Mums forced into office by big UK company?

[MM90]

I work for a big, well-known company. The bosses are considering plans to force all colleagues to come to the office 3 days a week. They are thinking about checking our turnstile data individually and disciplining anyone who doesn’t come in for 3 days every week, whether they need to be there or not. I thought this was the 21st century where working women have the chance to create a sensible work / life balance so long as they perform in their job. My line manager gave me a great performance rating during Covid. I have two children under 5 and no family nearby. Any thoughts on this?

There isn't anything you can do about it of course, but it does annoy me to see more companies bringing people back into the office (and I say this as someone who doesn't work from home). The roads are becoming clogged up again and the same companies will pretend to care about the environment and go on about becoming more sustainable whilst forcing thousands of staff to sit in standstill traffic engines running for no good reason...

I haven't made any claims beyond my own organisation and it isn't really my business what other employers choose to do. I was responding to the pp who suggested that bringing people back to the office would result in the loss of good staff. In our case, it hasn't... quite the contrary.

I presume that most employers will use the evidence that is available to them to make whatever decisions are right for them.

It’s not a race to the bottom. Lots of people work remotely so that they don’t have a commute, never mind a 2 hour one. The same with wrap around.. I did that too when mine were young, but that doesn’t mean that I think every other woman should ! It was hard and expensive, why are you wishing that on others?

How on earth can colleagues communicate with each other, work together etc. Can companies really work like that without it actually being a faff

Asynchronised working - and scheduling meetings when people are working. It can be a bit of a nuisance trying to get people together, but it's not a new thing - the job I had between 2008-2012 involved different people in the office every day as loads of people worked part-time or worked from home some of the time, in fact even back then there were a few who were home-based and just came in for team meetings. It's just something you work through. And you usually find that people will flex and take part in a meeting in their non-working time on occasion because they receive so much respect and flexibilty in return.

Three days a week in the office and you don't think that would allow a work/life balance?

Yes the environmental issues are being ignored.

'Back-in-the-office' notices are often the precursors to redundancies.

Companies who plan on retrenchments will usually issue these in the hope that staff will leave voluntarily. Companies who are expanding are loath to make such announcements in case they lose valuable and experienced staff.

There's a firm (I think in the US) which has done this. Issued a RTO instruction and then sacked the people who didn't want to do it.

And then issued a lovely notice on LinkedIn saying that the people they got rid of were poor performers, so trying to damage their future job prospects as well.

As I said some employers are arseholes and it is enough to turn you communist.

There are threads and threads with posters who WFH while looking after young children, often implying people who use childcare are mugs

We both hybrid work and use childcare when WFH and the balance is great but I fear our employers will start to roll it back because other people have ruined it for us.

I also think the feminist angle has a few dimensions to it - I think there are now a lot of women with even more caring obligations foisted on them because "well, you're at home, of course you can look after the kids/pop in on granny"

Why inflict bad smells on your colleagues? They probably don't want to be there either.

What we need is a world where all this doesn't fall to just the mum. This is the problem. Why aren't dads having this conversation between themselves about putting a load of washing on or collecting from the childminder?

WFH isn't helping women when it's enabling them to still do the shit that men aren't expected to do. When we start talking about WFH enabling parents to work better (whilst also having adequate childcare) I will listen but at the moment it just feels like another way of women doing absolutely everything and men just having to go to work.

The language used by many on this thread is so interesting, and very sad that it appears we're not moving forward at all.

@WindsurfingDreams but would you be at an exercise class during your designated working hours?
If you're there during agreed times not to be working then you're not working. Whether you're at home or not. You're there's during your free time.

Yes, also the threads of people bragging that they work more than one job at once etc.

Those of us who need to work at home should be mad with the people who abuse the trust given to homeworkers

Couldn’t agree more.

What is their dad doing?

Actually "extending" nursery hours is a touch difficult... if you're there when they open to pick up as they close... Family nearby can do "emergency" pick ups when the train/traffic is shite and save you the £10/minute late pick up fee. Meaning you need less "contingency" in your commute time.

Family can help with pick up and look after kids for 30 minutes before you get home which is far easier than a full day childcare. Family can allow access to cheaper and better holiday childcare - leisure centre multi sports days rather than the £££ full day camps, or clubs for a sport the kids actually enjoy.

I'd say 2 days in, 3 days remote is a better balance because most days in are more meeting focussed and actual work is easier at home!

Mums forced into office by big UK company?

I thought this was the 21st century where working women have the chance to create a sensible work / life balance so long as they perform in their job.

Sorry @MM90 but you seem to be a bit misled and also feeling wrongly entitled as a Mother because you have young children under 5. Who looks after them at the moment when you are WFH? If the answer is you do, then you are not giving full attention to your work and judging from so many posts on here, you are not alone, which is one of the reasons employers are beginning to insist on a certain amounts of mandatory days in the office.

In principle I'm all for WFH/flexible working to make people's lives easier.

But I've been hearing about a friend's colleague (they all WFH most of the time) who has a preschool child and who, when asked about attending virtual meetings, will sigh and grumble and say things like, 'Well, I suppose I can put him in front of the telly for an hour so I can attend,' which is blatantly taking the piss/emotional blackmail and which she seems to get away with.

I do know this case is really down to the work culture and the employer should have a clear WFH policy in place covering children at home, which they don't.
But also, some individuals are obviously on the take when it comes to WFH and, while enforcing on-site attendance is a blunt instrument, I have some sympathy with employers who are presumably fed up with staff taking advantage.

3 days in the office is perfectly reasonable

I worked from home for ten years before Covid for an all remote team in a national org. Was great. Very productive. Met up f2f when needed every month or so. Zoom actually ruined home working because suddenly your eight hours solid working on outputs became eight hours of interruptions 😢

It's all about what's in the contract. If you signed a contract which said you were office based, you have no leg to stand on. If they said you were WFH and then changed it later, that's different.

I think WFH is best so long as the work gets done - but I know a lot of people who do absolutely take the piss.

The company I worked for went from staff being remote to three days in the office, unfortunately there were a few employees totally taking the piss such as one who would block out several spaces during the day in the calendar to “walking my dog” so no meetings could ever be booked when she was walking her dog various times during the day. She abused the flexibility and it just ruined it for everyone else.

Then they need better managers. Lack of productivity isn't remedied by forcing people back into the office. If someone is underperforming, it's for management to assess why and come up with a plan to improve their performance. What's important is looking at people as individuals and understanding that different people work differently and need to be treated differently to get the best from them. In the UK there's an attitude that 'you're not special' and everyone just has to do as they're told at work and that's that. But the UK also has the worst productivity of any Western developed country, and this is probably why!

Most people who work from home aren't doing it so they can secretly not pay for childcare for their toddlers. That appears to be something of a Mumsnet myth, from reading this thread! But the real world and MN don't always bear that much resemblance to each other!

Re WFH closing the gender pay gap...I think the jury's out on this. There are also studies that show remote workers are much less likely to get promoted.

We've just had someone resign at work because they were asked to come back to the office for at least 2 days a week and we found out the whole time they were WFH they've been looking after their small (preschool) child and now have no childcare. Their contract was office based.