Should HR departments ask women about their plans to start a family?

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Sheryl Sandbery COO of Facebook has recently said, ?Employers should be allowed to ask women about plans for children ? Every HR department tells you not to do that but we need to have a much more open conversation.? This has got the Family Friendly team at Mumsnet wondering what you think. Would it make for easier career planning for women and a more open discussion between women at work and employers or would it be a massive backwards step? Have you ever wanted to talk to a potential employer about your long term plans or ask about their maternity package? Have you ever been asked and felt that your answer has had a negative impact on your employability? We'd love to know.

The US is the same as the UK to my knowledge - they have sex discrimination laws too that make it unlawful to discriminate against an individual due to their gender.

I think the point the COO is making that she knows she shouldn't ask, but it would make it easier for the employee and employer to ask the question. We all know that that question should be asked to anyone - male or female. I am not sure if Facebook is openly family friendly in terms of their HR policies - if they are then I read it the context that it is a positive comment - it means the employer-employee relationship can be so much open. If they aren't well, then I guess it could be construed as a negative i.e. they are hiring women and then they go off on maternity leave etc etc.

Sorry, correction: ...that question shouldn't be asked to anyone - male or female...ooops!

Have not read the whole thread, so sorry if it's been said already, but I'm fairly sure that would be illegal, wouldn't it?
Doesn't the Equalities Act apply? It woud be treating people with a protected characteristic less favourably.

A big fat no. Unless men are going to be asked the same thing, and judged equally on the basis of the answer. Thank god for the Equality Act.

I think we have to remember the equality thing is better in the UK than say the US for women/men/family situation.

Having said that was sat in an interview with three old farts (yes local councillors) for a part time 25hrs a month job and they asked me about my family, I did a bit of a double take then asked them what exactly they wanted to know, he coudn't explain it so I said yes I had one and couldn't think of anything else, only fumed afterwards when I asked myself exactly what was the relevance to the job!!! I can bet they wouldn't have asked any male applicants oh wait there wouldn't have been any unless a retired bean counter, grrrr

As to the point about having the convo - I think it has to be applied equally these days at whatever lifestage/sexual orientation - after all you can have kids at 60 if you REALLY want to. But by having the convo would it make any difference to the job or how it was done - if not then its not a relevant convo is it

No.

If someone asked me about this in interview I'd be incandescent. In fact, I'd tell them to stick their job where the sun don't shine.

a) I don't care if they're asking both men and women, it's none of their damn business

b) why ask, if you're not planning to discriminate on the basis of the answer and

c) the answer can change form day to day anyway, depending on a whole host of circumstances, so it's a meaningless exercise.

No, of course not.

But I think msrisotto has a point. SS may be looking at this from a perspective of a senior woman at a young organisation only - I imagine Facebook do want to keep her and would work with her and other male or female senior employees to accommodate any external plans or responsibilities (for example, a sabbatical or whatever)

But there's absolutely no way that can or should be generalised to all people in all roles in all companies.

An illegal and pointless question. As many have pointed out, plans to TTC don't always translate into a timely, viable pregnancy. You can't do workforce planning around a hope to conceive, however, as many have pointed out, organisations have p,entry of advance warning about absence in regard to mat leave, but not many choose to use it.

also maternity leave is a right. not something you have to negotiate. the law covers it and the only point to a 'discussion' is to try and circumnavigate the law. it offers nothing for the woman that is not already meant to be offered.

It is not any of their business. What exactly do they think they can plan? As has been said many times we do not necessarily have absolute control over when we get pregnant so often despite our best planning it doesn't work as we would like.

Ime I had 3 mc's, a new manager came in at this point & immediately ignored me - presumably because he expected me to get pg, which thankfully I did the following month. He continued to ignore my efforts, then whilst i was on ML my role was changed which made returning part-time impossible (we had discussed this prior to ml - I was open & honest about that!). I was offered a crappy pt role totally under my level with barely a proper remit. I was subsequently made redundant.

So they knew my plans, they had time to plan, I had time to plan. Where did that get us?!

So long as employers & managers do not value their female staff for all they offer, regardless of time out for children, this isn't a discussion it's ammunition.

"Unless you can afford - and want to! -hire a surrogate there is no option except for women to have children"

Exactly. And yet both man and woman (in general) gain the benefit of being parents. So not only are there biological inequalities (which is inevitable) there seems to be a call that women should also be penalised in their career. For men to become fathers. Fuck that.
Why has mnhq not been back? I have to say if this wasn't an mnhq thread I'd almost suspect trolling!
Where I work seems to have no problems being flexible for parents (I assume otherwise too but too small to tell, but we are all parents of small children). Men as well as women take the hit when kids are ill or it's sports day etc. the person who has just come back from mat leave and works part time is regularly still in the office at 7, pops in on her non working days, takes work home. As the other woman in the team I'm the one who works until midnight, also works weekends etc. they get back what they put into their staff.

