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?

What did you do before @SimonJT?

@willandgrace

Again, not trying to antagonise a genuine question (I am already rethinking my approach and looking at summer holidays and core hours to offer a bit more support) what would people do if their employer said they had to go back to the office?

Well, if my employer said that to me, I would contact my union in the first instance and also get some legal advice. If there was a pattern of indirect discrimination in the workplace, I would also possibly contact the media.

@Sansaplans

What did you do before *@SimonJT*?

I used wrap around care, this is no longer available.

@willandgrace

Again, not trying to antagonise a genuine question (I am already rethinking my approach and looking at summer holidays and core hours to offer a bit more support) what would people do if their employer said they had to go back to the office?

Presumably everyone used to be in the office previously?

@willandgrace

Again, not trying to antagonise a genuine question (I am already rethinking my approach and looking at summer holidays and core hours to offer a bit more support) what would people do if their employer said they had to go back to the office?

If I had to go back to the office I would be very, very upset. I am a lone parent to a 12yo. He really struggled during lock down, especially the last one. I would hate to leave him home alone for many hours over the summer. It would be to his and my detriment. As it stands I work in a garden office in my garden. I obviously have no commute. I have breaks. He can come and go as he pleases, just letting me know where he is and who he's with.

Some of the holiday sports camps run from say 10am - 3pm - nigh on useless if you're working away from home in an office, but perfectly manageable if you're at home and just nipping up the road to drop and collect.

It's a moot point for me anyway, as I've worked from home for many years.

@willandgrace maybe it would help if you focused on productivity and service level agreements, and leave your staff to sort out how they will achieve the amount of work required, in the hours/times required.

Involve your colleagues in working out what are the core hours, the targets needed to be achieved (case loads etc) and also what is acceptable in terms of interruptions etc.

Then how your colleagues achieve this is their concern, rather than yours.

Can you discuss this with them, in an evidence-based way? People are pretty stretched by this pandemic, so discussion and a bit of flexibility both ways should stand you in good stead for colleagues pulling together as a team.

BUt they need to be doing their jobs: being interrupted on a difficult call is just not acceptable.

Personally I would be able to go back to the office (wraparound childcare is open) but my job, although some calls are required, can be done efficiently from home and my child is old enough not to require constant supervision. My employers have always been flexible but we were never allowed to be wfh at the same time as providing active childcare (i.e. kids unable to be left to get on with it without more than chucking snacks in their general direction).

Yes everybody was in the office previously and are contracted to work in the office
Would you really go to the media if your employer asked you to work from the office when you were originally employed to work from an office? (When I say office, some of our work is 'back office', some is client facing albeit by phone/video link currently)

I think it's a bit unreasonable to expect normality as a time when most things are still shut etc. Can you engage them in a consultation to see where people are at? Most people looking after kids at home are not doing it to save money as it's really exhausting. Are after school clubs back up and running, how about holiday clubs where you are etc?

In answer to your question - some of my friends quit when asked to go back in. Frankly, they are exhausted after this past year and just couldnt cope with it all.

In my partner's company they promised to give everyone two months' warning.....is this something you could also do?

I dont think your being unreasonable. Lots of friends dont want to pay for childcare anymore as they are working from home. You can argue that if their productivity is dropping they need to return to the office. I would also investigate legality of putting into home working policy about ability to work uninterrupted without undue distractions.

@willandgrace

Again, not trying to antagonise a genuine question (I am already rethinking my approach and looking at summer holidays and core hours to offer a bit more support) what would people do if their employer said they had to go back to the office?

Summer clubs should be running by then?

I’ve not used them much nor wrap around care but had to pay to work ft through summer.

Also in DP's case what with having a 10 yr old, he has no need to use or pay for a childcare provider. 10 is old enough to get on with something for a few hours after school. His bosses agree and he has also been given extra annual leave and a pay rise as well as praised for all the hard work he has done while at home.

Those of us who can't WFH are having to pay through the nose for childcare because of the rules. I don't see why those who are already massively privileged by working in the safety of their homes should be expect their employers to pay them if they're actually looking after their children rather than working.

I’m just really glad I don’t work for you. I have school age children, a demanding and client facing role. I started with a new organisation during the pandemic and have smashed all of my objectives and targets

I'm not sure why you're so antagonistic towards the OP - they're asking quite open questions.

The OP is also saying that they think productivity is down - targets are not being "smashed" - important, sensitive calls with clients re being stopped because of interruptions. That's not meeting targets, let alone smashing them ...

What about those with a Stay at Home parent who is providing the child care? There will be background noise regardless, walls are thin.

@hennaoj In my opinion, that person cannot work from home and needs to return to the office or workplace even if they would prefer to work from home. The public have been very tolerant and will be again if the need arises but as Covid becomes less problematic and restrictions are removed (June on the current roadmap), special understanding should not be necessary.

