Looking after kids. Working from home

[Dressassistance]

Hi 😊 I wfh as do the majority of my team. It seems that after school pick up and during school holidays, some of my colleagues with children are not really available. They take ages to respond, are inactive on teams and don’t answer calls. This of course impacts negatively on other team members. They are not catching up or anything after work, they work their standard hours.

I can’t get my head around this being acceptable when people who work from office / other people working from home (including myself) would have childcare in place and working as normal.
What are other people’s thoughts on this? Am I being harsh?

I worked in a government legal setting during Covid and it was so stressful for those who were parents having to homeschool their children whilst working. I don’t know how they did it.

Someone I used to work with was an exec pa to a CEO. She had a baby and would work when he was asleep. Eventually when he got older she put him in nursery. Then she got pregnant again so no idea what she’s doing now.

If your child is sick and not being cared for by someone else then you need to take the day off work.

just cos you WFH it does not mean you should be taking care of a baby at the same time

I find it so annoying. I have childcare because I can't guarantee I will be able to leave to do pick up - I could have am important meeting in my diary at that time - and I think my child is better off playing with others kids in after school care than sitting on a tablet with me shushing them for 1.5 hours. They get my full attention when I finish work.

DBIL & his wife do this, they have a 2yo and will go away for weeks at a time both WFH hundreds of miles from the child's nursery, I think it is massively unfair on both the toddler and their employers. Junior age children between 3:30-5pm ? meh can't get too worked up tbh.

YANBU. This became such a widespread issue at my DH's company that they've massively cut down on WFH and only a handful of people in the organisation are allowed to WFH regularly now.

I'm in IT. Now in a senior role but worked like this for over 20 years in a few different organisations now. Once out of service desk/1st line I found most IT teams are flexible so long as there adequate staffing levels. In my experience when teams are short staffed and there has to be an official rota for covering hours, team morale takes a dive.

This. We are not allowed to WFH with any primary aged child at home (unless they have childcare in the home like a nanny). Of course, some of us have negotiated different hours, which is fine. And the odd emergency is fine.

In answer to the PP who works from home wondering about what to do if her child is sick, well you take the day off, just as you would if you worked in an office. You don't 'pretend' to work from home with a baby/toddler in the background. It's tough, sometimes impossible, if they get sick a lot, but it's not different from working in an office.

I’ve noticed this too. I think it’s ok as a one off but not regularly. I book my DC into holiday clubs or take annual leave.

I agree. I wfh 3 times a week and have people calling me and messaging me expecting answers immediately. There’s no way I could just work as suits me. Today I’ve had about 4 unexpected meetings due to things that have needed urgent responses

I’ve got a couple of colleagues that do it, despite the fact we have a policy that says you should have childcare for working hours.

It’s rubbish parenting and it’s rubbish for work.

It doesn’t seem to be addressed by their managers (I’m guessing because they might do a better job of masking it to them) but it does very much feed into the perception that working from home = skiving. Which then threatens it’s for people who do actually work properly at home.

My sister is a manager she has 15 report into her, she allows it to happen during school holidays etc when there is no childcare, so 20 percent of time. She has kids herself and they are in childcare 80 per cent of the time, but like many people working childcare, wrap around, summer camps times do not aligne with working hours. She expects them to make up their time and she does herself too, this includes working at weekends and late in eve. She says that she understands the issues and constraints parents have. Her company doesn't have an official flexi policy however.

In my work however it is in the policy, but we have flexi working hours with core hours expected ( 10-3) and its up to the individual etc to work up their time. We can also build up TIL etc to use if need to finish early etc
You mention that its hard to get people etc after certain time, just to say that doesn't mean they are doing school pick u[s etc, could be their work schedule. We all know that we wont get an answer from them till at least the next day if we message after 3pm.There are teams here that are finished at 3 regardless of school run etc , they deal with China and other countries so they start very early in the morning, there are other teams that deal with America and further west so they start late and work late.
No one person works the same, i know based on my managers workload that if i sent a teams message this morning he might not get back to me to this eve, or even torontom, - Unless you know their exact workload then you cant really comment
If you are a manager, and this is not allowed then you need to speak to HR. Also aswell need to speak to your team of what is expected , how critical are these responses needed, if they are critical is teams the right format to be using to asking these items, do you have a dashboard that can be updated visually for everyone , do you need a check in meeting at a set time set days, they have to have information for this meeting then
As i said no one works the same, its up to the company to put structure place and use different tools to gather the information they require, as well as communicating regularly with the people who report into you whats expected of them. Work with them

And make sure your DP( if you have one) takes equal sick days if not more as you have just been on maternity leave.

