If your baby was off nursery sick, would your employer be ok with you WFH?

[acutd]

If you have a job where you can work from home and your baby was off nursery sick, would your employer be comfortable with you working from home?

I'm trying to work out who is being unreasonable.

Mine did and still do on the odd occasion. It depends what you do and whether you can do your work outside standard work hours to get stuff done.

The baby is 7 months old for those asking.

WFH with sick baby- no, would need to take leave. If they agree to let you work your hours flexibly at another time that wouldn’t be wfh whilst looking after a sick baby.

No - you cannot work effectively if you are nursing a sick child

@acutd

The baby is 7 months old for those asking.

I think it depends on hugely on the job. Office type work that doesn't rely on calls or meetings and can be accomplished outside hours - then I think it would be nice of an employer to allow you to do a few hours during the day while they sleep (assuming they don't want to just sleep on you) and then catch up over the next couple of evenings.

If you need to be online during business hours then it just won't work and you'll need to take leave.

If this is your first it can be an adjustment when you go back - juggling everything is occasionally impossible and unfortunately you will miss a lot of work due to child illness, especially the first winter. It does improve after this.

If you have a partner, make sure they cover half of the days and just grit your teeth and steel yourself for a tough year or so.

If you were on a call/meeting and your baby was crying, which would you prioritise?

Mine would but I get paid parental leave so if I worked from home they'd get something out of me more than nothing!

No I’ll have to use carers leave or take annual leave/ unpaid leave

You cannot work from home with an ill 7 month old baby. You just can’t.

Yes I've done it - no more than 2 days in a row though and I make the time up
In the evenings (probably more time than required actually). My employer knows I don't take the piss and often work late to meet workload peaks and deadlines so it's give and take.

Contractually though I'm not allowed to use WFH in place of childcare so it's an informal arrangement

No, because you can’t care for an ill baby and work properly.

No, because you just can’t work effectively with a sick baby.

Mine is 18 months and if she’s unable to go to nursery, I’m essentially on call for urgent queries or emergencies rather than actively working (though I'm a commercial accountant so the world is rarely going to end if I'm not available for a day and I don’t need someone to cover my work particularly). My work don’t bat an eyelid about taking unpaid leave and I try catch up the hours missed in the evening/weekends but I realise I’m very lucky in all of the above respects.

At 7 months I'd say not likely. When mine were a bit bigger I'd either take annual or parental leave our ask to wfh, and more than once I then asked the next day to change it to annual leave as I wasn't able to get much done and it wasn't fair on them.

Also depends how ill they are, sometimes they just want to sleep all the time, but at 7 months I would imagine they're pretty clingy so normally you would need to be quite hands on and thus not working

Yes they’d be ok with it

To be honest working from home with a sick baby can be easier than with a healthy one. Depends what sick means tbh

Yes, have always had employers very relaxed about this, even when I couldn't technically WFH but was allowed to do it with a wink. It didn't happen often, saved them the paperwork, kept me loyal.

No, our company won't allow it and I've had to refuse someone wanting to do it a few months ago.

Company policy looks at it from the perspective of not being able to focus care on the child and not the fact you can't focus on work. You'd get parental leave for this, but it wouldn't be for the whole time you need to look after the child, just long enough to get care in place to enable you to return.

@OnlyFoolsnMothers

To be honest working from home with a sick baby can be easier than with a healthy one. Depends what sick means tbh

We call this "the right level of sick" , helps them sleep through as well.

Yes but I don't have a job where deadlines are for that specific day and no one has to cover my work if I'm not in.

They're also very understanding of family commitments and that it's give and take in both directions.

My husband has worked from home when our two have been sent home before! We were able to juggle until I got home from work!

My work would be ok with it but it depends on the level of sick - sleeping all day or needing to be in a sling while you answer emails- fine. Crying all day while in pain or needing constant soothing - better to take a day's leave.

Mine is fine with it so long as I can do the bare minimum and make up the hours. We're trusted to do the right thing - so if my child were really unwell I would obviously take holiday or parental leave. If he's well enough to just sit on the sofa with Cbeebies and snacks they'd be fine with me working around him.

We've been WFH since the pandemic started so have done this a lot while waiting for PCR results. Also my partner is here too so we can split the load, and both our managers have young children so understand the issue.

I think since so many of us had to work from home with kids at home during lockdown, there is now an expectation that if your children are at home sick or isolating that you’ll just carry on and magically manage both work and childcare. It’s almost become a bit taboo for people to say they just need to take a day off for parental leave because you can now work at home so surely you can just carry on. I see and hear so many children in the background of teams calls.