Can I have some postive working from home feedback please?

[Jennapuss]

Hello. I am thinking of asking to work from home for part of the week, maybe just one day, as I don't want to put DD in childcare all the time (she's only 6 months). My friend told me that at her work they can only work from home if their child is in childcare! So what's the point of that then? I'm pretty appalled by the attitude of some managers to flexible working. But what really gets me is the assumption that nothing would get done. It's not like all of them in the office are so amazingly productive - and the managers are the worst, wasting their time drinking coffee in meetings all day every day. There must be people out there, maybe who run their own businesses, who have managed to combine working with looking after the kids? Surely if anyone can do multi-tasking it's a mum!

Jennapuss, I'm afraid I agree with all the other posters on this thread. I have worked from home part-time since ds1 was about 3 months old but I quickly realised I had to get childcare to be able to do it. I'm afraid even with your plan below I think you are being quite optimistic to try to get even 3 hours work out of a day without any childcare. And don't forget that as they get older they sleep less and less during the day, so you would be either trying to fit more work into the evenings or trying to focus when your dd was still awake and wondering what mummy was up to!

Also, in my experience before having my boys, work colleagues are far less likely to sympathise with your situation if they can't see what you are doing. I had a boss who 'worked from home' several days a week and it was very hard to get her on the phone during those days. I am afraid that without seeing her sitting at a desk slaving over her work, most people in our office assumed she was just taking the piss and using that time to take the kids to and from school, tidy up the house or whatever. It's not as if she turned up the next day having completed a whole lot of her work.

I'm not implying you would be like this at all, and I completely agree with you that many people in an office situation are not very productive, but in order to get the approval from your boss I think you would need to show very clearly that your work would take first place over anything else, during those hours they are paying you for. And if your dd is in the house instead of in childcare that's not giving the right message to your employer.

I'm sorry, I appreciate all your comments, I really do, but I don't care too much what message I'm giving my employer. I'm not interested in career progression now - I'm there because I have to be, not out of choice, and my number one priority is my daughter. I'm not bothered about which "hat" I'm wearing either (sorry hatwoman!). I am me, a new mother, and they can take it or leave it. Of course I am professional when at work, but that doesn't stop me from being me, and I'm not going to gloss over the fact that I have a child - it's nothing to be ashamed of. My employer has not expressed a particular concern about my daughter being at home with me. And if I arrange things so the quality of my work isn't affected (and if I thought it would be I wouldn't be considering it) and if they agree to that arrangement, then it's none of their business how I organise my life.

I'm not going to argue this one too much more as I'm obviously on a different wavelength from most of you when it comes to priorities. I'm sorry if this sounds like a bad attitude, but like I said I work hard for very little reward and I'm pretty sick and tired of it tbh.

I'm afraid that I agree too. I started a small business at the beginning of the year before DS started nursery and it has been really difficult. I have been literally running round the house to get away from him on occasions so that DS doesn't drown out customers on the phone whilst I'm trying to take details (DH also works from home so he does have someone else he can go to at that point) I've tried to do as much as I can evenings and early mornings but there have been times when it's been really tough and I have wondered what on earth I am doing.

I get SO much more done on the two mornings that DS is at nursery (I get 2.5 hours per session by the time I have taken him/gone to pick him up) compared to when he is home.

Oh dear, I've just read through my last post and I sound like a right cow. I'm not really, I'm just very fed up with work at the moment. I have a cr*ppy female boss and I hate being in the office. I'm desperate to find another job, but my job is the only one of it's kind in the whole county - yes, really - so without moving house this would be pretty impossible. Unless I got promoted, which with the attitude I've displayed here is pretty unlikely I think!!

I do actually know people who successfully work from home with kids - not every day obviously. I'm almost tempted to change nickname and post some positive vibes to myself! As I quite often spend a couple of hours on Mumsnet in the evening (good therapy) I'm sure I could put that time to better use. And there's the weekend as well.

TBH I'm prepared to do just about anything not to have to go into the office for 5 days a week. But I really do mean it about not being able to afford childcare - it's a real dilemma and I genuinely don't know what else to do about it.

Jenna, I don't have any direct experiences but wonder if you have read How Not To Be A Perfect Mother which has a long chapter about homeworking (mostly with childcare though, sorry).

I think if you have your dh involved and with evenings /weekends etc it may be doable but I'm afraid I cannot imagine you being anything other than you both (and your marriage) being stretched to your limit doing it. e.g. i think the chances of you and your dh getting much time together are going to be tiny. But if that's what it takes, parents do it. I hope it does work for you.

Before my baby was born I considered requesting 2 days from home. I had visions of sitting at the PC, bouncing junior on one knee and getting work done.

Ha!

OK, so DS is only 8 weeks old, so maybe I'm not quite together yet, but yesterday all I planned to do was the ironing, a trip to the shops to get nappies and bathroom cleaning. I managed only to get the nappies. Looking after a baby/small child is a full-time job - you can't just successfully acheive a full workload and care for a child.