Oh yes, absolutely! Good point

Yes it’s the same in my experience. Our management are at arms length, fortnightly catch up meetings rather than daily, so they just don’t realise it’s happening:

It annoys me because it gives people working from home a bad name. I pay for childcare for my kids so I can give my job my all within my working hours. Perhaps when my eldest is old enough to walk home from school, get their own snack and stick the telly on then I wil do away with after school club but I can’t imagine having her home now and having to ignore her when she could be with her friends playing and having fun.

similarly I can barely work at all when my toddler is home unless they are so poorly they are basically just sleeping. I don’t know how people can handle that.

yea childcare is ridiculously expensive but it’s necessary.

I do think a lot of people aren't really aware of the myriad different arrangements people have with their employer though. As I said, only two people in my organisation know my arrangements as they're informal and flexible. Someone could very easily not be able to catch me on x day afternoon and assume I was taking the piss as it's the same every week. But it's arranged, agreed, and I still work my full hours.

What I do think maybe we need more of is people making it clear when they're available and unavailable. I always have my out of office on I'm not available stating when I will be, and my signature has my loose working hours, and I notice it in the emails from people from external agencies too.

I used to work for a company that offered WFH, but stopped allowing us due to two women who “worked” from home with babies/toddlers and no carers whilst doing no work. When confronted (one of their clients couldn’t reach them all day) one of them had the cheek to complain “you don’t know how hard it is to take care of a baby!” and let slip that she didn’t have a child minder at home on her WFH day despite our WFH contract language stating that you had to have one.

Now I work for a company that is very flexible about WFH, but I don’t work with anyone who has little ones. I’ve used it to help out my sister, when she’s gone on holiday or taking one of her children to a sport tournament, but her children are old enough to be self-sufficient but not old enough to stay by themselves overnight. I do have one colleague who was reprimanded for abusing her WFH because she kept claiming she needed to be there for her child, a 16 year old neurotypical footballer, a head taller than his mother, who “needed” (according to her) to be dropped off & picked up at the school 2 blocks away from her home.

Personally, if their output is the same, work is getting done and performance is not impacted then I would turn a blind eye. A lot of families are under financial pressure and we have cut back using holiday clubs massively because of the cost. If they are otherwise good employees it is worth being flexible to retain them.

I think it depends on the ages. It’s not really allowed where I work, but I had a manager who picked his child up from school at half 3 two days a week. But the child was a well behaved 9 yr old - all he needed was an adult in the house really, and was perfectly capable of understanding dad is working, so do any homework and entertain yourself. My manager was never uncontactable, and had meetings after half 3 without his son interrupting.
A baby, toddler, or a young primary school child is very different I think.

Yeah that's unfair of course. But its a perk of WFH i guess?

I think that approach is also part of the problem. If there’s a non standard arrangement in place, be open about it. Doesn’t need to be the reasons why, but it’s the same as telling colleagues when you’re taking leave. You don’t just vanish away, you communicate. Be that out of office, or working hours marked in diary, or email signature or whatever.

When that’s the case no one notices that they’re doing it…….

I take my lunch during pick up/drop off and my DS watches TV whilst I finish up for the day but that is because he can reliably entertain himself. I would not do it with my 2yr old.

I plan out the holidays as the 6yr can not be expected to entertain himself for 8+hrs

For me there is quite a clear cut line- working with an under 5 in the house shouldn’t be happening on a regular basis. Equally teens are basically fine. I think the grey area is primary. Year 5/6 probably not an issue- reception to year 2 potentially a problem.