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?

it’s completely acceptable at my work.

So is caring for elderly relatives.

Childcare is expected for pre schoolers but once at school - school runs etc is fine.

As long as the work gets done we support a flexible family friendly workplace.

not all employers are dinosaurs 🦕

Depends on company policy. Where i work, childcare is expected whether you are in the office or not. I went back to work when ds was 6 months. No one worked from home then so if ds was sick it was carers leave or annual leave.

Sorry if this sounds harsh, but why should they? I’m sure most companies will allow some leave in exceptional circumstances though. Can you imagine if you worked in a small company with say 6 employees, and three of these were parents and they all needed time off because their child was ill. That would be potentially 50% of their staff off at the same time.

Exactly

I think if you don't take your kids to the office with you then you are obviously not allowed to babysit during your working hours.

Being in the house with teen or pre-teen who do their own thing, fine. Husbands are probably more of a bother than your child anyway.

Having a younger one early or later around childcare, also ok.

Anything else should be gross misconduct. You are not working and neglecting the child. Just lazy parenting and poor work ethic.

It does piss me off because these idiots are ruining it for everybody else who is working efficiently from home, or who can manage holiday by saving on the commuting time. Holiday clubs often start later or finish earlier, but if you can log in immediately instead of commuting for an hour or so, it's absolutely manageable while going in the office wouldn't.

I agree, if the work did get done / hours were made up. That would be great and I am all for flexible working. It doesn’t though at my company, well specifically my team (I don’t know enough about the others to comment). Every holiday productivity is minimal, clients ignored and others picking up the slack.

It's not employer being dinosaur, it's employees taking the piss!

You can't work and look after your own child at the same time. You are failing one or the other or both. It's the opposite of being family friendly

I think you need to articulate if/ why it is affecting your job.

If it’s something a lot of people do the likelihood is that it’s accepted by the company and no one will thank you for raising it. If these people are decent at their jobs and are getting their work done, albeit slightly more slowly after 3pm, then the company may not care. A lot of places have more or less accepted this as the price of getting reliable staff who aren’t off sick constantly and know they’ve got a decent deal.

If it’s affecting deadlines or meaning that you can’t get stuff done then mention it to your manager, and see if you can agree what to do. But you need real evidence, like “I was due to meet X deadline but then I didn’t get the data from Y so it had to wait until the next day.” If clients are complaining that things are late or you’re having to pick things up because you can’t get a response then that’s clearly not on.

Or TBH I might just try to structure my own day so that I get the stuff done where I need a response earlier in the day if it makes no difference to you.

These threads pop up occasionally. Honestly you would think no one ever had a baby prior to covid and wfh was a big thing.
You paid for childcare and swapped as many favours as possible with other DMs in the same boat over the school holidays. I worked shortened days so I could pick DS up from school some days as he wasn’t a particular fan of after school club. It cost money and promotion prospects for me during those years, but I never thought it was on my employer to have reduced output as the result of my decision to have a family.

Looking back I should have split things more evenly with DH and that’s one thing I regret, but the few times I tried to wfh when DS was ill with the full consent of my manager ( he always seemed to make a miraculous recovery at important meetings time) it didn’t make me want to do it more regularly as I could neither parent nor work effectively.

I know times have changed and I got in trouble with some younger relatives for agreeing that her employers were right not to let her wfh all week because it was half term ( her DCs are very young and definitely cannot entertain themselves).

My place has a policy that if your role is clinical or customer facing you can't be working from home while in sole charge of children under 12, and children can't be in the same room while you are doing clinical work or delivering training, for confidentiality reasons. It's sort of overlooked when people are on admin days, or CPD days, but they are very strict about it. Someone was actually sacked for gross misconduct because a patient complained they had their 5 year old kid in the background while doing an online appointment (which the clinician admitted to, their childcare let them down last min and they didn't want to use up leave). So it really depends on what job you do as to whether it can be accommodated.

It’s not acceptable, I discovered a person working for me doing child care a few weeks back, and leaving the office early. His work was so behind, he’s now on a tracker and having most hours monitored closely.
mine went to after school and holiday club where they thrived with other children and activities, there’s no way you can be present at work and be looking after children

That would be a disciplinary matter at my workplace, probably leading to losing your job. It would be impossible to do, in reality, though, because the duty manager would be immediately down on you like a ton of bricks. They know what everyone is supposed to be working on and how long it should take and when it should be finished. You can’t possibly stop at 3pm and then decide to pick it up again at 8pm. It would be red flagged straight away at 3pm.

