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?

Well, yes, you're right that I don't know exactly what is available in the OP's area. There is always some regional variation. But for various reasons that I won't go into here, I happen to know quite a lot about access to free legal advice, and anyone who is familiar with this subject will tell you that the current situation in most parts of the UK is pretty grim. I wish it was better.

And yes, her partner may be a member of a union, and many unions do offer free legal advice for family members. However, for for obvious reasons, most unions will only advise family members on non-work related matters. Perhaps there are some that will give employment advice to family members as well, but this is not the norm.

People really don't read the threads, do they? I know I am guilty of it on occasion but several people have pointed out that this isn't about working with children in the house, which seems to be a MN obsession, but about the time and cost of the commute.

Speaking as someone who's also rather familiar for reasons I won't go into here, while I don't disagree about what has been done to the free legal advice landscape, you still do not know. It was inappropriate to presume.

OP has been told repeatedly on this thread that what her contract says goes. She needs to talk about this with someone who's not only seen the contract but is qualified to explain that it isn't necessarily that simple, and she's not going to get that on here.

I think this is rare, and very much depends on the job/industry. By lockdown I meant people realised how much they value the interactions with other humans, afterall we are social animals (well most of us anyway!)

Well, I wish her the very best of luck in finding that elusive free legal advice to check her contract for her. If she is able to find it, great... she will be in a very lucky minority.

Back in the real world, her best bet is probably to put in a flexible working request.

Back to the real world, OP/someone who's actually in this position needs better advice than has been given on this thread. Her best bet is to obtain it.

People missed interactions with friends and family but I certainly don't think it "rare" not to need face to face interactions with work colleagues. Hence the fact so many people like working at home. I also have a lot more interactions with some at home via teams than I ever did when they were in the office.

If she can....

There is a reason why all employees would be well advised to join a union. They can be very helpful in situations like this. However, most employees don't bother, and they then find it very difficult to access specialist advice when they need it.

I can tell you from experience that it is much easier to performance manage someone when you can see them than remotely. Many jobs aren't easy to track outputs

True enough, but it always amuses me on these threads to see the wild swinging between "If they're not managing performance adequately that's their fault", and then if they do manage it and dare to find something not quite right, "Waaahhh, they're micromanaging me!!"

Specialist advice will certainly be available. Free specialist advice is more difficult, but better to pay for it than to listen to the some of the dafter assumptions and generalisations that have been thrown out on this thread. OP needs to know her legal position before making any decisions about how she should respond to this. There's only one reliable way to ascertain it.

I'd never disagree with advice to join a trade union, of course.

OP blissfully unaware she is the reason why WFH is being stamped out 😂

There are tons and tons of threads on here with posters admitting to WFH around very young children

Yep, spoiling it for everyone else

Well, yes, of course specialist advice is available if you pay for it, but that goes back to my original point about it being premature for the OP to spend her money on this at this stage.

We will have to agree to disagree on this point. We can at least agree on the fact that joining a trade union is a wise thing for any employee to do.

@parkrun500club well i was replying directly to the op? Who cites no local family as her issue. So basically childcare.
The op doesn't mention commute, environmental factors or quality of life.

Yes, and even if you hadn't been wrong about the free advice issue, it would still have been a bad point. Especially for someone who felt moved to criticise others for not being constructive.

You cannot possibly ascertain, based on the small amount of information given, what the relevant legal position is and what OP is best advised to do. She needs better than your assumptions and guesses. If you're unable to accept that, it looks like we will indeed have to agree we disagree.

Over 24 hours now and the OP still hasn't come back......🤔

I'm not going to keep going round in circles with you on this. You think I'm "wrong" and that I'm making too many assumptions. That's fair enough, you are entitled to your opinion. I think I'm being realistic and pragmatic.

I also think you have nothing constructive to offer because your main contribution to this thread has been to tell everyone else why they are wrong, and to make suggestions about hypothetical free legal advice services that are highly unlikely to be available to the OP in these particular circumstances.

Either way, it's all academic as the OP hasn't bothered coming back to the thread in any case. I can tell that you are eager to have the last word, so this will be my last response to you on this subject.

That was a lot of words to say you aren't qualified to tell OP she doesn't need legal advice or that she won't be able to get it, and you don't like that being pointed out.

Myself I don't do that thing where I put a load of argument then tack on at the end that I'm not coming back, as it's cringe.

Sorry confused you with someone else so edited!

My response was that you were yet another person saying she wanted to work alongside looking after children, whereas in most cases it relates to the wraparound care and being able to be home in time to collect from nursery at 6pm.

My excuse for what?

@pinacollateral your excuse? For being on Mumsnet and frequently coming back and commenting on the same thread.

I agree. Some people have caring duties for older family members but there's little or no offer of flexible working arrangements or legal protection for those people.

You’re fortunate you’ve been able to wfh 100% up to now as most people are back in the office. DH can wfh only 1 day a week which is generous for a lot of places. The current consensus seems to be employers want staff back in the office as we’re seen to be more productive and it’s better for team work perhaps?

Covid happened, companies let people WFH, then after, asked staff to return to office, part of the week & suddenly people were saying, NO!. Yet if your company offered you 2 days at home, 3 in office before Covid, staff would have thought their company were great to offer that. Now they are really annoyed. You were employed in an office role, unless your contract says you WFH all week, you shouldn't be moaning about being asked to go back into office. Childcare issues aren't your employers problem. What would you have done if Covid hadn't happened?