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.

I would try and put boundaries in place so that you are not doing more than necessary and also so that you don’t feel resentment as it’s not good for you. Do you have staff appraisals at all? You could discuss workload here and see what they say.

Being a parent is not a protected characteristic.

So she is HR but "we are the ones covering her workload, staying late, reshuffling deadlines and picking up the slack"

Do you all work in HR then? Surely someone knows what to do if you are a HR team?

It is not 90%. Try again.

The manager is HR not the rest of us.

Her DH can't even work the washing machine so she has to do it. He chooses not to I should say.

It can be viewed as gender discrimination as it may put working women at a disadvantage

Simply wouldn't know how to?
He'd figure it out if he had to...

Managment will only address the issue when it becomes an issue for them. If the rest of the team keep covering the work and shifts then it's not a problem for the manager.

If it's easier to push the work your way they will keep doing it.

The answer is to stop agreeing to stay late and stop working hard to make up the difference. Let the deadlines get missed and let the problems fall on the managers shoulders.

I agree.

In the case that I mentioned, the husband was presumably 'too important' to do any of the childcare. However, our place of work handled everything very badly: their solution was to try to dump work on me.

There was the additional problem of the woman not having kept up with her professional development, as I found out: I was being expected to find the time to get her up to speed, in spite of the fact that she was supposedly experienced and an asset. This added to my workload.

I later found out from the woman herself that our employer was running scared because she'd taken the Local Authority to an industrial tribunal for failing to keep her original job open for her when she was away on her last maternity leave. (They had given her a position at the same level, but she wasn't happy with that and it seems that she'd basically been allowed to name which school she'd be prepared to work in.)

Interestingly, our headmaster was approached by a male teacher for similar (but temporary) consideration with regard to his timetable. His wife was undergoing cancer treatment and colleagues had volunteered to cover his register class so that he could get his child to nursery.

The headmaster refused.

Please consider that there may be reasons other than useless husband. I would love to be able to be more flexible for work but my autistic child would not cope without me there in the morning or bestime. Some of my colleagues that I'm friends with know this but I'm not going to share my personal life with just anyone and I'd be much more likely to give a 'oh my husband's useless lol' to tutting randoms I don't want to discuss my personal life with.

In @catchingup1's situation, I would avoid any comment on why the colleague isn't there, you don't want to be accused of bullying and the manager likely knows more about the situation than op does and isn't going to gossip about it. Stick to facts, you only have so many hours in the day and if you need to cover someone else's tasks something else needs to be dropped.

If I'm late in, which would stress me out anyway, I would do my best to do something to alleviate that. Just because you have children it shouldn't impact on your colleagues at all, otherwise it's unfair. Does she have to evidence the sickness absences or is it just a given? Either way, not acceptable at all. Management deal with this.

There's a big difference between flexible working, and frequently leaving early and/or frequent last minute changes in arrangements.

I work flexibly, this was agreed as a reasonable adjustment due to my physical disability - it often takes me much longer to get up and moving in the morning so sometimes I end up being late, and I'm happy to be the one who (usually) stays later if an emergency comes up. But I keep a daily timesheet where this is all recorded to the nearest 15 minutes so it can be checked that my hours are balancing out over time - my usual issue is that I end up banking time & have to work a few shorter days so I don't go over the carry-over limit for the flexi period! It can be very surprising how much an extra half hour here & there (most days in my case) can add up quite quickly.

That's one possible approach the OP could take. Keep a log of the hours she is working to cover for the other staff member then request TOIL to make up for it. This may focus management's mind on just how much extra time all this cover is taking - they may well be thinking "it's just a few minutes here and there" when in reality it's 2-3 man days every single month maybe more.

Certainly the other staff member should be able to request flexible working if it a) can be fit in with the business needs and b) helps them maintain their home life. But again this needs to be recorded accurately, and if over time it shows that the staff member is consistently working say an average of a day less per week then management should be looking at whether they should be paying her a full salary or pay her for working a 4 day week that's worked flexibly (e.g. 5 shorter days each week)

But it is annoying everyone because she has given the excuse of a useless husband. That is why there is so much resentment.

If we didn't have to keep finishing her work on top of our own, I think people wouldn't say anything. Manager won't taken action so it is leading to a bad atmosphere.

Then you need to escalate to your managers manager

It’s none of your business business WHY she’s off so much. If it’s giving you too much extra work, take it up with your manager.

What sort of job do you do?
I would just passive aggressively email her work back to her "hi Susan, hope little one is ok - pls see attached from Mrs Smith asking you to xyz, hope WFH is going well :) "

And put your OOO on from 5pm

@catchingup1 if your manager won’t do anything about your complaint, take it to their manager.

Did you read my OP? The manager has been told.

The manager and her manager are good friends so complaints do not make a difference.

As others have suggested, if you can’t complain or raise it with a senior manager then stop doing the extra. Stop working at your finish time and leave whatever work is not finished. If the team miss deadlines then explain it’s due to absence

You don’t know if she has disabled children. I have disabled children it would be easier to not work but I enjoy working I work less hours and am paid less and have the option of hybrid if I need it but I know one woman in the office got very upset and the supervisor attempted to push me to do more. I got an apology from the senior manager as the email the supervisor sent was discriminatory at least and just vile at worst. We don’t know what’s going on you need to say no to the extra work or tell manager that you will not do someone else work

You don't have to finish her work... you are choosing to. Stop and force the management to do something

She is taking the piss big time. If she can't manage work and home life.Then maybe she should work less hours or part time.

She is s not your problem. Don't do any extra work to cover for her chaotic life.
It is entirely her problem .