to resent covering constantly for a colleague's childcare absences?

[catchingup1]

One of my colleagues is constantly off or leaving early because of childcare. Pick ups, drop offs, kids off sick, last minute issues. I do understand that children come first, that is not the issue.

The problem is that it is not shared at all in her household. From what she has said, her husband does not step up, so everything falls on her. Which in reality means it falls on the rest of us at work.

We are the ones covering her workload, staying late, reshuffling deadlines and picking up the slack. It is not occasional, it is constant and it is starting to feel like it is just expected.

What makes it worse is that our manager is fully aware but does nothing. She avoids conflict and just tells the rest of us to get on with it. There is no attempt to address the imbalance or put any proper structure in place, it is just quietly absorbed by the team.

It also makes it harder because she is HR and we are a small organisation, so it feels like there is nowhere to raise this without it becoming awkward or going nowhere.

I do not blame my colleague for needing time off when her kids are ill. But it does not feel fair that her home situation, particularly a partner who is not pulling his weight, ends up creating extra work and pressure for everyone else.

Good outcome

I hope this resolves the situation. Well done for being straight forward with our manager, rather than taking it out on your colleague. I hope her husband earns megabucks to make up for the hit your colleague is going to take on her career because he is "useless." I hope he isn't as useless at his job (although of course he isn't - such men never are, it's "learned helplessness")

I was intrigued by the fact that alongside this thread, there was one posed by a frazzled mother who was being pushed by her workplace to deal with her childcare issues more efficiently as she was haing to leave work on regular "emergencies." She was adamant there was nothing much she could do, any alternatives suggested just would not work, and that she made up her hours.

I wondered if that thread was actually a (mildly) disguised thread from your colleague ...

There is no basis for a bullying accusation.

When I was told that a member of my department would not be writing reports for her classes, I merely asked the two deputes delegated to tell me this: "So who's going to write them then?"

This was followed by silence. As I said in a previous post, in the end one of the deputes consulted the member of staff and then wrote the reports for her.

She was adamant there was nothing much she could do, any alternatives suggested just would not work, and that she made up her hours.

There is one difference here - making up the hours. That being said, not only is one staff member's personal problems not really being that of the employer, but it certainly isn't the problem of the rest of the team (or shouldn't be).

There's also the consideration of the specific job being done. Not everyone has a job that can be carried out flexibly, many involve needing to be available at certain times as an integral part of the role whether that be a specific person or at least one or two team members. For example my role there HAS to be cover every day until 5pm in case of emergencies, and the ability to maybe stay later to deal with them. Many Friday's there's only me and one other part time person working (small, very understaffed team) and she needs to finish early for childcare reasons. As it happens I don't mind this arrangement but it is an arrangement rather than frequent "emergency" being dropped on me. We all have our rota'd days of having to stay until at least 5pm which were arranged around our personal circumstances and it's very rare that anyone has to leave early on their days despite the others all having children.

The OP on this thread said staff need to be physically present, so presumably making up hours wouldn’t work.

Difficult situation all round, but in the end it is this colleague’s DH’s responsibility to step up and make changes. Sometimes things have to hit the wall for people like him to wake up - and for the colleague to realise that she is facilitating her DHs apathy by not making waves.

Am glad the manager acted - I suspect they had not appreciated the impact it was having on colleagues and was in the BeKind camp which, as ever, means that you ride roughshod over the majority to facility a single individual. We need to move away from this model of management and social narrative.

Compassion for someone doesn’t mean letting them out of their contractual or social responsibilities - it means providing support to scaffold them into resolving their issues. This woman will now need to go home and have it out with her DH and whether that means he has to make arrangements with his employer or she needs to find another more family-friendly role (with the lower salary implications), that is for her to decide with him.

Hopefully this will help. Keep being sympathetic to colleague but crucially do not be tempted to offer solution suggestions. Just bland “Sounds tricky, but I’m sure you’ll sort it out”.

She is crying again today saying her DH won't do pick ups and how useless he is. I think she is hoping we will all start covering her hours again.

We are standing firm!

She is making her choice to marry a useless man everybody else’s problem!

Sounds like your colleague needs to register her kids with a childminder for school drop offs/pick ups if both she and her husband are unable to do them. That’s how many working parents manage.

She probably does need to use a childminder or something- but it’s really important OP to not get involved with making suggestions like this to her as then you get into a debate about why she can’t, or could you just help until the childminder contract starts after May half term, or costs and why she needs a pay rise etc. She has the same options as other families with two working parents. She needs to talk to her dh. (In my experience, these men like the extra income having 2 working adults gives his household, even if it’s just not having to cover her personal spending money, but don’t expect that extra income to come without any effort from them.)

We are just sympathising not making any suggestions. It is her choice what she does. I think it is very difficult for her with a useless DH but it ends there.

She can put in a formal request for flexible working, or she could talk to the manager about reducing her hours or changing her work pattern. That's what most people do isn't it? If the company approve it, it's up to them to ensure there is resource to cover the times she's not there. It sounds like the issue is that she randomly disappears and people are left to cover.

Yes I agree with this and ultimately once she's exhausted the flexible/change of hours route she will have to seek alternative employment or a childminder.
As DH is either unwilling or unable to step up I can't see any other alternatives.

It's not like this is some unusual situation in terms of school pick ups. Working parents have to plan for this and there are a few obvious options:

• one of you goes part time to do pick up
• one of you gets flexible working agreed so eg you leave early on Mondays to pick up but make up your working time in the evening
• you pay for childcare eg childminder, after school club
• you get a grandparent or other family member to do pick up

Or a combination of the above on different days.

What you don't get to do is carry on getting your full time salary and just expecting to go and pick the kids up every day at no cost to you. None of this is unfair or controversial. She's not being picked on. She needs to work out her own solution to her own difficulties.