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?

Realising that “full time” needn’t be mon-fri, 9-5. I’m working full time but there are times in the middle of the day when I have to care for my daughter.

That's great if you have that flexibility- not all roles have that.

On issue of flexibility best we’d get is core hours 10 to 4.00 and make up time but that’s very new in sector and quite rare.

We’re still uninterrupted presence required, with lunch break if you try to protect it.

Surely your target the drop in quality of the work rather than the kids at home scenario. If they claim this as the reason for the mistakes then you work that into the solution for them. Quality of work may be impacted by other factors, having kids at home causing this is your perception but may not be theirs. Getting to the bottoms of the drop in quality is perhaps something quite important here. I find I can work better when my young kids are here alone with me than when my DH is there to parent in the background. He is more of a distraction than they are. Sure it’s much tougher to plan abd organise but good planning means I can keep the kids pretty well entertained while I work. When DH is there he doesn’t plan quiet activities, not his fault and not a criticism just an observation. Why should he? This is my home and I would much rather be in work where it is quiet.

I think you should frame this in terms of productivity and job performance. Crunch the data and find evidence that productivity/ effectiveness has suffered and state a target of what you want it to be. How they achieve that is up to them and you performance manage them accordingly.

I don't think you can dictate their home and childcare arrangements.
You can insist their attention is on their job during working hours, or that a certain standard of work is met; how they achieve that in their own home is up to them.

YANBU, when schools were closed it was very different. If they aren’t returning to the work place now they need to have childcare in place or take annual leave or parental leave.

Apologies, I have just seen you have older children/adults @willandgrace As there are still restricted options on typical childcare - from May half term /summer hols it’s more reasonable to expect parents with primary aged children to be able to source external childcare. Polite reminder to staff that when on calls interruptions need to be minimised as far as possible.

OP - I had interviewed for a position earlier this year (during the lockdown) where it was made clear on the first interview that being found to have competing responsibilities during work hours will be grounds for disciplinary. So the landscape seems to be changing.

Yabu as it's not for you to dictate their childcare arrangements but if they are failing to do their job properly yanbu to discipline appropriately, and not having childcare shouldn't necessarily be the excuse.

Yanbu. I know some people who won’t send their kids to school/nurseries as they don’t want to pay, so their work suffers as a result, but at least they’re saving a ton of money right?! My kids are currently in an Easter holiday club right now and will be there for 3 weeks

@MintyMabel

What is the workaround? I don't understand why you think employers can afford to pay people full time salaries who aren't working full time for a year and ongoing?

Realising that “full time” needn’t be mon-fri, 9-5. I’m working full time but there are times in the middle of the day when I have to care for my daughter.

As PP said, that doesn't work for all jobs. What happens if someone calls with an urgent query whilst you're caring for your daughter? Who deals with that then? That's the nature of my job. If employer allowed all of us to take random long paid breaks in the middle of the day, who would be answering those calls? My colleagues who don't have children I guess would need to answer all of those extra calls to cover the rest of us? How would that be fair, that they do more work but are paid the same?

@MintyMabel

What is the workaround? I don't understand why you think employers can afford to pay people full time salaries who aren't working full time for a year and ongoing?

Realising that “full time” needn’t be mon-fri, 9-5. I’m working full time but there are times in the middle of the day when I have to care for my daughter.

I agree with pp this is a big ask and in many cases doesn’t work at all or is not being present at work meaning someone else has to step in.

Really interesting to hear the different viewpoints, I am thinking I may be being a bit unreasonable in the short term and should be thinking more in terms of the summer holidays when, in theory, things should be open all being well.
It is a difficult situation for all concerned, I don't have any issue at all with some noise in the background if kids are being looked after by other parent for example, definitely not saying other parent needs to take them out the house all day, but having kids interrupting the type of calls we have just isn't ok.

But nothing works for "all" jobs so that really goes without saying.

That's great if you have that flexibility- not all roles have that.

But the vast majority of office roles allow for plenty of flexibility.

We are going through similar in my company. All employees with PR have been asked to come to us if they are struggling to find suitable childcare and we'll help them to find a solution. For some people we've contributed to the cost of a nanny (where they would usually use a childminder who is currently not working) or we've worked with them to make hours more flexible so they make up the time in the evening for example if they need to look after children in the day.

If someone has children and hasn't come to us then we assume that they have got appropriate childcare lined up.

Ultimately at this stage now there are few companies who can afford to pay staff who are doing childcare instead of working.

YANBU. It’s not possible to work effectively with younger children in the house and no one else there taking care of them. Now that schools have gone back and nurseries are open we have to have our childcare in place again. People have been given flexibility around start and finish times because wraparound childcare is less available for some, but it wouldn’t be acceptable for them to be working with the children around all day.