Again, not trying to antagonise a genuine question (I am already rethinking my approach and looking at summer holidays and core hours to offer a bit more support) what would people do if their employer said they had to go back to the office?

I'd meet with my manager to discuss a mutually acceptable option. Particularly in light of the fact that no performance issues have ever been raised during my time working at home.

That said, I believe that they value me as an employee and recognise that replacing me would be tricky.

If I felt that a manager was insisting on a return for no legitimate reason, or was behaving in a discrimitory way, i would contact HR and possibly my union. I suppose if I had to I'd look for another role or request a move to an area that could accommodate my childcare needs.

What it would damage is the informal bit of my relationship with my manager - the goodwill I show in going above my job role and hours when necessary, in being flexible to provide cover at short notice etc. If I really felt my manager wasn't willing to be reasonable about a situation I can't do anything about then I would be much less inclined to do those things.

@Scottishskifun

I think it is unreasonable yes. Its not to say that your staff should have nothing in place but on several levels it's an unreasonable request.

1: Childcare is very expensive and usually set hours. We have cut our nursery hours down to a school day because Wfh we don't have an hour commute so don't need as long. It saves considerable amount of money to families.

2: Many alternative childcare options aren't available at the moment still

3: Many nurseries and childminders have gone bust as a result of the pandemic it's extremely hard to find spaces

4: Help from families is limited due to the rules

If your staff are getting their work done and still wfh be a good employer who is flexible and understands the issues not demands that your staff magically fix a very difficult situation right now!

Erm surely 1 is just you saving money - that is not something your employer had to support?!?

I always wonder if most MNers work for the public sector or the relatively rare massive corporations/covid success stories where an individual only able to work 75% of normal hours can be carried. Or maybe they've truly never looked into their company's finances and seen how headcount cost is generally the biggest cost, and a real issue for so many businesses that are struggling during this pandemic.

Now that schools and nurseries are reopened I have total sympathy for team members who have children isolating, but otherwise do think people need to sort childcare, agree a flexible contract that works for the business and the employee, or reduce paid hours. Wraparound care is reopening now or after holidays in most places, and certainly where I and most of my team live, it's the same cost to put 2 kids in wraparound care for an hour or to get an after-school babysitter, even less per child if you can share with another family or swap days.

@CrumpetsForAll

If I was told I had to go in I’d question why: in my workplace there’s now months of evidence that roles can be done largely remotely so insisting I must be in immediately while childcare is unavailable seems unreasonable.

Posted too soon! I would say that I wanted to come back as soon as I could but until I had wraparound care it would be hard to do that. I’d offer to come in as much as practical and work evenings etc but until out of school clubs are available for my two there’s not much more I can do, I’m a single mum with no family near. My boss did suggest they go to their dad more but we have a history of acrimony over contact time and we agreed it wasn’t worth me opening that awful can of worms up again and ending up back in court (again)

Childcare for my youngest (now almost 3) is my DP. He works evenings and weekends around my full-time 9-5 job so that he can be home with the youngest and do the school run for our primary aged DC.
Now I'm WFH full-time and I'm well aware of how it may look to others. I'm home, I'm working, and a young child can often be heard in the background.
If you have employees with my type of set up (which isn't uncommon), or employees who, pre-covid, have used a mixture of informal childcare providers (and can now only use one due to childcare bubble rules), then yabu to expect them to come up with alternative arrangements just because they're still being instructed to WFH.

@willandgrace

Yes everybody was in the office previously and are contracted to work in the office Would you really go to the media if your employer asked you to work from the office when you were originally employed to work from an office? (When I say office, some of our work is 'back office', some is client facing albeit by phone/video link currently)

Depending on the circumstances, if it had become a gender discrimination issue (and it sounds like this has), then yes I would! Whether people previously worked in an office is irrelevant. We are still in a pandemic, and many, many people (mainly women) are struggling due to childcare. People are still supposed to be working at home if they can, and are dealing with the aftermath of the last 13 months too. A switch hasn't been flipped that has allowed a return to normality yet.

You are Not unreasonable. They are paid to work not look after their kids

At some point guidance will switch from wfh if you can to go in or up to employer.

I don’t think people will be able to say much against the request to go back to work

There are only two workarounds that I can see.

Firstly - deprioritise work so that it can be done over a longer timeframe.

Secondly - redistribute work to people who have full availability.

Employers don't like the first one, so they tend to do the second one. Hence people without childcare responsibilities having to pick up additional work. I said earlier on the thread that parents were being given carte blanche to flexi credit up to 50% of their working hours. Who do you think was doing the other 50% of their work?

I'm not against the idea of discussing workarounds, but I do think it's interesting that flexibility only goes one way. It's probably fair enough for a parenting forum, but still.

YANBU. Those of us who work out of the home have to manage.