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.

@Marmite17

The key point in OPs post is that her working conditions PRIOR to the pandemic have changed. So I don't think she is unreasonable in being upset.

I didn't read it that way. Her daily routine has changed from.prior to the pandemic. But it made it sound like before she travelled to sites directly from home (rather than go into office and then travel from there) but did not have a formal wfh role. It does make sense that without the need to travel to places close to her home, her default workplace has always been the office and therefore would revert to that

@RevolvingPivot

9-5.30 is a long time to be in nursery 4 days a week I'm not surprised you don't want her in for 5.

Posts like this REALLY don't help.

Both my kids were in nursery 8-5h30 5 days a week and it wasn't an issue.

@Runnyrose both your options seem to imply either your DH doing BOTH pick up and drop off or you doing pick up and drop off.

Is there a reason you can't alternate?

When I had children I changed my work hours to start at 8am so my husband did all the drop offs (still does close to the end of primary school) and I end earlier to do pick ups.

Could an alternating rota like this work?

@EmmaOvary

Frankly, expecting everyone to be office based all the time is a prehistoric model that the UK would do well to finally abandon. We have some of the lowest productivity in the world, and some of the highest presenteeism. As with many things, à look at the Scandi countries shows us that it is possible to have a large section of your workforce working from home, without the economy imploding. It's unimaginative to think that it would. Wouldn't we be better off having less stressed workers working more hours potentially rather than spending that time commuting? I'm in London and when I was working in offices that required me to take long, packed tube journeys to get there, I was constantly catching viruses and bugs that often meant sick days off, or at least reduced productivity as I struggled through a work day (probably infecting colleagues). That was hardly a win for my employer.

This

I can understand why employers would rather have employees working within their office - it obviously makes supervision and teamwork much easier, and has further benefits in terms of communication, training other people and other members of the team knowing what you are doing.

But I agree with @PersonaNonGarter's advice. At the very least, you should be able to negotiate a compromise on that basis. And start to think now about how all this will work once your child is at school.

This is why professional women often change career after having children. Ingrained long hours and unworkable arrangements.

It does make sense that without the need to travel to places close to her home, her default workplace has always been the office and therefore would revert to that

I can't see how this makes sense , spend all day on teams from home or go into an office sit at a desk and do teams meetings all day ? What's the difference ?

OP please ask if MN can edit your first post to make it clear that your job was not office based pre-covid. Otherwise you will just continue to get bitter posters telling you that it’s time to stop milking the pandemic now.

You need to play it a bit more canny here. Your employer has shown you their cards. They call the tune. Keep yours closer to your chest, look after your own interests, and choose your next move carefully.

You say your work is very niche. How are your networking skills? Are you/have you developed professional relationships beyond your immediate employer? Are you on any professional networks? Is your cv and online presence up to date?

drop the compressed hours and work full time over five days a week?

If all staff are going back to the office, not just you, why do you see it as "cruel" that they are requiring you to work on the same basis as everyone else?

[quote Runnyrose]@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.[/quote]
I'm sorry OP, it sucks but if WFH wasn't on your contract then they aren't being U. Nor are you though, as it's just not working for you anymore. Your only option is to suck it up and accept it, or say sorry you'll be looking for other employment and then follow through and actually do that (unless they offer your terms to keep you).

I wouldn't look at work as the enemy, they are keeping to the terms of the contract. It's just one of those difficult realities of parenthood, throws everything up in the air and stuff that used to work, just doesn't anymore. You need to decide how much you love your job versus the logistic improvements of finding a new one that is more feasible schedule wise

This is why professional women often change career after having children. Ingrained long hours and unworkable arrangements

Funny how professional men never have a problem though

Even here, o/p is suddenly taking on all the nursery run obligations when currently her dh is sharing? Why?

If your job involved travel to clients then I bet you could take the clients with you if you left. In your position I would do just that.

Used to live an hour from my work so put DS in nursery right near work so if he was ill or anything i could get to him quickly and meant I could work my hours easily but this was ten years ago.

I can feel your pain and its hard with commutes and cost.

Could you just do 4 days and not do compressed hours?

Could Your child go to a nursery near you?

When they start school nursery at 3 it will most likely be a PM or Am class which obvs be local to your home then once school starts its again different hours and 13 weeks off a year, could you move to a childminder so that they can then assist with school runs etc?

I am single parent and worked full time in the office then, i moved back to where my job was as it was my original home and used a childminder who offered flexibility.

But your DH as self employed needs to do the school runs. End of discussion.

@EarringsandLipstick

What about junior members of staff, how do they learn if everyone with more experience is never in the office?

They were almost never in the office pre-Covid. 🤷🏻‍♀️

So that was always an issue, and clearly didn't cause a problem before.

