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?

48h sickness rule when children are well in themselves and climbing the walls, inset days, snow days, whatever days, annual leave is gone, unpaid leave is not always available/allowed, and then they wonder why more women don't join the workforce, ok.
And no, men are not prone to cover these, and until the gender pay gap will be closed, it will be always women to sacrifice their jobs.

Why do people always say this. I can only think that it's people who only live a 5 minute walk or cycle away from their workplace.

If you don't have to commute, you might not need wraparound care, and you don't need to worry about leaving the office to get back to a 6pm pick-up from nursery. When my son was young, I had to leave the office at 4.20 to get a train home to make sure I could collect him by 6pm. Had I worked from home at that time, I could have left at 5.45 and had a leisurely walk to the childminder's house. Ditto with the breakfast club in the morning.

Companies aren't requiring office attendance because they need it. They are doing it because they want to reassert control and because they treat their employees with disdain. People kept companies going working from home during covid, and this is the way they repay them.

It's worth noting that after the Black Death, there were far fewer workers, so employers had to pay more. They desperately tried not to and to reinstate the status quo of exploitation but had to give in. This is just the same.

Sensible employers treat their staff with respect and give them flexibility. In return they will get good results. There will always be people who want to be in the office full time, people who prefer to WFH full time other than meetings and those who prefer a mix. Sensible employers can accommodate all of them - and accommodation also helps to drive a diverse workforce.

See also: companies with massive profits sacking people because they can.

It's enough to turn you communist.

What 'studies' are they?

I'm WFH today but I just popped out for a long lunch. It was all totally clear in my diary and I will make up my hours around it. Same if I want to go to a gym class or walk the dog. I am allowed and encouraged to use the flexibility of working at home for my well being. I have targets to meet and work to do and if I am meeting those then I am allowed autonomy in how I organise my day. It's not cheating the system in the slightest

The ridiculous 'return to office' is trashing any attempt to reduce the gender pay gap. Big companies may as well just throw their DE&I policies in the bin and admit that they actually prefer white men in all roles, particularly in leadership, seeing as they're throwing up more barriers to work for women

Agreed. Also nobody with disabilities or who is neurodiverse.

That might be 'objective fact' for your company, but it's not indicative of the bigger picture. There's loads of evidence to show that forcing people back to the office doesn't make businesses more productive or profitable, but here's just one report: www.techradar.com/pro/shockingly-enough-forcing-people-back-to-the-office-isnt-leading-to-higher-profits

Do you look after your kids whilst WFH? If so, then YABU and part of the reason UK employers are getting all uppity and mandating that people come back to the office to raise productivity.

I work hybrid - 2 days in the office usually. I have a primary school child and a nursery aged child. Both in childcare the whole time I'm working - regardless of whether WFH or office because I shouldn't be working whilst caring for them.

youve made this just about mums do other people not need flexibility too?

I edited to add that in! Good point.

This battle needs to be fought at a household level too though?
My husband does half the school runs, sick day care , holiday care etc and half the housework and my children are his step children! We both manage to have senior pressured careers still.

At an exercise class recently, mid morning, there were several women laughing that they were "wfh" that day

And? An exercise class takes an hour. A working day is usually 7-8 hours out of 24.

Plenty of time to do a day's work and do the exercise class.

Yes. He always used to carry it home and back to work again, but when the company brought in the no WFH under any circs policy all of them started leaving their laptops at work. They have 24 hour security, passcode access, and CCTV - none of which we have at home, so it's far safer there.

I'm disabled and WFH suits me but I am more annoyed at the people who take the piss and abuse the trust of homeworking tbh than employers who make decisions they inevitably need to make if lots of people are pretending they don't need childcare any more etc

Can you ask for more time to get longer childcare hours in place before this change is enforced?

Or are you saying that you don't have childcare in place because you've been combining work and childcare yourself?

If the latter, you're illustrating precisely why employers are clamping down and demanding that everyone get back in the office.

