Employer insisting DH returning to the office and childcare

[Hedgepond]

My DH has worked 4 days a week at home and 1 day in the office since the return to work after the pandemic. During that time we’ve had a second child and arranged our childcare around our working hours.

I work in a healthcare job, leaving the house at 7.20 and not back until 8.30/9pm on Mondays and Tuesdays. On those days he drops the children in their before school clubs and nursery and collects them after. One child is at a nursery a 15 minute bike ride from the house and one is a 7 minute walk. So he gets the furthest child at 5.40 in order to get back for 6pm for the other one. From January our little one is going to be in a preschool next to the eldest child and will finish at 5.15 so pick up will be even earlier.

We live an hour away from his office. Currently he works from 8.30- ~5.30 non stop in his home office and the logs in again in the evenings after he’s done bedtime.

On Wednesdays he goes into the office while I work at home and then on a Thursday and Friday I work occasional extra shifts to top up my income but to be flexible in the school holidays, so again he does the childcare on those days. I can do that work within school hours but DH is a back up in case I get caught up in an emergency. He will then collect the eldest
and he watches TV until I’m back… I can extent the nursery last minute for the youngest. I come back from work and take them straight to their swimming etc after school clubs.

He has alternate Fridays off and works at home the other Friday.

If DH has to go into the office on a Monday and Tuesday he will be able to arrive at 8.45 at the earliest (he could do an earlier drop off for the children) and he’d have to leave at 4.30 at the latest to get back but this will be impossible from January onwards when the pick up is 5.15. On a Thursday and Friday I would have to give up my extra work to guarantee I’d be back in time for the pick ups as I can’t risk not having any back-up in case I can’t leave work.

He won’t be able to do the hours he does now if he goes back into the office due to the commute so he’ll have to log in most evenings to finish things (he already does quite a bit anyway). I don’t see how this works well for anyone. I’m worried I’ll have to give up my job to do the childcare as we have no one else who can do the pick ups for us. I can’t change my working hours or days.

Does he have any leg to stand on for continuing WFH or should he start looking for another job? He’s the main earner so if he can’t find another job I’ll have to give up mine.

This. If he comes up in writing with a solution that addresses their business concerns then it’s hard for them to refuse.

You have obviously been very flexible and creative to address your childcare needs , he needs to use that same approach to show his employer how he can meet THEIR requirements. So many employees are trying to force their employers hand.

“ Well if I can’t continue doing exactly what I do now then my wife will quit her job “.

THEY DONT CARE ABOUT YOUR WIFES JOB. 🤦🏼‍♀️

Lots of race to the bottom here.

My job can't be done from home as a rule, but I don't resent anyone trying to make their lives manageable in clearly already carefully balanced circumstances.

This. Sorry. Changes made because of covid were temporary measures in an unusual situation. Unless the employer made them permanent they were only ever temporary - people should never have assumed it was going to work that way forever. He can try and find a compromise (we have a lot of hybrid compromises now as a result of Covid, but ultimately my employer doesn’t have to and you can’t rely on that, eg for childcare), but there may not be one.

He's been doing his job from home for a long time with no issues.

They don't "require" him to be in the office. They are forcing him into a difficult situation that there is no need for.

@MumblesParty You think that people taking the piss will suddenly work hard in the office? They will still take the piss, it just looks like they are working if you don't look too closely at their output.

If he's working 8:30-530 "non-stop" and then additional work calls in the evenings it sounds like he's working way more than his contracted hours. I'm curious what's in his contract, as it's not really reasonable to expect employees to routinely work evenings unless they're getting extra time off during the day. Or is this why he gets every second Friday off?

Many employers who are mandating return to work are implementing some sort of 'core hours' policy which gives flexibility at the beginning and end of the day without needing to put in a formal request, so he should check if this applies for his employer. If no such policy is in place, I would be checking how many hours a week he's contracted to work and putting in a formal flexible working request that enables him to meet those hours, via a mix of office working and some WFH in the evenings, which will also allow him to be available for meetings with US colleagues. He could also consider requesting one day a week fully WFH, but that will depend on how strict the return to office mandate is. Employers do need a good reason to refuse a flexible working request, and asking to WFH one day a week with flexible start and finish times on the office days isn't exactly an outrageous request.

Yes! They can't have it both ways.

If they ask him to check something out of hours just respond: 'Sorry I've been told I can't work from home'!

If he is able to do his work fully from home, works hard and this has not been an issue then his employer would need to come up with a very good reason not to accept a flexible working request to allow him to either work his hours around this or continue working from home.

Put in the request all the benefits financially to the business of him working from home eg gaining extra hours, reducing time pressures due to not having to commute, increasing productivity. Point out how the business will lose out if he's not able to continue doing this.

See what they say.

Employers can be reasonable, I know not all, but I'd hope to think there's some flexibility and unless there's some performance or trust issues I don't see why enforcing a return to the office is needed full time.

If they're not willing to flex to keep their staff then I'd probably be looking for other work - though I know it's not as simple as that!

Yes. And really if he has to be in the office, they should not expect evening work on top as a regular thing...that's just massive unpaid overtime.

If he's established and valued he should look for other jobs and then when he has an offer, threaten to walk if they can't accommodate.

You putting pressure on him to argue to keep his arrangement isn't going to help him. He may not want to put his head above the parapet given that they are looking to make redundancies.