I guess it's a case of speaking to individuals and working out what's actually going on - as a few people have said.

For example, in our area, the local primary school now finishes two hours early mid week to allow a deep clean half way through the week. The breakfast club is no more - school starts at 8.50am not the early bird of 7.30am. And there's no after schools clubs.

So at 1.15pm on Wednesday those kids are given to their parents and that's it, whereas pre-Covid the kids may have been at school until 4.30pm with after schools clubs then a friend or grandparent doing an hour or two to help.

A friend, who is a child minder, has had to drop her usual kids as her husband was shielding. She's still not prepared to have her usual 6 in her house so, when she does reopen now her DH has had his vaccination, she'll be taking 3 at most. That's three parents, just from her group, that are now looking at alternative child care when all our child minders were running waiting list pre-Covid!

In the past some parents would have used other family members to do school pick up or the kids would have gone to friends on days when grandparents etc couldn't do it. That's all now gone by the wayside to some extent as you can't cross bubbles. To be honest, I don't want other people's kids in our home at the moment. I'm sure a lot of my friends feel the same. So I wouldn't be willing to help where I'd have happily done it (and have) pre-Covid.

Now, our DS is 14 years old so, if I were working full time, he'd be letting himself in, getting a sandwich and getting on with his homework. If I'm WFH he'd have little or no impact on me at all.

But, during the summer holiday he used to go to a drama kids club for a couple of weeks. That didn't run last year and won't run this year. That's over 100 kids not in a club this summer in our area alone. Our secondary school used to run sports weeks during the summer - that's not happening either. But again, as he's 14 years old, he can amuse himself most of the time. Many can't.

So it's not quite as easy as saying WFH with childcare or get back into the workplace - they still won't be able to get childcare if it's not available so you'll lose them anyway.

I do agree that, where child care is available, it should be used. But it's not fair to base the demand that children are not in the house during work time on the assumption that child care is still available as it was pre-pandemic. One of the school gate mum's used to have a nanny twice a week when she worked from home. I don't know if she'd get that now - her son is the same age as mine so no need now.

Most parents I know, whether WFH or back in the workplace, want to do a good job of work. They are worried about leaving the kids to their own devices because child care has broken down and equally worried about not being able to do as much as they once could. Many parents are now doing a trapeze of work without the safety net of adequate childcare.

I don't know what the answer is but it has to start with honest conversations.

@MintyMabel

That's great if you have that flexibility- not all roles have that.

But the vast majority of office roles allow for plenty of flexibility.

Not really. Not enough to do childcare during working hours.

I think there’s a reason many companies don’t insist on childcare but do insist on being able to work outside the home at any time or not having competing responsibilities etc. HR can advise on necessary wording. The question is how do you police it? Part wfh/ part office?

Some childcare facilities are not even open for full hours due to bubbles bursting, staff shortage, etc

If school age children have to self isolate at home due to a contact having Covid, parents have to take 10 days off work unpaid to isolate with them.

Mine are 11 and 13, but the 13 year old isn’t really that sensible and has anxieties, and the 11 year old is too young to stay at home all day really. So whilst I’m still furloughed from my job, and my husband is extra busy with work, I can look after them, but once I’m back in work, who knows what happens if my work colleague, or a school contact, contracts Covid, and we have to isolate. I can’t afford loss of 10 days pay.

We are still in the middle of a pandemic, not the tail end of it. The next year is still going to be confusing, frustrating and restrictive in so many areas. You’ll just need to work it out flexibly with your staff as much as possible.

@forinborin

OP - I had interviewed for a position earlier this year (during the lockdown) where it was made clear on the first interview that being found to have competing responsibilities during work hours will be grounds for disciplinary. So the landscape seems to be changing.

This sounds like the right way to go with wording

Really interesting to hear the different viewpoints, I am thinking I may be being a bit unreasonable in the short term and should be thinking more in terms of the summer holidays when, in theory, things should be open all being well.

That sounds fair. If people are still struggling for childcare by summer it should at least be in small enough numbers that you can work with them individually to sort something out, be that reduced hours or unpaid parental leave or whatever.

But the vast majority of office roles allow for plenty of flexibility.

Neither mine or my husbands does. It resulted in DS being borderline neglected when schools were closed.
I have some flexibility on certain days but not plenty of flexibility.

Yabu as it's not for you to dictate their childcare arrangements
It’s not for an employer to dictate every detail of specific childcare arrangements but they absolutely can dictate that staff working from home have childcare in place.