AskAManager for ideas], and if that is not possible for people then we will be asking them to come into the office. We're planning to formalise this policy [in three months time] but wanted to give you a heads up so you can start to make any changes that will be necessary for you. Is there anything I, as your manager, need to know or can help you with?"

I think you still need to be flexible at the moment and make allowances for people showing willing but struggling, but then you can treat it like any other work issue: you laid out your expectations (proper WFH environment) and the potential consequences (have to come into the office).

I’m not sure if this issue does affect female staff more. If you look at the job roles that are majority female a lot of them are not home based roles (healthcare, domestic, retail). Potentially this will affect many males working from home with a partner having to work outside the home

Hopefully there will come a time when things are back to normal and you can insist on this. But we are not there yet.

If you are flexible with your staff they will repay it a million times over and I say this as the employer of 40 people - many of whom have young children - not one of whom is not delivering.

Our after school club is still not open and won't be for the unforeseeable future

Breakfast is still only available for critical worker children

Yabu a bit

What do you expect staff to do when the other parent is a stay at home parent? They can't exactly take the children out the house from 9am to 5pm to facilitate the other parents working?

@sHREDDIES19

To suggest a parent can safely and adequately care for (young) children at home whilst working is crazy. It’s dangerous for one as without supervision who knows what they’re up to? Plus interruptions mean a person simply cannot commit to their role fully during the working day.

It's not necessarily dangerous. My father (self-employed, desk work) often used to care for me and my brother during the school holidays while working from home. (We had a series of au pairs, but there were often gaps or they'd be at their English class or visiting home or whatever.) I'm sure it was often absolute hell for him, but even when we were 5 and 3, we could be told to play in my bedroom (next door to his office) and come and get him if anything broke or anyone hurt themselves. We often got shouted at for being too noisy when he was on the phone, but I wouldn't call it dangerous to have an adult in the next room. Bloody miserable for the adult, yes!

@willandgrace

We do have a home working policy but it doesn't cover this scenario - the quality of work has definitely dropped, even though most staff are adamant they are more productive than ever I think they aren't happy because they don't want to pay for childcare when they are at home and may have concerns about mixing with others but should I really be expected to support that? Not helped by the fact my kids are older teenagers so the ruling doesn't impact me

This is an interesting point, I've heard the phrase "we're more productive than ever with WFH", but from my experience, this is not the case.

The indirect discrimination isn’t really linked do much to the asking as to what happens after that!

You can ask everyone (regardless of age/gender) if they have kids and childcare. If they then don’t have access to the same provision that they would have pre covid and then you put some form of perceived sanction in place this is likely to affect women more than men and therefore be discriminatory.

www.moorebarlow.com/indirect-sex-discrimination-childcare/

Yes the OP said staff but in 99% of cases people mean "female" staff. Lets be real.

I'm not actually sure that is true in this instance. I'm certainly seeing a lot of instances where male colleagues are having to request flexible working or time off to cover childcare that was previously covered by grandparents/childcare facilities that aren't currently available to them.

And the reason the man is covering is because they work from home, whereas their female partner doesn't - so partner doesn't have the option of trying to work around the children.

You are definitely not being unreasonable. They cannot do their job and look after children as well.

hazandduck I don’t think your situation is sustainable to be honest. You might want to keep your preferred choice of childcare open but I think your employer could legitimately ask why you haven’t sorted out a nanny or other childcare. I don’t think you can expect to try and work with a 1 and 3 year old for much longer. I did it myself with those ages in the first lockdown and it was hellish work wise but also unsafe for the children. I wouldn’t want any of the people I manage to be doing juggling under 5s and work. Not just because of performance but worry about what might happen if a child had a serious accident while the parent was on a call and any liability.

@BungleandGeorge

I’m not sure if this issue does affect female staff more. If you look at the job roles that are majority female a lot of them are not home based roles (healthcare, domestic, retail). Potentially this will affect many males working from home with a partner having to work outside the home

Legally it has already been established that childcare has a disproportionate impact on women in the workplace in the U.K. because women still tend to have the greater share of childcare. That's why it can amount to indirect sex discrimination as it’s women who end up being at a particular disadvantage. (section 19 of the Equality Act 2010).

@hennaoj

What do you expect staff to do when the other parent is a stay at home parent? They can't exactly take the children out the house from 9am to 5pm to facilitate the other parents working?

Surely the WFH parent and the SAH parent can manage to not be in the same room at the same time? It's one thing having a bit of background noise that the WFH parent can ignore - quite another to have a toddler bouncing into the room screaming at you to come and look at the snail they've put in their pants and the WFH parent being to one who is actually in charge of removing said snail from said pants.

I have a friend who works in the utility room to escape her cats in their mostly-open-plan flat.

YANBU
In your position I would say that I expect staff to be available and uninterrupted during school and nursery hours, and that there would be some understanding/flexibility for after school and holidays if the usual wraparound/holiday childcare is not available, and obviously if the child cannot attend for whatever reason (sickness, self isolating, school/nursery closed temporarily), but staff should discuss this with their line manager.
I think some people are just taking the piss now.

If you had a job that meant you couldn't work from home and didn't have childcare in place you would have to give up the paid employment. If you can't do the job you are paid to for the hours you are paid to do then you can't fulfil your contract and need to resign. OP tell your staff that they have until the first of June to have childcare in place or resign.

Unless you're talking about air traffic controllers or anything else where you absolutely cannot be distracted, is it really that impossible?

I work for a company who told us at the start of the pandemic that we have to be understanding of the situation and yes people will have unexpected child (or other) care obligations. Nobody minds if you can see or hear children, partners or pets or need to jump off a call for a minute to sort something out.

And we were also told clearly that people working from home does not mean they are available all hours, so meetings can be only organised during core hours and not during lunch.

Guess what? Company is still doing fine and people are not stressed out of their minds.