But it feels unfair on other staff members who do work their full hours and often have to pick up the slack after 3.30 or whenever.

This is 100% a management issue. If people are wfh whilst looking after children then it will more than likely show in their work output. If people are regularly unavailable and difficult to get hold of during working hours where it impacts the team then management should be pulling them up on this and using the correct disciplinary and monitoring routes. If the workplace does not have a policy for wfh with children then it can't be surprised when some employees do wfh with children. If they do have a childcare must be used during working hours policy then the workplace and management need to enforce it.

Whilst wfh with children instead of getting childcare is not professional, if people are able to get away with it and management are not enforcing the policy of childcare must be found during working hours then people will take the piss with it. Holiday child care (that covers all week and more than 9-3) in some areas is incredibly difficult (and expensive) to find and there will be people who will do their upmost to avoid having to source it.

I’d say a family friendly work place is one that offers family friendly contracts (eg part time, flexible hours, annualised hours. Tolerant of last minute leave requests etc).

Not one that makes juggling and multi tasking the norm.

That's the difference between WFH working or not working, OP, but it's a management issue and you need to take it up with them ... not to moan about so-and-so failing to do their job, but more in the vein of customers being neglected, others having to pick up more and so on

Typical example of how wfh allows people to take the p *
Not possible to have a hot cup of tea whilst looking after children, let alone 'work'

FWIW, I've been telecommuting for years. It used to be standard to have a formal telecommuting agreement which among other things included the worker certifying that they had a private workspace which, at least during working hours, others could not access. If a child at home needed a carer, another carer would be present during scheduled working hours. Of course people would take a break and spend time with their children or go out and drop/collect someone, but they'd mainly use their lunch and breaks and ask for additional time formally if needed.

COVID happened, and employers with no experience with remote work were suddenly allowing (in some circumstances, some would say forcing) workers to work out of whatever space they had available and manage any distractions as well as they could. It's understandable, and was normally accommodated because there was no better option. But when lockdown ended, standards should have been enforced and those without a proper WFH environment required to return to the office full time. Not every company did this, though, and not every manager knows how to manage remote employees effectively.

As it's interfering with your work, I'd tell your boss but don't necessarily lead with "Lucy basically knocks off work for the day when her kids come home at 3" or "Joe disappears for hours a day every school holiday". Start with how Joe's and Lucy's lack of availability or dropped responsibilities impacts YOU and use specific examples, but let management investigate and figure out the root issue for themselves even if you're pretty sure you know what it is. They don't want any possible hint that they're discriminating against an employee for being a parent, but if someone's genuinely not working when scheduled to be, they'll (usually) deal with that when they see it's causing problems that impact work and money.

I worked with someone who was unavailable from 1530 to 1800 as she was taking her kids home from school, giving them tea etc. Her DH was home for 1800, he took over and did bath and bed. She then logged on and made up the time. It worked brilliantly. I could trust her and know that everything would be done and waiting for me when I got into work in the morning.

Of course it’s not acceptable and of course it’s not fair on those working harder and I think it happens a lot. That said, I don’t think it’s the parents’ fault really, once children reach school age then there’s no affordable childcare available unless you’re lucky enough to have family willing to help out. Likewise, gone are the days where one person could work a sensible job with full time hours and a family could live a decent life with one salary. So we’re left with this weird set up where both parents need to work, if they claim benefits they’re looked down upon but there’s no contingency for holidays or children’s’ sickness for working parents. It’s all a bit of a mess and I think a lot of supervisors and managers turn a bit of a blind eye as they realise it’s an impossible situation.

I don’t think it’s at all acceptable for people to do this.

No one should be the main carer for primary school kids - or certainly not under 10s - and working. Obviously the odd emergency is fine but not regularly.

It’s not fair on kids or employers.

If your manager. You have noticed a pattern then time to address it personally with each team member.

Explain their availability and work in afternoon will be monitored moving forward and then if they don't do better put them on a performance plan

I lead a department with over 40 staff, and my team leaders need to ensure that we are appropriately staffed. As long as the work gets done, and we have the right level of cover I am happy with a degree of flexibility. We all work a hybrid split, but if there is an issue its nipped in the bud.

My stance is that we are paid to do a job, so do it properly, don't take the mickey and there won't be a problem.

But suppose someone needs her during that time, do they just have to accept that she’s working later?

be the same if that person was working part time too I say or if that person is working in a different time zone or works different shifts. unless it's a life or death situation it cab wait till that person is avaliable to respond