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?

@TheKeatingFive

You have to distinguish between ...

Unable to source childcare/bubbles bursting - and support employees in these circs

Unwilling to pay for childcare because of wfh - nip this in the bud fast.

Completely in agreement with this.

As a short-term, emergency measure when there is no other option fine.

As a long term measure to avoid paying for childcare costs, not fine.

It depends. People are having to isolate at times, which means theres no option but for the children to be home, but if it's a case if people scrimping on childcare because they're home, they are BU.

@LowlandLucky OP might not have a job for much longer if she takes that approach

Until childcare is back to normal, I think some flexibility is needed.

However, some parents have decided that childcare costs are something they can avoid by home working and something work cannot expect them to pay into the long term behind Covid. This is wrong.

In normal, non-Covid times, employers can expect t their employees to be fully available to work the hours they are contracted to do. There is no doubt that small children take time and energy and people cannot fully devote themselves to work when caring for children and there are no other adults to do so. Therefore ore in normal times people should expec to have to have childcare provision in place.

Many workplaces have policies for emergencies. They accept emergencies occur where illness or childcare problems mean a parent can’t work or will need to work with a child around. Most will define the acceptable period for this to avoid doubt. Often a day is allowed and during that day the worker is expected to put in place arrangements for the next day. More than 2 days being acceptable is unusual.

Being a parent of small children and working is tricky. There are costs and there are inconveniences and back-ups in normal times are needed. It really isn’t down to the employer to constantly accommodate or accept less work because some workers have children, beyond certain acceptable limits.

Now is a special time. Things are getting back to normal and where childcare is available, parents should expect to use it. In some areas it is limited and adjustments and compromises are needed. But working parents should expect to be ensuring provision will be in place in the coming months so that they can be fully devoted to their paid work in those hours.

@Lassolarry1980

So baffled that you sought advice from mumsnet rather than your HR department and or legal department

I thought the same!

Givem its such a can of worms you are better off insisting people come into the office.

Perfectly reasonable to expect employees to have childcare for young children. I’ve always wfh and I would take dd to nursery and then return to the house.

I would allow for flexibility for the odd sick day, school closure, etc.

Dd is now 12 so I do think it’s reasonable she is in the house during the day. She knows to only interrupt for remote schooling issues or actual emergencies.

YABU because things aren't yet back to normal. My DH is ECV and has had one vaccine. My childcare options are zero because all nurseries that are open around here have no spaces, and because of lockdown my very willing MIL (still only had one vaccine) and DS2 are virtually strangers.

My manager is a male with 4 young kids. Of course, he isn't pushing us all to get our kids into childcare because he would also have to step in line and he aint about to do that!

Yanbu in principle but I think that you need to listen to staff about what is actually available.
I have seen 3 ,children through their schools whilst working full time.
I had no family help and was utterly reliant on breakfast, after school care and holiday clubs. I had spaces booked as soon as lists opened and had money and childcare vouchers put aside.
If anything had happened(like a pandemic) I would have zero resources to fall back on.
If these resources are back up and running, fine. If not then bear with a bit longer.

PerspicaciousGreen

My husband does go in another room (our bedroom) for video calls, however there still may be quite a lot of background noise as we have three children (all of whom happen to have autism). The youngest stims loudly, I cannot be in two places at once so cannot guarantee a child won't enter the room he is in. I also have to use the toilet, cook food, walk the dog, clean the house, etc. There is NO suitable childcare for my youngest anyway as he would require 1-1.
This is our home, not a work environment, it's bad enough that I have to pussyfoot around in my own home when they are at school!

If people are unable to work in the office and have to have children at home for whatever reason then tough, there will be noise.

I want my house back, I want the freedom to use my house as I please during school hours and will not be dictated to by my other half's company seeing as they are not paying us rent to use our home as a workplace.

Because of lockdown, nursery places are just non-existent! Maybe people want their young kids to socialise, so it just seems as if there are less spaces than normal.

@HeavyHeidi I'm really impressed that your company has managed to make it work for everyone. At mine, the only way to achieve that has been to chuck the non-parents under the bus. I need your wisdom.

Think this is a case by case situation, YANBU, especially if there is no relevant excuse aside from saving money. Change your policy

I have to agree with the op your staff need childcare in place . Of course you need to be flexible children get ill childcare is let down etc but it sounds like they don’t have any childcare and are quite enjoying not having to pay childcare and wfh . If a member of staff is struggling on the odd day or certain times like after school say then they should be able to discuss with you but if it’s a case of no I don’t want to come back to the office because I don’t want to sort out any childcare then sorry but that’s tough luck . And I’ve brought 2 children up so I know how difficult it is but wfh was never a permanent solution.
Encourage you staff to tell you why it will be a problem I suspect it’s they are reluctant to change now .

