To think my employer demanding I go back to the office is just cruel

[Runnyrose]

I work full time over 4 days. DD attends nursery and DH and I split drop offs and pick ups between us. We live 45 minutes from my work in one direction and an hour from DHs in the other but I've been working from home since returning from mat leave in February. My job used to involve a lot of travel around the county and before mat leave, I could easily not step foot in our main office for weeks at a time and generally would start from home and finish at home and go to meetings or appointments in between. Because of the efficiency of Teams, these meetings are almost exclusively virtual and there is no plan to go back to face to face meetings. There is literally not a single aspect of my job that requires me to be in the office.
Suddenly, it's been announced that we have to go back to the office and work there. This will be impossible to manage with DDs childcare setting so the only way will be for my DH to take over both drop offs and pick ups which will mean, to ensure he's there on time, losing 2 hours of work a day. He's self employed so this is a significant amount of money lost every day. I will also lose 2 hours of seeing DD for travel time every day. Not to mention the sudden increased cost in fuel.
I've spoken to my manager and she was completely inflexible and the only solution we could come up with was for me to drop my hours so that I can drop DD off as soon as nursery open, race to work, leave the second the clock strikes 5 to race to pick her up again which frees DH up at least but makes my day a race everyday and costs me a full day a week's pay which works out at nearly £5k a year in bring home pay, not to mention the impact on my pension etc . I can't work full time over 5 days because the nursery don't have availability for her current day off and also, I don't want her going in 5 days a week. Going part time won't even feel like a break for me because I'll literally just be replacing the 2 hours a day working with traveling.
I feel so unbelievably angry at my employer that I work so incredibly hard for them, they know this and my manager said she knows this, but there is no flexibility to allow me to keep working from home when it's going to cause complete devastation to our family set up and financial situation and not in any way shape or form change what they get out of me whilst I'm at work.
I'm trying to find another job but my work is quite niche and there just aren't that many jobs around that pay the same level I'm at now. And I do love my job and don't want to leave it.
I have no problem going back into the office, I just want the option to still be allowed to start and / or finish at home like the job was when I first started and what DH and I planned our situation around before we even had DD.

As your DH is self-employed, could he not drop one weekday to cover the 5th day that your child cannot currently be accommodated at nursery, make up the hours by working one of Saturday/Sunday (or extra hours in the evening if appropriate) so his income is the same, and allow you to split your hours over 5 days, so you can still do pick ups/drop offs on the 4 days child is at nursery and not lose any income yourself? You still have one whole day off together each week. It’s not forever.

Unless your contact specifically states WFH it would seem your employer is perfectly within their rights to expect you to work at the office.

Is this a blanket policy?

What did you expect would happen? Unless you have a written contract that your “usual place of work” is off-site, then the boss has the right to demand that you are in the office. Until you run the company, there’s not much you can do about it.

What does your contract say is your place of work?
Were you office based before going on maternity leave?

@Cwenthryth No, that's not an option because he works in a partnership and his partner would not want to work the weekend and they need each other to work due to health and safety restrictions in their field.
I know they are within their rights to, but it's just so unnecessary. It doesn't do anything to benefit them and in so many ways negatively effects my life. They claim to be a family friendly organisation and specifically pride themselves on their flexible working options but despite how hard I work, there's no bending for me.

there's no bending for me
That’s not true though is it, they’re offering you options to fit around childcare. Just not the exact option you want.

Maybe you could find alternative childcare for the 5th day, another nursery, childminder, nanny.

I get that you’re annoyed especially if you used to do wfh at start/end of day before may leave but you’re commutes are pretty average and it is standard that you would have to factor in nursery drop-offs to that. Eg both me and my husband have one hour plus commutes. One of us has to do drop-off and the other pick-up. I had to leave dead on 4 to make nursery pick-up when I did drop-off. It is quite normal for parents to leave and be in a bit of a rush. Wfh is much easier but for me, it won’t last forever.

School will likely be much harder so you might as well set up sustainable working patterns now.