When I go back to work I plan to reduce my hours to 30 hours and compress them so that I work them over 3 and a half days. On the half day, whilst I'll be contactable, I plan to do the work over evenings and on my 2 non work days. I'm very lucky that I have the sort of job where this is possible, and as I have successfully worked from home, once a week, for several years, I think it will be agreed.

Work isn't a place; it's an activity so can be done anywhere at any time - but my view is that it cannot be combined with looking after a child,

Thanks for the constructive comments. ChoosyFloosy - I would only be doing this one day a week, so it would only involve maybe one evening and part of the weekend. There's no way I'd contemplate working from home all the time - I couldn't possibly get through all my work! I think I might get that book - thanks.

Jenna if you really can't afford the childcare (are you claiming CTC btw?) how about asking your bosses if you can do 5 days a week over 4 days in the office, IE longer hours per day?

That way, the day you're at home with your DD, you are going to be with her, rather than trying to work.

You're obviously feeling incredibly negative about your job (and there's the stress of your DP not having found something FT yet) but your employers only have to agree to a request for flexible working if it is not going to damage their business. And you need to consider the stress your proposed method of working from home will put you under. Also, the negativity you feel about your job may be obvious to your bosses so they'd be less likely to trust you to work at home. Employers in the main are still really, ridiculously suspicious about home-working, but if they have an employee who asks for it who comes across as not wanting to be there, they'll be even less likely to agree to a request for flexible hours.

I'm not saying this to be negative, I just think you need to consider it from their point of view because they're the ones with the power here.

Hi Jenna

You do sound terribly down about your work .

When my DS2 was born I had to go back to work as DH had taken redundancy and set up his own business, but was not earning enough for us to live off.
In retrospect I realise I was really angry with him. We hadn't talked about things properly, and he had always assumed that I'd want to go back to work. I hadn't realised it, but I'd always assumed I'd stop working full-time once I had 2 kids.

You sound very angry and frustrated by the situation you find yourself in, and that's understandable. However you need to be careful not to let that flow over into anger with your employer, or else you may find yourself with no job at all!
Whilst the boss may have her ansaphone on all day when she works from home that's not really the point if, in your job, you are expected to be available.

Your DD is still very young, and I suspect you are tired, stressed and feeling torn between having to work and wanting to be with your DD. Please don't put unrealistic expectations on yourself - it isn't the solution.
As someone suggested, can't you do more hours over 4 days?

There's another answer. Find work which pays more than the £20k a year so the economics of this change and it isn't so difficult that your husband hasn't got a job at the moment. Don't know if that's possible. You say it's notoriously badly paid. Is there something similar you could do which is better paid?

Hello. I can't go into more detail about what I do because someone may put two and two together. I'd love to find something better paid, but my current job title tends to put off potential employers who cannot understand that there are many many transferable skills.

I can't do more hours over 4 days because I have to be available for at least some of 5 (I could see about 4.5 I suppose). This would also mean longer hours in the office which on balance would be worse than 5 normal length days.

My line manager is at work, not at home, when she has her ansaphone on the whole time. And she does the same work as me ie frontline, so she is also supposed to be available. Her excuse is not being able to cope with the constant interruptions.

My line manager's boss knows I have problems with her and is sympathetic. I have never let my feelings about being at work affect the quality of my work and management is very happy with my performance.

I have found out today that another lady in the section who works from home one day a week does so with her DS at home, who's just 1. So there is a precadent - I think the main issue for me will be convincing my line manager who is adamant that I need access to the paper files for every single thing I do, which isn't actually true. Nobody has raised the issue of trust with me, and the overall boss is very supportive of home-working and does it himself.

Ooops - that should be precedent!

Does this other woman with a one year old at home have someone who comes in to look after her child while she works Jenna? (Perhaps someone unofficial, like her mum or something?) In which case, there's no reason whatsoever why that wouldn't work.

I don't believe so. I think she does what I'm intending to do - ie does some during the day and makes it up in the evening. She is at principal officer level, so it's hardly "stuffing envelopes" (!). I might add that there will be many times when my husband is at home that day so it would be madness to have to pay for childcare every week just to cover those times when he isn't.

I honestly can't see what you have all got against it and I'm not quite sure why I am continuing to justify myself. I'm very surprised to be arguing this one with so many other mums - my personal view is that my primary role is as a mother and my paid work has to fit round that. But each to their own, and it is mine and my boss's decision in the end of course.

Jennapuss
If your DH is likely to be at home often on the days you would be working at home, then surely that IS having childcare, and you could rely on him to look after your DD while you get on with your work.

I don't think people are being deliberately unsupportive - more just trying to be realistic based, no doubt, on their own experience.

Your comment that "my personal view is that my primary role is as a mother and my paid work has to fit round that" is all very well as a personal belief, but I doubt very much that any employer will be sympathetic and supportive of that ad infinitum - perhaps during a child's illness/ maternity etc yes, but not on an on-going basis.

I think your feelings about this are typical for many mothers of small children, but this is why so many of them leave the workplace, or reduce hours or become self-employed etc?

