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?

The idea that mums can WFH and simultaneously look after small children is going to damage women's employment prospects like nothing else if people aren't careful!

I presume you are corralling your 2 under 5s whilst in a Teams meeting/loading washing machine

^

But if she's meeting deadlines is this pertinent?

I have the opposite problem, I have just started a role in Melbourne for a well known company where people go into the office 2-3 days a week. I suggested to my boss that as we are a new team, would he consider asking the team to agreeing to one day a week where we all went in so we could share contact time. He said no it wasn't possible, as the culture is that everyone was free to choose the days they came into the office. The long lockdowns in Melbourne have affected this city more so than other places I think.

The idea that mums can WFH and simultaneously look after small children

^

No-one is saying that though

OP appears to be saying, and doing, exactly that. I know of others who think it's perfectly acceptable to do this

It's pathetic. I think it stems from a lot of people not really having any friends and wanting to force their colleagues to spend time with them.

If I am forced back to the office I'll get a job elsewhere or go freelance but in the meantime I'll:

Work minimum hours in the office (arrive at 11 leave at 3)

Eat the stinkiest lunch and drink the stinkiest tea I can find

Big noise cancelling 🎧 (good deals on Amazon today)

Refuse to work over my contracted weekly hours at all

No it didn't. A lot of people including me have worked at home since computers made it possible.

Surely your children should still in childcare during working hours?

Try being a customer of a company that has employees WFH. When they cant access certain parts of the companies main system so there is a limit on what they can do

I wfh 4 days, recruited during lockdown when my company didn't actually have an office. I have a 15yo so no childcare responsibilities. I log on at 8am and off at 5.20. Plus I often work evenings.

My boss wanted to move back to three days a week in the office so I explained that would be an extra £500 in fares per month after tax, so he'd have to pay me an extra £8,500 a year to cover it. I'm close to retirement so he knows I can just walk away.

He changed his mind. Funny how they can be flexible when THEY want to.

Not really. The only employees that we lost when we brought people back to the office on a hybrid basis a couple of years ago were the lazy pisstakers who we suspected weren't doing much work at home anyway.

The vast majority of staff have fed back how glad they are to be back and how much better it is for team morale to regularly have time with their colleagues.

If you are a decent employer and treat people well, having to come into the office a few days a week is unlikely to put people off. If there are a few that don't value the opportunities for face to face interaction with the rest of the team, then they probably wouldn't fit with the culture that many organisations are trying to create in any case, so they will be no great loss.

I am in a senior job mainly working from home (small amounts of travel) but couldn't do it if not remote working. I cannot physically commute and dress/drop children at nursery on the same day prior to 9am. My husband does hybrid working and does his share. I am still at my desk for the same amount of time whether I wfh or am at the office. My work is supportive of working mothers and is very focused on keeping senior women as they care about the gender pay gap and losing key skills. In a few months I will be using my coffee breaks and lunch to breast feed my 6 month old baby. WFH has allowed me to keep a great job, be there for my kids ....and it also allows a great company to keep me! It is shortsighted for companies to undervalue this part of the workforce and they will pay a price in the long run with their poor employee job satisfaction and rubbish esg stats.

You sound very nippy. Not surprised you need the office when voluntary interactions must be hard to come by.

There will be better outcomes with more staff in the office.
The pandemic changes were meant to be temporary.
You signed up to an office job.
Just because you're "a mum", why should you be treated any differently?
Organise some proper childcare and just do your job.
Or resign, and let someone else have that job.

Why do people jump to the conclusion that people who WFH aren't using childcare?

I don’t see anyone jumping to that conclusion. PPs are responding to the many (including OP) who make it very clear in their posts that they don’t want to go back to the office because they are doing full time childcare at the same time as supposedly doing their office job.

Like others, I'd also like to know what childcare you have in place which enables you to keep to working hours while WFH, surely that can keep going while you work in the office?
As a mother I'm another poster annoyed by the emotive "mums" in the title.
If the OP is coming back at all.

Seems fair enough to me. 2 days is plenty to keep the washing machine busy, collect parcels etc.

It's not good for people's MH to be hiding away at home, esp people who live alone or who are in abusive relationships.

Horrible for young people trying to learn. Yes you can ask you boss over teams but it's not the same as being able to wheel a chair over, or ask another more experienced member of staff.

Balance of hybrid working seems fair.

What does your contract say? Is it a remote position or is it an office location?

Congratulations on managing to keep WFH so far past the time when most people have had to start going back to the office. My company has rolled this out globally, all employees back to the office at least 30 days a quarter, with supervisors expected to monitor. Unless, like me, you are on a specific home based contract, having negotiated it about a decade ago because my role is across multiple time zones so I do flex around business needs.

My kids have always been in childcare until COVID. Trying to work with young kids in the house is unprofessional and is part of the reason why companies are 'forcing' people back to the office. If you don't like it, find a new job, or make a proper application, with business reasons, for why your role can be done flexibly. Having children is not a valid reason.

The changes were described as a change for good where I worked (and in many other organisations). Working in a roomful of people is crap.

I recently went through this at my previous employer and ended up having to leave as they wouldnt budge from the mandatory 3 days. Without outside help or one parent not working, its not possible to work full time and do nursery /school collections from where i live. I understand Lloyds Bank are mandating 3 days a week from later in the year as well. Its very difficult.

However you are not 100% remote.

I've do roles where it is often up to me when I come into the office. I've learnt to come in to introduce myself to people and/or for meetings. Only because I've found myself having someone talk to me like they know me well but I couldn't work out who they were for a minute. (They were my temporary boss.)

Lloyds is quite easy to game, though (as I imagine many places are). It's all for show to mollify one or two weirdos.

Unfortunately people using WFH as a cover for giving fulltime childcare for their kids has undermined WFH for everyone.

You should not be working and looking after your children at the same time either way.