As I said I always raised it because my having children did not interfere with the work and if the employee chooses to raise it and explain she takes 2 weeks holiday to have babies in and goes back full time and has a brilliant long term nanny and a non sexist marriage at home where by if the children are sick the husband is the first call for child care... all that is a selling point so say it and sell yourself. If you are a constant skiver who is always off and with a sexist husband who would never in a month of Sundays take time off if your child was sick then you might well be more of a liability.

yes i feel bad about it in a way but as i'm good circumstances, and better than they might expect of a single parent, by having involved gps who are happy to go pick up ds if school calls saying he's ill and ok with me saying can you pick him up next tuesday because i'm on a conference in london etc i did bring it up myself. you know they are judging your family circumstances so if you are in a position to reassure then you do yourself a favour by doing so.

however the reason i feel bad is that by doing so i'm effectively encouraging the idea of women with children being problematic or needing to justify themselves.

the thing is though i really wanted to let them know that i was flexible and being flexible pays dividends for me because i get to totally manage my own hours and have flexibility from them too when i actually need it.

the reality is there are actually few jobs where it isn't possible to be flexible and most women tend to be so grateful for being allowed that flexibility that they give twice as much back in many ways and become very loyal employees. sadly lots of employers don't see that and fear their employees having any kind of control over their own hours and work.

we don't need HR depts asking women about their family plans we need employers waking up to the value of flexible, more autonomous working (obviously with accountability) for all of their staff.

Yes saf. I have mentioned to my boss that I don't plan more children in general conversation about families and backgrounds. If I thought she wanted to know officially I would lie. Fact is if I did get pregnant I would probably keep the baby. And apparently dh and I spent over two years having unprotected sex which we weren't aware of so it could have happened.

No way.

I've been trying to get a job for two years and its stressful enough. I've been asked dubious questions at interview, which are legal but I did feel were stepping into territory I wasn't comfortable with. I may have finally got a new job and it has been been a huge concern to me, as we are considering starting a family in the near future.

It means that women might need to discuss if they are infertile. Or discuss any other problems they might have. Or it might put them under pressure if they are ttc. Or lots of other very intrusive and very personal information. At interview stage.

Given the number of interviews I've been for, the thought of having to do this repeatedly...

The emotional stress of having to do this, and the worry of just how much this could affect you is enormous.

And yeah men would not be asked this and even if they were it could be used to their advantage rather than disadvantage (someone who is 'settled' but doesn't need to take maternity leave is even more attractive to an employer than someone who is single and more likely to change jobs frequently to advance their career).

yes a while 'after' i got the job there was a jokey remark from my boss about how i better not go and get pregnant now as he's had enough of women announcing they're pregnant of late. from him tbf it was jokey and he knows i'm rather determinedly single and glad to be out of the pre school years and yep, i did take the opportunity to reassure that definitely wasn't on any cards i was aware of.

in this job i think even if i did get pregnant i'd happily work right up to the birth and pretty much straight away again afterwards if possible anyway as i like my job, it's flexible and we have a nursery with staff subsidies on site which would be heaven - would LOVE to be at work and pop over to the nursery to bf, have a cuddle then get back to my office. now if every workplace was like that....??

Haven't seen this on the thread so far, but is there any more info about the context? Was Sandberg talking about at interview, or during appraisals, planning for the year ahead, etc?

Still think it's pretty naive - the UK has far more employment protection than the US (google "at will" employment) but I think it's still something like 30,000 women a year get sacked/made redundant due to pregnancy.

In an ideal world, yes, it would be possible to go into an end of year review and say you're planning to start TTC so maybe it's worth recruiting that extra member of staff now, rather than next year. But guess what - you can already do that.

If the conversation isn't currently being started by the woman, then that's because she has reason to fear it will not be career enhancing. The cure for that isn't to allow employers to force the issue by enabling them to bring it up, it's for employers to make it so damn clear by their actions that it won't have a negative effect on your career that their female employees start bringing it up unprompted.

saf, my previous employer would frequently make remarks like that, again in jest. It was part of the reason that I feel aggrieved about the job; his attitude to women got progressively worse - especially when his relationship with his partner(s) broke down. I was there for a very long time but left under a cloud and felt bullied and forced out (I sought legal advice, but unfortunately it wasn't in my best interests to pursue even though I had a good case).