Id also say the compressed hours model is unlikely to work for you. I have friends that do it but don’t have to worry about pick-ups. surely you must be pushing your hours to get that to work with nursery even with wfh?

Could you mive your kid to a nursery near your work?
Yabu though. Your employer had to allow you to work from home during the pandemic and yabu to have built your life around this temporary dispensation.

I don't have a particular advice but just wanted to say that I agree with you that they're being cruel. You didn't go to the office prior to the pandemic and there's no reason for you to do so now.
I hate it when an employer takes a high achieving, motivated employee and changes their work conditions to the point where they start searching for another job.

I don’t understand why they are insisting on this. Yes it was a temporary arrangement due to the pandemic but what benefit are they getting by you being in the office? It is obvious it will make your work life balance unsustainable and therefore you will end up leaving. Why not be totally honest with them and say how much you love the job and the company and that you want to stay but you will have no alternative but to look for another job due to the inflexibility over wfh. See what they say, I don’t think you have anything to lose.

I haven't built my life around a temporary model. My DD was born at the start of the pandemic, Covid was still very unknown when I started maternity leave so at no point did I ever plan to have a baby in the middle of a pandemic. My job involves travel to other sites and always has. We have a main base because there's 5 of us who cover a very large area and my patch (the patch I applied for the job for) is where I live so the travel to and from the office was only as and when we needed to all be in the office together which was rare. Officially it is my base but in all the time I have worked for this organisation, I have always started from home and finished from home 95% of the time and that is what DH and I based our life around. I miss going out and doing meetings in person, I'm not saying I want to stay at home all day every day, I'd love job to go back to what it was before. But the decision has been made that that model of working is no longer necessary so because of the effectiveness of Teams for the wider organisation so now I need to travel 45 minutes (easily over 60 in rush hour) to sit in an office to call a team that are maybe 20 minutes from my front door.
And my compressed hours work completely fine as they are. I do 7 - 5 so DH drops DD off and I pick her up in plenty of time for 5:30.

I'm not saying that I don't understand they have the right to say I have to work in an office now, I'm just angry that this is not what I signed up for when I took the job and simply saying that given the impact it's going to have on me, it seems a cruel stance for the organisation to take.

They aren’t being inflexible. They’ve offered for you to drop your hours and leave on the dot so you would be able to pick your daughter up.

Most people would love to work from home and do drop off and pick up every day. Very few jobs are that flexible, and it isn’t cruel. They have actually been quite accommodating to offer a drop in hours, but for whatever reason they aren’t willing to allow everyone to work from home indefinitely.

Plenty people would like a job to go back to! I don't understand all these people who expected to work at home forever. Ive not much sympathy. I know many people who were laid off and who wanted to return to work. Shop assistants, delivery drivers, posties, emergency services have all worked throughout and not from home. Spare a thought for people who were furloughed and now have no work, many would be glad to be going to work of any sort.Working in an office must have been manageable before?

@Gothichouse40 did you even bother to read OP's posts? Why the shitty attitude?

I think they are BU. If it’s possible for you to do your job from home they should be more flexible. Many businesses are offering far more flexibility post-covid and it seems strange to me that they’re not. I’m a teacher so I’ve been in work pretty much throughout this, but that’s a very specific job that requires you to be on site. If you don’t have that type of job I think it’s reasonable to expect employers to behave like human beings and offer solutions that are appropriate for their workers.

@Gothichouse40 perhaps rather than being sanctimonious you could actually read my post properly. I did NOT go into the office before Covid. Yes I spare a thought for all those who have worked throughout the pandemic and those who have lost their jobs. But that means I can't ever complain about anything again ever! Have you ever moaned about feeling hungry? Because there are people dying of starvation you know so spare a thought for them before you moan that you're late for lunch.

There are lots of places that wouldn’t sign off 7-5 so I think you have been lucky so far tbh especially if you’re been in the house while your daughter is getting up and ready (there will always be a suspicion that might not be the most productive time).

