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?

It'll only be fixed through policy and governance. It needs a top-down approach because a bottom-up approach just obviously isn't going to work. So yes, the onus will be on employers to commit to equality, and that will mean flexible working. Hence the passing of the flexible working bill in Parliament last year, which still needs tightening up.

Most of us are full time in the office now, in fact i went back full time in Jan 2021 because it's important to be there. Honestly i don't have sympathy. Your young dc should be in childcare whilst you work so what is the problem?

Not at all, we've already danced the dance in my house by DH part time working for years. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to have fixed the wider issue, not least because I also experienced maternity discrimination from my employer not long after.

But the facts are as they are. You cannot just glibly wish away massively entrenched societal sexism, and the existence of said sexism is why lack of flexibility is worse for women than men.

Yes and that's you as an experienced adult.

How on earth are graduates and young school leavers meant to learn, expand their wings, if they are stuck in their bedroom with Mum and Dad downstairs. And nobody to mentor them day to day.

That's something everyone needs to consider. In 10 years time your primary age kid will be spreading their wings into the world of work. It's really not good for them to be stuffed in their room or in an empty office because everyone else is WFH.

Lots of my friends with children under 7 were unable to work during. the lockdowns.

Other friends and colleagues - this includes men - were working odd hours.

All because of no access to childcare. (In fact there were only 2 of us in my social circles who had paid childcare or school in that time due to being in specific jobs.)

I don't understand how you can take care of child, especially one under 5, properly for a full day so their development isn't curtailed and concentrate fully on a job.

Yes I have spoken to tradies and others who do the sort of jobs where they can have short phone calls while taking care of their children 3 or older. However their child has interrupted the phone call.

There's the partners assumption again. As if all women are in partnership with the father of their DC.

Meanwhile, regardless of the beliefs you hold, society continues to exist and lack of flexibility impacts women. Particularly when childcare is so crap. If people want to talk about lack of visibility and promotions being bad for women (by which they actually mean only the cohort of women workers to whom that's relevant) the flipside to this is that removing flexibility will disproportionately push out women.

Because often school and nursery hours don’t match up with office hours plus commute. School drop off? 8.45. Nursery pick up? 5.30. If I had to go to the office I’d have to leave my job as I wouldn’t make pick up/ would be very late to the office after drop off. I used to work freelance as my hours were flexible and worked with around care, but not in a career. WFH has meant I can work in a career I love and contribute more to society. If my role changed to office based I’d be leaving my job, back to my random freelancing. There are many many women (yes it’s normally the women) in similar situations who would be forced out the work force without wfh.

Agreed. All our juniors choose to come into the office more than they have to. That tells it's own story

Two under five suggests your first was born pre COVID, so had the world not gone to shit in a snotty tissue, you would have been returning to the office after maternity leave finished. The fact you didn't and you planned another baby on the assumption the world wouldn't change again really isn't their fault. They're returning to an amendment of the old rules, not introducing new discriminatory practices.

@AnonymousBleep it needs policy change too, but, like the example I used upthread there will be many who ignore that. My friend's husband works in a very family friendly org (I know as I work there too in the next team) but he pretends he doesn't as he knows the women in his family will pick up the slack.

Policy needs challenging but lazy and selfish men need challenging too.

That's why you ask for flexible working and use paid childcare around it.

Anyway something needs to be sorted out otherwise the birth rate will drop even more.

You aren’t being forced are you ? The rest of us have no choice but to juggle it and pay for wraparound care.

I climbed the ladder equally quickly. I forgot to add that bit. But we both progressed at the same speed. My point is doing childcare didn't harm him so I don't know why so many women insist on doing the brunt of the school runs

The thing is, if we don't push for change, it won't change.

I would love for all men to suddenly find a conscience and an awareness of their male privilege, and for them to unilaterally decide that they're going to fix the inequalities in our society, but that's never going to happen. Half the time, they simply don't see the injustice. And half the time, they don't perceive it to be in their interests for things to change in any case.

Yes, there are men who are allies who are trying to make a difference, but if we really want things to change, we are going to have to make it happen for ourselves. Starting in our own homes and then extending into what we do in the workplace, in local communities etc.

I'm not saying that's how it should be, but it is how it is. And personally, I'm just not up for sitting around waiting for men to dismantle the patriarchy while I wait patiently in the corner.

I do use paid childcare. And I did request flexible working - I wfh.

Good luck with it, I'm sure you'll succeed where every other feminist has failed.

Your posts really are becoming increasingly offensive. "Weirdos"?

If you are doing the job, meeting requirements, outputting the outputs, who cares?! Who cares if you are in office? Who cares if the kids are at home?!

Eh, not really. Or at least, it only tells part of a story.

There are and always have been young workers who did badly out of working in person, and whose opportunities are greater now that there's more remote working. We've heard already on the thread from people who are ND and disabled, for example. Some ND and diaabled people are young.

My primary aged DC is neurodivergent, and despite the claim made by the poster you're agreeing with here, it will be extremely good for them to have the opportunity to be able to work in an environment that suits them better.

It sounds like you work in a hybrid environment, so by definition your juniors are a self selecting group. The ones who struggle working in person won't have come to you in the first place.

I’ve given up any concerns about that. Its public discussion here, I don’t care if it ends up in the DM. If I don’t want something I say on a thread to be published I don’t join in 🤷🏻‍♀️

Of course it didn't harm his career. Women are routinely overlooked for promotion because they're assumed to have caring responsibilities, and men are not. It doesn't matter if men actually do have some caring responsibilities, it's down to innate misogyny in our society. Women face twice the struggle as men for the same career, which is why men vastly outnumber women in leadership positions. This isn't a coincidence. It's how our society is structured.

While it might not be in the job description part of any experienced member of staffs job is to mentor and support less experienced staff.

How do you do that from home?

Exactly, I went into the office more without anyone telling me too, because I could see that the junior staff in my team wanted more face to face time.

Our juniors get much more mentoring and support than I did in my first job in the sector. People working in the same office as you can certainly ignore you and make it clear they resent being expected to spend their already hard pressed time training you up!

Actually, I think a lot of employers took the piss a bit before the big remote working increase, when it came to training staff. When I eventually moved to an organisation where there was a dedicated trainer rather than someone being expected to do it on top of their normal workload, it was much better.

I can't comment on the OP's particular situation, but I'm intrigued as to why so many people think that finding mandatory office attendance to be a challenge with regards to childcare means you aren't sending your children to childcare and are looking after them at home?

I had my son during COVID and he attends a nursery that is a 10 minute walk from our home. I start work at 9am and finish at 5.15pm; nursery opening hours are 8am - 6pm. When I WFH, I can drop off at 8am and comfortably be at my desk for 9am, and I can finish at 5.15 (or even a little later) and make pick-up with ease. The office is a 30 min - 1 hour journey from my house and from nursery, depending on traffic, and it has no parking so public transport is needed. I can usually drop off and make it in on time unless the traffic is terrible, but I'm always at risk of missing pick-up even if I leave bang on time. No prospect of changing nurseries given the waiting lists and levels of demand near me - fortunately my husband has more flexibility on WFH so we can make it work, but it's a real challenge for a lot of people.