Being honest about it, the prospect of getting pregnant and working there is one I feel relieved not to have to face. Having to talk about this in advance or being in a situation where its is expected that you should do this and then having to explain why you have got pregnant accidentally and be resented for 'not following procedure' is not something I would relish with someone who has already expressed a negative view like that - jokey or otherwise. Even though it was jokey, it made me feel deeply uncomfortable.

yeah different person and i would have felt uncomfortable. my boss is gay (no personal axes to grind with exes etc), big into non discrimination, speaks proudly of his feminist mother and i know in reality he'd be very supportive of me if i had another child. i'm in a far from typical situation work wise though and well aware of it.

i've had previous incredibly negative employers and colleagues. this is actually the first time in my life i've really liked my line manager and wanted to continue working with them. to the point i keep 'joking' about how our exit strategy should be going into the consultancy business together.

in an ideal world women could trust their employers, line managers and colleagues and have open discussions but we don't live in that world and HR putting people on the spot with intrusive questions would do the opposite of helping the situation.

And in an ideal world it would not be assumed women give up work or go part time when they have children and as many men would do that as women. The fat is most women marry up and earn less than their man and go part time or give up work when children are born and their money is often very littler or pin money.I wish that were not so.

If you recruit a woman like I am who earns 10x what her husband does, who can say yes if a chidl is sick it is always husband who will deal with it and i have worked for 10 years without breaks and am never sick that is a huge selling point if you are male or female. If instead you earn £6k a year and your husband £40k and he leaves everything related to children to you and if you lost the £6k the family would manage fine and you have a record of often being off sick and your career is not very important to the family then things are different.

Anyway I think it's right the questions may not be asked. If they are asked they must be asked of men,. In fact it's very important women ask male colleagues when their wife is pregnant who will be looking after the baby to challenge male assumptions and to help men understand they are moving to a culture where if the man takes 6 months off that's fine. My daughter's boss recently took her maternity leave (3 months?) and then her husband took 6 months. Employers are seeing more men taking time off and that's a good thing for gender equality.

Seems like I've missed several days of one of the most thought provoking threads in a long time.

As I recall, Ms Sandberg was speaking at a US state department (might have been US treasury actually - not sure which dept) sponsored discussion on women in the workplace and the comment taken was form a much wider context in the discussion. It was the week before Davos and I think the subject was then reprised there.

I only read a write up after the fact, obviously I wasntinvited! But I believe her point was that by being up front companies could then accommodate workers' desire to achieve a balance of home and work life. I think she was being pragmatic in saying 'women' as in my experience ( but I'm over 50) it generally is the women who do most of the child care in two parent working families. I have taken many days off over 20 years to look after sick children - my DH has only had a handful of days off.

True, Ms Sandberg is in a fortunate position of being able to make the rules where she works but she famously leaves the office at 4.30 to go and spend time at home before working again through the evening.

I don't think having the debate is a bad idea - only by talking out loud can opinion be heard.

So what if women (or men) take the odd day off to look after sick kids. If you're in an office job there is no reason why you couldn't work remotely for a day - possibly slightly compromised if the kid was actually being sick (I've run a conference call whilst holding a sick bucket) but when they are ill they normally sleep most of the time or lie on the sofa - and even if you cant do a full day of effort - like most women on here, I would then be working all evening.

Ok if you work in a shop or meet clients then this is not quite so easy but for most office based jobs it is perfectly acceptable to work from home now and again, write reports, catch up on paperwork etc if a child is sick. Both me and my DP have done this without issue. It is this kind of acceptability/flexibility that is needed imo - not trying to scare women out of the workplace if/when they have children.

I tell you what, I am a damn sight better employee now that I have children and am a working parent - because like most on here I suspect, I would literally bend over backwards to keep all the plates spinning and often work evenings and weekends to demonstrate my flexibility. I would literally work all night just so as not to give anyone the chance to say having children was impacting on my job. I am also now bloody good at multi-tasking and getting the job done. When I was childless and in my twenties it was down tools at 5pm and off out clubbing/partying = unproductive hangover day the next day.

Employers are stupid imo if they don't make a few flexibility concessions in order to be able to take advantage of this growing band of highly-motivated, experienced, dedicated professional women who just happen to have children.

Most people accept a job or enjoy their job in large part because of their managers. Are we then in return able to ask what their plans are regarding starting a family? After all you may not wish to work for a boss who plans to have two MLs in quick succession (male or female). But I'm thinking that wouldn't be welcomed & deemed inappropriate

hear hear flatmum. I work from home most of the time. DD was sick on Monday so I couldn't take her to childcare. So I worked from home figured out what I'd managed to achieve and told my boss I'd done about half a day, so took half a day leave. She accepted it without any questions. I have a deadline to meet by a week on Tuesday I'll do a couple of hours this afternoon, and will be working 14/15 hour days Tuesday and Wednesday of this week to get everything done. I honestly feel that it's a fair swap for having such flexible working conditions.