I can see why you’re annoyed and there doesn’t seem to be any logic to it. Often child care feels so fragile it is very easy for something to tip the balance and make everything just feel very hard. I suspect a nanny would cost more than the £5k loss in salary but you might be able to find a nanny share for a few of the days which might make it feasible to stick at 0.9 fte.

But you don’t know why they’re demanding a return to in office. Perhaps work productivity has dropped with people being at home and comfortable carrying out tasks during the day, or perhaps they’ve noticed problems in some way.

There could be many reasons but realistically it isn’t ‘cruel’ to ask you to come into the office to do your job. If you dislike the change you can look for a job that is at home with no chance of office work and allows for 7-5 but in my experience there aren’t many of these.

You didn't go to the office before but you travelled around. So what would've been your plans for your child if you had to do this again?

I think it’s reasonable to expect employers to behave like human beings and offer solutions that are appropriate for their workers.

They have offered an appropriate solution, that she can drop her hours and leave on the dot for pickup. Many jobs wouldn’t even do that, but would expect you to work your contracted hours and sort your childcare somehow.

Yes, they need to work with their employees, but they also need to look out for their own interests. It’s a job, not a charity.

I was hired in my job with an expectation of one day a week in the office. My manager is the extrovert type and loves the buzz of being in the office and wants her team around her. There is no benefit to my being in the office as my work is technical and she can't/doesn't check it and I am pretty autonomous along with the other technical people in my team who are all over the UK and we keep in touch virtually and works well. I am a high performer, she wanted me in 4 days a week although the company has moved to 2 days a week (which I comply with) as a whole even though my contract says 1. My manager id pushing for 3 now.and will push until I am in the office full time. I also have back problems and hotdesking means my special chair with additional support is always missing and I have to set up a nww workstation each time. Im incredibly unproductive in the office due to the pain so it makes zero sense.

Like you OP I have a toddler in nursery and deliberately chose this lower paying job because it gave me flexibility to do nursery pick ups and avoid the commute. I'm not happy with the sudden change and am interviewing furiously and lucky to have a good relationship with recruiters in my niche field so have feelers out. I have turned down 8 jobs because of lack of flexibility but have 3 offers I am seriously considering. I honestly want full WFH now. No ambiguity about it, I don't trust a blended work approach as I feel a manager can just change their mind willy nilly.

Is there any pathway for escalation?
Is there a flexible working policy you could quote?

I’m not a legal person and tbh I just picked the 1st site that came up on google:

www.thrivelaw.co.uk/2021/09/08/case-update-indirect-discrimination-flexible-working/

But there was a recent case in the news about someone’s flexible working request - taken to employment tribunal. I don’t know if making an official request to HR would help and/or getting union/legal advice to help draft this request?

I dunno how/if it would impact on your relationship with your line manager.

My DD is not with me at any point throughout the work day. I'm in the (home) office for 7am and and she leaves for nursery with DH. I didn't start travelling around until 8 at the earliest and I would always be home by 5:30 latest so I can collect DD.
And it's actually very easy to monitor what work I do between 7am and 9am because of the systems we use in my team so they know I'm actually at my most productive at that time which is why it was approved before my DD was born. I'm not asking to change a thing about my working pattern. All of this, the condensed hours, the basing at home at the start and end of the day and the only going into the main office very infrequently; every single element was all in place long before my maternity leave and long before Covid. The only difference now is that Covid has revolutionised virtual meetings so they no longer need us all travelling to sites so want is in the office instead. That's it... That's the change.
But fine. I can see plenty of people are simply in the stance of I've had it too good for too long and now it's time to pay the Piper. Depressing that that is how this country works.... Work is working perfectly for employee and employer but ultimately, whatever they employer wants to do, no matter the impact it has on its staff, so be it because you're not really suppose to be able to actually have a work life balance; why should I when so many other people don't have that luxury. Misery sure does love company I guess. I'm not looking for advice, just a bit of a rant but actually having to explain myself to people like @Gothichouse40 is only making me more upset about it all so nevermind.