Employee wfh without childcare

[goteam]

I manage a small team of 6 and one of the staff members joined the company 2 years ago and moved into my team during the first lockdown.

The job is home based and this person has had lots of training but doesn't do the amount of work required. The manager from the other team which the employee moved from said that she suspected she was wfh with her young kids present but she didnt feel she could touch the issue.

Is it not ok to suggest that a full time employee has full time childcare and that this does not breach employment law?! This employee is rarely at their desk as far as I can tell. Never answers the phone but will call back half an hour later, wont reply to urgent emails, ignores requests for work which I have to then pick up.

I know things were difficult over lockdown with childcare (same here) but my own managers are worried about me raising this and say things like 'I would be careful about it'. Other staff are getting a bit tired of picking up the slack and most of my team are parents too and paying for childcare.

You don't have to accuse her of anything.

You simply have to clearly set out the nature of the underperformance and what she has to do to remedy it. Eg answer emails on time, attend meetings, meet deadlines. If she is not able to do those things then really the reason for it is not your problem.

Although there's nothing inherently wrong with asking about childcare if you KNOW she doesn't have any I do see where the caution comes from. How many people would even consider that as a reason for a man's underperformance without proof. So you risk her suggesting conclusions have been jumped to as she's a working mum with young kids. Better to stick to the facts which relate to her actual work product and performance.

I would proceed with caution OP, your management team have a point. The issue isn't so much talking to the employee about potential root causes of her drop in performance, which could include childcare, but may also include other factors (several MN threads about people struggling with motivation and direction when working remotely), but rather the risk of potential for indirect discrimination - if she's having to cope with unreliable childcare, as a single parent when male employees don't have that challenge, could she cite discrimination if you, as her employer, don't at least try to level the playing field, with flexibility on work hours (an "as long as the work gets done" approach), making a reasonable allowance for timescales to answer emails etc.

My suggestion is:

1. Don't put her on a PIP before having a clear and unambiguous conversation to try and get things on track with some agreed boundaries and expectations for certain deliverables, what's acceptable, where there are non-negotiable aspect (Eg if customer A request xyz, please ensure you action it as a priority, as that's our contractual obligation etc)

1. Listen to her challenges, find out what's actually going on, don't make assumptions, show empathy and concern. You'll get more from her if you get to understand her, wfh can be a dehumanising experience, it doesn't work for everyone.

1. Don't go anywhere near dismissing her for gross misconduct at this time, as has been suggested upthread! That's inappropriate and excessive when someone is clearly struggling atm and needs a framework in place that sets the agenda clearly but shows support. I'm sure she isn't going out of her way to 'shirk', people are still struggling with the aftermath of 18 months of chaos.

1. Keep detailed notes of the dates of each conversation and intervention, so you can keep track. If it were to kick into the formal process of PIP and associated checkin progress meetings, you'll have a full catalogue of all discussions and how you've tried to support this employee.

It appears you senior managers and company have really dropped the ball on this. There should have been clear guidance issued to managers and staff.

Grievances are raised. Not always reasonably. Having a grievance raised against you in the past isn't an excuse to not manage, which is what your senior team seem to be doing. As a manager when one is raised against you, its either unreasonable and the employee is the problem. Or its a reasonable grievance and you learn from it and move on.

I am shocked that this person has been a poor performer and been allowed to get to 2 years employment without her performance being handled.

Its not that childcare can't be mentioned or has some protected status. The reason I wouldn't mention it, is because there doesn't seem to be any evidence that this is the reason. Leading with that, will just enable her to keep bringing back to that and you have no proof.

Get HR involved to support you in starting a Pip. You can't just go into a pip. There's alot of prep work before hand.

How aware is she of her poor performance? Are you having conversations with her about this? Did her previous manager tackle her poor performance?

Does she have clear targets? So you say she doesn't answer phone calls and calls back? What is it you want her to do? What's the target?

The urgent email? What turnaround time is expected? You can't just say 'respond to urgent emails quicker' or 'you don't respond to urgent emails quick enough'. Do you or your company actually have targets or response times? Do the rest of the team have the same targets? Are they achievable and do the rest of team hit these targets?

Are you sure you are aware of everything available to you to be able to track wether people are actively working? After over 18 months of home working, I would be surprised if nothing is available. Our system shows us at a glance if people are active. But then there's layers, we can see which system they are in. Down another layer which part of the system. Eventually, if needed, IT can retrieve actual key strokes made.

If you are going to remain WFH the company really needs to be able to have something. Micro managing is a pain the behind and I rarely use anything other than the top layer to see everyone us active. But sometimes you do need more available

* I am shocked that this person has been a poor performer and been allowed to get to 2 years employment without her performance being handled.*

^This. Very poor management. Get HR involved and get her on a PIP

@Magenta82

You can manage the performance without speculating on the reasons for it.

I would be putting her on a PIP, clearly settling out expectations and pointing out where she falls short. You can ask her if she has everything she needs to do her job and what support she needs.

If she brings up childcare you can point out that this is a permanent WFH position and we are no longer in an emergency situation, she needs to arrange appropriate childcare to cover her work hours.

This, she clearly needs performance management, no need to mention childcare arrangements. If she she can't do the the job then find someone who can.

If it standard now that staff work from home, why hasn't there been a policy drafted to pinpoint the rules around it? The home working policy should clarify all aspects of working from home and include rules around working with children.

When cases go to court, the first thing that is looked at is policies. If your policy isn't discriminatory, and not outrageous, it is deemed acceptable that employees operate under the terms.

Bring this to the attention of HR. Once the policy state that childcare need to be in place, and that not being so without notification/agreement from manager, this could lead to disciplinary actions.

I think the biggest problem here is that it’s not been dealt with
already. COVID is a red herring here - it sounds like she didn’t have childcare in place from the start pre-COVID, and that’s the part that will make it tricky for you.

I’ve had to deal with this twice recently with employees. In one organisation we have clear guidance in our new hybrid working policy stating wfh is a perk not a given and you have to have childcare in place - person hadn’t realised and thought they would be allowed to keep doing what they were doing juggling things during lockdowns. I explained that if there were performance issues our first out of call was to require more office attendance for supervision purposes so she’s best off arranging childcare now to avoid a very difficult situation. I gave her until September to sort, so it was about 3 months notice. She has sorted it.

The second was trying to work with a 2 yr old in the house full time - wasn’t my direct report but someone I hired. That org didn’t really have any guidance on the matter so it was a bit more difficult to navigate. The LM came to me with advice because she wasn’t performing well despite clearly being a quality candidate. We dealt with it by me having a quiet word with the new hire to just say really you can’t work with a 2 yr old around can you, been there couldn’t have done it etc, again they settled on getting it sorted by a certain date and the kid is in nursery now. (they had also moved so it was a bit trickier to get a place).

I think also it depends on the children’s ages - my 10yr old is fine for a couple of hours after school van gets snacks/light meal etc while I wfh but under 9/10 I don’t think it’s really feasible. If they are really little it simply isn’t safe either.

You address the issues with her poor performance, lack of availability etc, and discuss possible causes and offer appropriate support. The cause of the problems may well be trying to look after young kids at the same time, but she may not say that, and it's not for you to decide the solution. If she offers the information you can offer advice, but that is up to you. Whatever the reasons for her poor performance you need to agree a plan and a timeline for her performance to improve for her to put her kids in childcare and take it from there.

I wfh some of the time but my child is 8 so it's very much easier to do so, especially when he's at school. I couldn't and wouldn't have been able to do so effectively when he was pre-school age.