To think that workplaces should be less accommodating of personal lives?

[HangryDenimBird]

I’ve noticed workplaces bending over backwards to accommodate personal lives. AIBU to think that employees should keep their personal issues separate from work?

That mindset works when employers expected staff to be available from X time until y to complete a set list of activities.

But when employers expect employees to be more flexible, IE travel and stay away from home, to work longer hours to support a deadline, come into work early on a certain week to support an activity, etc then that flexibility needs to be respected and reciprocated.

There is also a significant push for more efficient, higher productivity working, which means work is more stressful for many people.

Both these mean workplaces taking into account that employees have lives and working around that accordingly. And understanding that a supported workforce works better for an employer

My husband has cancer, my employer is very supportive with me taking time off to take him to appointments. I keep track of my hours and work evenings/longer days and use some leave to cover them. I obviously don’t go to all appointments but they are incredibly flexible.

I’d wouldn’t want to work for a company who wouldn’t offer that support.

I've never seen a workplace yet where the leeway given to people to, say, pick up kids or help care for an elderly relative has caused issues. I think we have discovered now that actually giving people a bit of flexibility works far more often than it doesn't.

Is the op Kemi Badenoch by any chance?! 😂

Best all be robots then.

Lets remove all humanity from the office and see whether your staff retention of good staff stays high or whether you suddenly see a high (expensive) turnover of staff.

🙄

Happy staff = more productive and more loyal staff who have little reason to look for a new job.

It pays to give leyway to good staff. Recruitment and training is time consuming and costly.

Of course all this has to be done on a case by case in terms of performance. If someone's performance is dropping, then you explore why and what measures would aid it. If someone's performance is at an unacceptable level, you deal with that too.

It depends on how much you value staff and how replacable they are.

I am not a big fan of the “bring your whole self to work” trend. It seems to be a way of encouraging the people who already over share to do it more and force us to listen to it!

That's how I feel,

I keep the two separate, that includes the people, work colleagues are just that, they know next to nothing about my life.

People like to try and take the piss if you are too accommodating.

You again? No, they shouldn't.

To some extent but I'm not a robot

I work for a law firm which is relatively accommodating of personal lives. I chose it partly for that reason.

Some firms require you to work 80 hours per week and have zero respect for weekends, holidays, sickness etc. They pay much better than my firm.

It’s give and take. If I take an hour off to go to my son’s nativity, I make it up at some point. There are times when I work until 2am to get stuff out but mostly I do bedtimes with my children etc and work from home more than would be allowed at other firms. You also have lower target hours just after coming back from maternity leave.

I don’t feel guilty about the firm accommodating my personal life. It’s a business decision the firm has made to retain senior women with children or those who want work life balance without having to pay too highly.

I think it’s completely a matter for employers.

My employer is very flexible and accommodating because they have to. There’s a shortage of good people in my role, it’s an employees’ market, and if they’re inflexible, employees will toddle off down the road to another employer in the sector who is more flexible.

DH’s employer are inflexible and then wrong their hands about why they struggle to get people to apply for vacancies.

Whilst I am loath to respond to drop ambiguous comment and go threads, I'll bite.

Enjoy paying for me to be on benefits instead then. I can only work because my employer is flexible. One of my children is currently unable to access their right to education because there is no suitable school in the area to meet his needs. We are battling the authorities to get suitable provision and are met with denial and delays at every turn. I would love to be able to turn up to the office and do 9-5 every day,but life didn't turn out that way. If I have to leave, I should be entitled to carers allowance and universal credit while paying no tax.

I used to work for someone like you. I had a fortnight of working all day then rushing over to the hospital to be with 4 year old DC, and trying to sleep in a chair by his bed. I couldn't take leave because we were allowed only 5 days "compassionate leave" in a year and I needed that for when he was discharged.

(I would add this was was 30 years ago and I don't think it would happen now)

On balance, no.

If employers don't accommodate personal needs, they will lose employees to those employers who do. Increasingly, people are less interested in pay (once the package is attractive enough) and more interested in work/life balance, so if employers want to be competitive, they need to offer a great all-round package that takes into account individual personal needs.

Don't be ridiculous. You sound resentful of a colleague whose needs your employer is attempting to meet.

The whole person comes to work; it's impossible to separate being an employee from being a person who inevitably experiences "personal issues".

Obviously there are shades of more and less reasonable in terms of what both employees and employers might feel entitled to expect. But largely YABU.

If we could go back to the 1800s when employees had no rights at all at work, you'd be first in line to volunteer, right? No, didn't think so.

I think a lot of the public sector organisations would come to a grinding halt if they did as OP suggests. A lot of staff are only there for the flexibility/family friendly policies (sure as hell not for the crap salaries anyway)

Let's hear some examples then, OP.

Tell us you don't understand disability (to name but one possible factor) without telling us you don't understand disability. 🙄

Hi Kemi 👋🏻

So many of these vague posts with no nuance expecting a yes or no answer, lately.

It’s the same as all the others. There’s nuance. Don’t accommodate people’s actual lives and it’s shit for both employers and employees. Take it to the extreme in other ways it can also be bad for employers and employees.

I manage a team,

For every request I ask myself, is this reasonable, can this be accommodated. We rarely have vacancies. Staff are unbelievably flexible for the company because it is for them.

It's a win win.

I agree to a certain extent.
I don’t bring issues into work however there are times (flexible working patterns etc) that it’s helpful to the employer and employee. I can get more work done when I work flexibly but if I had set hours I’d have to drop to part time. (Just an example)

It needs to be balanced. You can 'get too much of a good thing'

For example sometimes it's helpful to allow a team member to wfh and video conference into meetings because she has no childcare on day a Thursday.

Providing that doesn't mess up anyone else.

It would be different if she covered say the reception desk physically in work and her not being there meant the other staff couldn't EVER get a Thursday off on annual leave or to go to a medical appointment say.

That wouldn't be fair.
I would expect there to be further discussion on this around coming in on particular Thursdays when the MIL could watch the child or whatever the employee could do to come and go a bit.

Is it fair to allow someone to work from home permanently because they bought a lockdown dog which has separation anxiety and landlord says neighbours are complaining...prob not, start training it.

I work to live, I don't live to work.

If employers want go keep their staff they need to accept that most people are the same.

You might not be at a stage in your life where you appreciate the flexibility yet.

Many employers, who can, support work/life balances and they find it works very well for them in terms of employee motivation, productivity, two way goodwill and retention.

What are your specific issues with it?