Arguably, it's non-parents being disadvantaged by the actions of a minority of parents.

3 in the office 2 at home is arguably a balance. Under 5s can’t self entertain anyway so need to be in childcare during working hours. I don’t know why you think you shouldn’t have to go into the office.

Exactly, and not everyone works 9-5 either, or has to be present at a desk or computer.

Trying Googling it (gasp!) and you'll find loads. Here's one: https://www.techradar.com/pro/shockingly-enough-forcing-people-back-to-the-office-isnt-leading-to-higher-profits

Research from the Fawcett Society showing that flexible work is essential for closing the gender pay gap: https://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/equal-pay-day-2023

Do you look after your kids whilst WFH? If so, then YABU and part of the reason UK employers are getting all uppity and mandating that people come back to the office to raise productivity

Do you have evidence for this?

Productivity would be raised if:

(a) they paid people better
(b) trained people better
(c) actually recruited enough people to do jobs properly

It's true that there are a number of groups who benefit from more access to remote working. OP is wrong to frame this simply as mums, the equalities issue goes way beyond that.

@parkrun500club but what if a colleague/client needed to contact them at that time?
Surely there should be an agreed set of times of the day that a person is "at work".
Unless they are on a designated lunch break then being at an exercise class during "working hours" is taking the piss.

Sigh. It isn't about childcare!

The cost of the commute is one reason why 3 days is silly. A full time season ticket costs around the same as 3 day tickets on the train. So a better balance is 2 days in the office and 3 at home. Of course, that does not apply if you can get to work by other means.

I'm ND and really struggled back in the days when I had to go into the office. Things like people eating or listening to the radio made it pretty impossible for me to work, and I ended up doing loads at home in the evenings anyway. Of course there are some jobs where people can't work from home. But most knowledge working jobs can easily be done from home, and it's up to management to find ways of motivating employees and ensuring they are productive, just as it would be in the office. The problem is, the UK has something of a poor management issue - but that's another topic for another thread.

Haven’t RTFT but am so disappointed by how many of the responses are so lacking in support / solidarity / forward thinking. It’s all “people have managed to juggle for years, why can’t you”, “what does your contract say” and “if it doesn’t work for you, find another job”.

One silver living of Covid is that it gave us all an opportunity to rethink the setup of the work environment and the working day, different from the status quo that was largely designed to support men in the traditional 9-5, with the traditional role of breadwinner rather than home maker, who have never had to worry about drop offs, pick ups or what to do if a child has to come home ill.

Society doesn’t look like that anymore, or at least it’s moving away from it. Men want more time with their families, and women want to be able to pursue their careers without having to sacrifice precious time with young children or stay up all hours of the night to get everything done because 24 hours isn’t enough.

WFH is an essential model to keep
women in the workplace. They need it to allow them to drop kids calmly at the childminder at 8 and log on by 9, not be stuck in a queue for the Tube, having legged it to the station. They need it to be able to leave work shortly before pick up time, rather than an hour before. Yes, flexibility and wfh might not be the norm / what they signed up to initially, but things have changed and companies need to recognise that if they don’t change too, they’re going to lose so many valuable members of their workforce. Telling women “just find another job” is exactly the problem. Those jobs are likely going to be part time, lower paid, lower skilled jobs. Women deserve better than that.

And they aren’t all at home trying to juggle childcare and work and generally taking the piss. Come on - we’re better than accusing our fellow women of that.

Depending on when you started your job there’s a very good chance it actually says your place of work is the office as most companies I know of haven’t formally changed Ts & Cs to reflect hybrid working. I wouldn’t take a job that didn’t offer hybrid working now but 3 days a week is fine and pretty much when I go to the office/other offices now. I’d like to know who is looking after your kids at the moment that can’t look after them when you go into the office, that doesn’t add up.
As others have said it’s weird that you think hybrid working only benefits mums and nobody else is impacted by this.

We just mark our availability in our calendars. Nothing we deal with is such a dire emergency it won't wait an hour or two.