Thanks for all the replies, I genuinely appreciate the different perspectives
Just to clarify a few points - we have a roughly equal mix of men and women with childcare responsibilities, that may not make a difference to the discrimination issue
The nature of the job requires long conversations with vulnerable/distressed clients dealing with complex information at times - the calls can be an hour or two long, several times calls have had to be cut short because of continual interruptions from kids, ultimately we have a service to run.
Our office is now open, we are allowing people to continue to WFH as per Government advice and because they want to
I am not talking about kids not being in the house, it is about staff not having the responsibility of kids while they are working/dealing with clients
We are a small team so I wouldn't need to ask details of children etc as I know them, again that may not make a difference to the discrimination issue

It's a tricky situation.

I am working this week and my husband has taken annual leave to be with the kids. However I have to work from home so there is still 'minor' interruptions just from being in the same house as them. In future I would be in the office though. Plus I work for an agency and have to account for every hour so if I don't get enough done in the day I can make it up or they would know about it.

I definitely agree that usually children need to be in childcare. The thread recently about working with a baby was ridiculous - it's not possible.

But there aren't currently the same level of after-school and holiday clubs available. This should change from the summer and people will have to start accepting that they need to pay for childcare (if there's no free solution) again. Including myself!

Yanbu.

My work has always required that I have childcare in place when wfh. There's flex on odd occasions for example if you had to self isolate or go for Covid testing, but constantly working from home with no childcare is not acceptable.

Given the circumstances, there are some concessions you could make. For example in quite a lot of areas wrap around care isnt running. So you could accept staff not being able to access care 8-9 and 3-5 for school age children, but perhaps ask them to flexi work (either through lunchtime or in evenings) to catch up a bit.

It's not the employers fault if someone previously was lucky enough to be able to use grandparent care to save money and now can't. Those people will need to pay for care just as people who don't have grandparents to do this. Again if you were willing to be flexible as an employer you should give people time to put arrangements in place, and you could offer to let people reduce the number of days they work if they can't/won't pay for enough days of childcare.

Oh and you cant be funny about people wfh if their partner is on leave and at home looking after the children. That is having acceptable childcare in place imho.

Of course YANBU.

They're being paid to work not look after children.

The proletariat are rising! Stamp on the workers fast!

So deal with the performance issue (meetings not being completed) rather than making a rule about childcare.

After June, I would expect all services to return to normal. If people are working from home, I will not use companies where I can hear children crying, TVs playing and so on. I think we have been very tolerant of less than stellar service (‘many of our staff are working from home and it may take longer than usual...’) but that is coming to an end. I would ask that tech is upped to a proper level too if people are continuing to work from home. By June (hopefully), childcare will be back to normal too so there shouldn’t be an issue. Obviously there has to be some flexibility for children who need to isolate and can’t attend childcare or school but if working from home is the new normal, childcare needs to be part of that.

The nature of the job requires long conversations with vulnerable/distressed clients dealing with complex information at times - the calls can be an hour or two long, several times calls have had to be cut short because of continual interruptions from kids,

I had this problem during lockdown, the reality is you can’t offer a sensitive service with children present, there are things you maybe don’t want children to hear, the person you’re speaking to needs your full attention and there are issues of confidentiality. I’d be amazed someone thinks they can do a good job in this kind of setting while children are around - I know I can’t. If calls are being disrupted because children are around it’s perfectly reasonable to expect that parents have adequate childcare while they are making such calls.

The nature of the job requires long conversations with vulnerable/distressed clients dealing with complex information at times - the calls can be an hour or two long, several times calls have had to be cut short because of continual interruptions from kids, ultimately we have a service to run.

On this alone YANBU.

But even beyond that, I think your responsibility as an employer does not extend to supporting lifestyle choices or risk assessments around covid that exceed government guidelines.

Of course, you run the risk of losing experienced staff who may move elsewhere, but that's on you.

@hennaoj

PerspicaciousGreen

My husband does go in another room (our bedroom) for video calls, however there still may be quite a lot of background noise as we have three children (all of whom happen to have autism). The youngest stims loudly, I cannot be in two places at once so cannot guarantee a child won't enter the room he is in. I also have to use the toilet, cook food, walk the dog, clean the house, etc. There is NO suitable childcare for my youngest anyway as he would require 1-1.
This is our home, not a work environment, it's bad enough that I have to pussyfoot around in my own home when they are at school!

If people are unable to work in the office and have to have children at home for whatever reason then tough, there will be noise.

I want my house back, I want the freedom to use my house as I please during school hours and will not be dictated to by my other half's company seeing as they are not paying us rent to use our home as a workplace.

Can't your DH put a lock on the door that he's working in? Surely that's a simple solution to ensure nobody enters the room and interrupts him . Furthermore, a headset would massively reduce the impact of distant background noise, that's what we all use to work with although admittedly our employer provides them. Also, can he not ask to work in the office? I don't know any office based workers who are categorically not allowed to be office-based, everyone I know who was office based is allowed to work in the office if they want to and are encouraged to do that if there home working situation isn't suitable. It doesn't sound like your DH's set up is adequate and if he worked for my employer they'd be making me work in the office instead, which would be fair enough if I wasn't able to work effectively at home.