And maybe that was an issue but was justified because the site visits were necessary/demanded by clients/service users? But hey, now that site visits are not necessary, no need for improvement of how things are done? My point remains. We know nothing about the reasons why, OP seemingly doesn't either/hasn't asked and is only focusing on her own domestic arrangements and personal feelings....so really it's all a bit pointless speculating. However, my point is that unless we do know there could be very valid other reasons and just because that is how OP did it before, in a very different pre-covid environment of site visits and was never in, doesn't mean that is the best way to do it now. Maybe I should have been clearer...OP needs to find this information out rather than just focusing on her own inconvenience

[quote Savingsun7]@KingsleyShacklebolt

From an employers perspective we had to get our staff back in as we had noticed that they were not as productive at home and despite them being needed to cover phones between 9-5, many were doing school runs and not being available when we needed them. Therefore we had no choice as the flexibility we gave was being taken advantage of.[/quote]
Not the case for OP tho, who didn't work in the office but at home and on the road. So, it's not a productivity issue here.

Covid is irrelevant here. The question is why a system which worked pre COVID is being changed.
And: whether the company can legally change working conditions, whether the job was sold as arranging f to f meetings, home admin. Whether the OP would have taken the job with the new conditions. Surely other employees must be angry?

It baffles me why women think they should have dispensations in the workplace because they chose to have children.

God yeah the law requiring employers to treat women fairly are just awful aren't they? God damn women, wanting children and a job.

@Bumtum126

On every single thread of this type, and there have been many, the OP is adamant that they are working better, more efficiently, and far more productive than being in the office. It would be VERY interesting to hear the employer's take on it as it seems unlikely that they are insisting that everyone go to the office just for the hell of it.

Agreed I suspect alot would have lots of vague ideas , nothing concrete they would ever reveal to staff. I think alot of management are stuck in old ways of thinking , if I can't see them they aren't working so get them back in. Rather than review how to manage people and projects they switch to default because it feels safe and what they know.

It is very likely that working patterns are stuck in the past out of a combination of habit, resistance to change, the woeful quality of a lot of middle management in firms and sometimes a "can't be arsed" attitude.

We were internally enabled for fully digital working before the pandemic but as client facing we go to our clients, people would go into our base offices for specific meetings with clients, for some activities and to network/be social.

Come the pandemic we were able to switch to 100% remote relatively easily and helped a lot of our clients to make the conversion they had been planning for years but never actually implemented.

our clients discovered productivity didn't go down, in many areas it increased (and this during a time of great stress, health concerns and home schooling) and that those huge expensive offices were not the big bonus they thought.

Most have now substantially reduced their office footprint for office based workers and are slowly looking at 1-3 days (of a 5 day week) in the office with most people settling on one or two days a week.

We prioritise desks for juniors who tend to want to be in more, for whom work is a bigger part of their social life and who are less likely to have good home working space. Most of our clients are developing a similar pattern.

Being able to demonstrate that we are a flexible employer is one of our key "sales" angles for recruiting the best candidates in a competitive market.

I feel for you OP. My day consists of back to back teams calls with other sites. If I was required to go back into the office, I'd be essentially commuting 1-2 hours a day to sit in an office, talking on teams all day (not with the people in the office).

Take the advice of other posters and see if there's a legal angle to this that you can explore.

Agreed I suspect alot would have lots of vague ideas , nothing concrete they would ever reveal to staff. I think alot of management are stuck in old ways of thinking , if I can't see them they aren't working so get them back in. Rather than review how to manage people and projects they switch to default because it feels safe and what they know.

I think this is true.

I'm really proud of my organisation at all levels. I'm middle management but consistently all levels, including staff & senior management, people have asked what works well? What doesn't? And proceeded from there.

We have also been clear that if any area of work is impacted by blended working, then we are doing it wrong, and need to adjust.

So, we are operating on a needs-basis, and already realising that some things will require adjustment eg I was left short staffed on site recently due to staff illness so I need to consider how to manage this.

It baffles me why women think they should have dispensations in the workplace because they chose to have children

It baffles me why men expect women to claim all the special dispensations yet won’t themselves.

Those dispensations are available to both sexes. Men choose to have children too.

She became pregnant after old system was established I think.

@Nomoreusernames1244

It baffles me why women think they should have dispensations in the workplace because they chose to have children

It baffles me why men expect women to claim all the special dispensations yet won’t themselves.

Those dispensations are available to both sexes. Men choose to have children too.

Yes exactly, its institutional misogyny that assumes women take the whole responsibility for both child care and elder care.

It also baffles me that on what is supposed to be a women centred site so many posters delight in other mothers' difficulties navigating work and childcare.

@Bumtum126

*It does make sense that without the need to travel to places close to her home, her default workplace has always been the office and therefore would revert to that*

I can't see how this makes sense , spend all day on teams from home or go into an office sit at a desk and do teams meetings all day ? What's the difference ?

We don't have enough information to compare teams at home versus teams in office. There might be a whole host of valid business reasons or not. OP has not focused on that or seemingly tried to find this out. Just made an assumption that there is no benefit.

What I'm talking about is comparing pre-covid situation of site visits close to home (therefore it is silly to commute away for site then go back to site) versus what the employer is currently asking, to worm in the office. Presumably under her pre covid arrangement, from what she's said, if she didn't have a site visits one day, she would be in the office not at home. Yes those days may have been rare...but her place of work was the office. So it does make sense her place of work now is also the office as default. Whether she can now be 100% wfh is another question and one that OP really needs to understand her employers reasons for why this isn't ok