Lets be honest, in a lot of jobs you work over and beyond the contracted hours, because its expected and the only way to get the job done.

My DH is contracted for 35hrs, but does double that because he works for an American bank, its the expectation and is well known in the industry.

American companies dont really care about childcare or WFH, or work life balance etc, but the rewards comes in the pay packet, its the offset.

If he's on a well paid job id be very wary of asking about contracted hours etc, because even though its wrong he will be looked at badly for asking, its why my DH doesnt ask for WFH unless theres an emergency.

Maybe he's under performing and they can't let that continue

They want him back for a reason. WFH sounds like it's run it's course

This is all true, but most employers who are implementing return to work mandates are unwilling to make exceptions for individuals, because it makes the policy more difficult to enforce for others. OP's employer doesn't sound especially reasonable if they're moving from 20% to 100% office attendance — most would move to 40-60%, or at least look to ramp up gradually over time.

Most likely he'll need to meet them half way, which could involve some flexibility around start and finish times, or perhaps increasing his office attendance from the current 1 day to 3-4 days.

Sorry if I've missed something, but I cant work out if the OP's husband is being asked to go back to the office 5 days per week, or just more days per week than at present?

I don't think it does people any favours or businesses even to emulate American work culture. This is a comment from an American ex-pat whose dad was given a whopping fortnight a year off. This included major holidays. He was in your equivalent of your civil service in management. He left the house at 6:30 for the bus, and he wasn't home until 6:30-7 at night. He got to the office at about 7 am, left at 6 pm. At 50 he had a heart attack scare and retired at 55 due to health issues and had a much diminished retirement because of it. I worked those kinds of hours too, and it is one of the reasons I left...60 hours a week is not sustainable forever. There is no health care safety net, few social care safety nets, and it is hire and fire at will. You can't even refuse to take work calls on holiday. Don't go down that road.

I have a colleague who was ordered back into the office three days a week. He told me he often comes into an empty room of cubicles. He's retiring early because of it. The whole thing is stupidity incarnate and often managers holding their little grubby rags of power. It is what you produce, not facetime. WFH does not automatically mean skiving.

Ok, off my soapbox. Don't work unpaid overtime. Do your job well, but go home on time, push back a little. Ask for the flexible hours. Your productivity will be better for it. Ask for the flexible working, and quietly look for another job if your employer says no.

The problem is that the paypacket is shrinking even in American firms. The wealth divide in the States is growing larger and larger. It is kind of the lobster in the pot analogy...turn up the heat, and you don't notice you are getting cooked.

Sounds to me like he needs to stop being so helpful and start working to rule. If they want him in the office that’s fine, but he needs to stop logging on in the evening for calls. If his American colleagues need to talk to him then they need to get up earlier. Or they need to finalise it and give him TOIL for logging in late (and then he can use the TOIL for pickup).

You both have my sympathies, it sucks that loads of comps are forcing people in the office. It makes staff miserable and stressed, and sucks when you’re a good employee. I recently changed jobs to a fully remote job (contracted as remote), after my last job insisted on more office days. I made it clear in my exit interview that it was why I was leaving too. I’m being paid more, and have overall better flexibility - so another option is for him to job hunt.

It seems to me that what was, for most people, an emergency solution during Covid, has become an expectation and employers are getting the flack. It was never meant to be for the convenience of parents with children.

One or both of you need a different job. This is obviously not sustainable. Even now it sounds horrendous. Why are you doing this to yourselves?

I work for an American mulitnational, and they mandated us all back to office last year.

We have decent flexibility in terms of when we arrive/leave, but none at all around any regular WFH

It was a company-wide decision, and they made no exceptions for anyone. So our choices were take it or leave it basically. The local office/local management couldn't do anything on an individual basis

You do what everyone else without this flexibility does , start looking at breakfast clubs, after school clubs, childminders etc and paying for it -or he starts sniffing round to look what's out there with full WFH situation - or he simply has the balls to say to his employers, this is difficult for me due to partners non wFh job - here's what I can do-could this work for you? He can only ask- I would go down that route first .

Unfortunately these were the dilemmas for working parents before wfh became a thing
Either one gives up work, finds a job that’s ‘school’ friendly or they find a childminder.
Normal Office hours are not school child friendly.

What about the school holidays OP

I believe it. This article on Fast Company is pretty good about this return to the office and why it is happening in the USA/UK
https://www.fastcompany.com/91229401/why-are-we-still-talking-about-return-to-office?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-gb

A couple salient paragraphs:

There is also a belief that some employers are using RTO mandates as a method of “quiet firing.” Since it’s been so widely covered how much employees prefer remote and hybrid work, when they are forced to return, they may quit, thereby saving their company the costs of severance associated with layoffs. The data backs this up too: ResumeBuilder surveyed 756 business leaders who had implemented a return-to-office (RTO) mandate since 2021 and found that eight in 10 companies had lost talent due to their mandates.

Another reason why the RTO debate has dragged on so long has nothing to do with people or the work they do and more to do with loss cost. In a recent Fast Company article, Emily Levine, executive vice president at recruitment firm Career Group, said “[Companies are] also feeling as though they’re paying a lot of money in rent, so to only have people come on-site two days a week, they may as well forgo their real estate.”
But since commercial leases last between five and 10 years, many companies are locked into staying in their offices and call their employees back as a way to justify the cost.

This