Please don't get angry with people here for being honest. Like I said before I think you are angry with the situation you find yourself in - the responsibilities, stress, workload, lack of choice and control?

You're right, ultimately it is between you and your boss, but I can predict now what the outcome of your discussions will be if you begin to share any of your sentiments from this thread!

Well clearly I will not be sharing my true sentiments on this one, Legacy. I will be approaching my boss with the utmost of tact and making it very clear that my job is much more important to me than my DD (!) That's the beauty of an anonomous forum isn't it? That you can share things you never would in real life. I think the women who are in a position to leave the workplace/reduce their hours/become self-employed are the lucky ones btw. There are many many more who would love to do this but can't. In my case, doing any of the above would mean I literally couldn't afford to feed and clothe my daughter.

Just re-read that - of course the job is just as important as DD in the sense that I need the money to provide for her, but that's all.

I haven't read all the replies, but I have to say that I can't combine working from home with looking after the children. I can only get work done when they are either at school or in bed, and I find combining the two is just frustrating and confusing for all of us.

I work at home mostly, and the biggest issue is that I deal with very large outfits, typically banks and it's hard to sound so professional with a child screaming near the phone.
DS1 now understands that daddy is a sort of "pirate" (I'm a headhunter, I steal people from banks, and demand money), and that it's hard to look like a big scary pirate if he's making a noise.
But at 6months old, that's a distant dream.

I have two fixes. One is a radio landline phone that can work outside the house, and the other is the sound system on my PC which can make professional office sounding noise at a level that can (usually) drown out the screaming.

We're at the stage where the live-in nanny helps out with the business occasionally.

I used to boss people around in the City as part of my job, and long ago realised that "real" productivity is badly correlated with staring at a screen.
But...
Working at home whilst looking after a child is never going to be anything like as productive as your office mode, and I'm far more sympathetic to your position than the average boss.
A lot depends upon your work, or indeed work that you can choose to do.
Productivity in some activities are quite independant of the size of the block you do it in. Some jobs require you do it now, others do not.
Whatever the dimwit laws on this say, the best way is to negotiate. One task I'm currently doing requires just enough nous that I can't hand it to a temp, but is amazingly tedious.
There is the generation of the reports and other bollocks that firms of any size generate. Again time consuming, and (allegedly) important, but as long as it's done by the deadline who cares what time of day it was written ?
If you're going to negotiate work at home, you need to reassure your manager with this sort of fixed deliverable. It's a risk for them if they have a home worker who appears to be shirking so your job is to reduce their fear.

DominiConnor - thank you! Most interesting post. Love the idea of computer generated office noise! There certainly is work to be done where it doesn't matter what time of day it is - as you say, reading/writing reports, etc. etc. I think work know me well enough now to know that I would not shirk at home. However I may have come across on this thread in my frustrated mode, I am a diligent worker and I wouldn't dream of wasting work's time. I think I've already won them over on the fear thing. My task I think is to get my line manager to realise that in the digital age I do not always have to physically be in the office to have access to the information I need. I think her objections are on that practical level rather than anything to do with me having a child.

In my misspent youth I was an IT director, and it's not not all that hard to give you a virtual screen. If you work for an outfit of any size, they almost certainly have VNC or Citrix, indeed the variable is not whether they have it, but more likely whether the BOFHs have told the unwashed users.
Once you have this, then assuming you have decent broadband at home, you have access to everything your desk PC can see.

Thus I think your next step may be a coffee with whatever IT bod seems most reasonable.
Explain the problem, and ask how long it would be to "add you to the list". Important to use that term, since it means the cost is adding you to an existing secure and trusted system, not constructing one for you.
Important you don't ask the IT director first,unless you know for a fact that he does not play golf. Really, I'm my personal field of expertise here.

The system is trusted because it runs very critical things remotely, and a golf playing IT director would get worried by stuff like that, so won't get told.

And there are lots of ways to fit in that work at home. I remember when the twins were little getting up at 5am on Saturdays to do 2 hours work before they woke at 7. I don't remember it particularly fondly but it was one way of fitting work around children and working at home. I'm working at home today with 5 children in the house and no child care but as the youngest are 8 that's rather different.

On the child noise thing I have an office door that locks and a big house. Our last nanny was terribly good at taking them out a lot too and keeping them away when I'm working. Some work people I spek to have children and like to hear I have world war two outside the office door - it's a connection they recognise and sometimes they work from home anyway but I'm very careful who I would mention that kind of thing to. And I can put my hand over the mouthpiece of the phone when people are talking to me if there's noise that might otherwise be heard.

It seems to me that we ought to write this stuff up as some sort of guide or FAQ.
Tips for homeworking parents, like avoiding scams, arguments for persuading employers, home business models both failures and success, an overview of the legal stuff.
Takers ?

I once reviewed a book on home working or teleworking they called it in those days. I think it was partly funded by or sponsored by BT - teleworkers hand book or something.

Ironic isn't it that BT and it's predecessor the GPO has done more to slow down homeworking and flexible working than anyone else ?