Best way to justify a day working from home?

[Myfairone]

Hi ladies,
I have returned to work after maternity and have been allowed to work a 3 day week for a 3 month period.
Before returning I asked if they would allow me to do a day working from home but my manager said 'I doubt that would be acceptable'.

I have just completed my first month and the money just isn't enough. Rather than doing an extra day in the office I would like to broach the subject of working a day at home.

Can anyone offer me some advice on the best way to justify a day working from home. I know that I am going to have to fight for it and want to be as prepared as I can be.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

Just being nosey.. why do you want to work from home?

That's what they'll ask too, I s'pose.

If you want to work from home you will need to convince your employer that you can carry out your tasks fully from home.

You will need to have adequte childcare (you won;t be allowed to work from home and care for a child at the same time - your DC will need to be at nursery or CM).

Provide assurance that you will have phone access, internet access etc.

Provide details of which tasks you will undertake at home.

Basically just make a strong cases to show that you will be able to do your job effectively in four days including one at home,

I am planning to ask for one day at home soon. I work full time and I would find a day at home woudl help as less travel (only need to drop DS at nursery then get home, not all the way to work), more peace and quiet at home to deal with important work (work at a uni so would do confidential stuff at home) etc etc

Hope that helps you

I came back to work after maternity leave four days a week with one of those working from home. Our organisation is very family friendly and other people also work from home so they'd have had to have good reasons to say no. I was basically honest and said if I came into the office every day I'd only see my DS for half an hour in the morning and half an hour at night, so wanted to work at home one day so I'd not have the travelling time and could see him a bit more. I think it helps to be flexible yourself - e.g. I still come in for meetings if they fall on my working at home day. I also had to prove that I had all the same facilities at home, software, phone access, etc.

"you won;t be allowed to work from home and care for a child at the same time "

Why not? I do and my employers are perfectly aware of that. You need to prove you can do your job, yes, but that doesn't mean you have to use childcare. I usually work later and earlier than my contracted hours to make up for any time that I've lost during the day. Swings and roundabouts.

An employer CAN use this an a reason not to give you flexible working. Obviously a lot of organisations are OK about it, but one that isn't may well use this an an excuse not to grant the flexible working request on the basis that you wouldn't be fully contentrating on your work if you had a dc to look afer as well.

So you want to increase your hours from 3 days to 4 days, and work one of those days from home?

Address the extra work issue first. If your job is currently being done successfully in 3 days, why do you need to increase your hours at all? (Because you want more money doesn't count.)

If you are satisfied and can demonstrate that there is enough work for you to do more, you need to think about what the objections will be to you working from home.

Sounds obvious but make sure it is clear to your boss that you have childcare for the day you want to work from home, one of his/her objections might be that they think you want to 'work' from home and take care of DC at the same time.

Without knowing what your job is it's difficult to say. Can the work be done to the same standard at home? What equipment might you need to do it from home? HOw much contact do you have with colleagues/the public, and how would you deal with this at home? Make sure you put forward solutions to any potential problems, and make sure these solutions don't impact negatively on the rest of the team.

Lots of useful stuff on working families website.

Just another point. You are asking how to 'justify' working from home. The 'justification' isn't really the issue, as long as you are entitled to make a flexible working request, which you are. The issue is more, how can you make it impossible for your employer to come up with a business-related reason to refuse you.

The more problems you think of from their point of view, and more practical, positive solutions you put forward, as well as talk about the benefits (to them, not you), the more difficult it will be for them to refuse you.

I think that you can also justify it in terms of whether they want to keep you. When I went back to work after maternity leave I made it clear I wasn't prepared to work in the office all the time and I wanted to go part-time. You know whether you can or cannot do your job under the circumstances you are proposing.

I need to wake up a bit!

Flexible working regs might not be relevant here at all. Firstly, you can only make one request a year under them, and presumably you hvae already made one to go to 3 days a week. So no obligation on your employer to consider it at all. Secondly, a request to increase hours wouldn't come under those regs anyway.

So you are essentially relying on goodwill from your employer, whether there's enough work for you to increase your hours, and how good a proposal you put forward for what you want to do.

Wow, thank you all so much for your input. To answer some of your questions. My employer wanted me to return to work full time and only agreed to part time on a 3 month basis with the view to me increasing my hours at the end of that term.

I want to work from home because I could save myself 3 hours a day commuting and also save in travel fares. And would also be able to see my LO for more than just half an hour a day.

Flowerybeanbag - thank you for the link and all the good advice.

My job can be done from home so I'm going to write a list of all the pros (for my company) and then present it to them and hope that they agree.

Thank you all so much for the great advice.

I think you will need to demonstrate that you have childcare in place for the day that you work from home otherwise you're not really working from home are you ?

I worked from home for years. Total blardy nightmare for various reasons. Work takes over your home life and I hated that. Much better in the office and keep home for home...

I would just like to second what Flowery has said. IME too many people go into a flexible working request (and I agree with what Flowery said about the legislation probably not applying, but they are likely to treat it the same) with a long list of reasons why THEY want the change and no thought to how it will work in practice.

I would lead with "I know that you would like me to increase my hours. I want to find a way to do that, but I would also like to look at ways of balancing it with my family life. My proposal is..."

A few things to think about (some of it has been commented on already, so sorry for any overlap);

1. What tasks are BEST done at home in peace and quiet (e.g. confidential things, long reports, etc). Are there ways you working from home is BETTER than being in the office?

1. What day of the week will you choose? Most jobs have good days and bad days not to be around. "Working from home" on Fridays is often seen as a euphamism for "long weekend", so think about whether there is a good business reason for that day if it's your preferred option.

1. As others have said, you will need childcare for your home working day. V few employers will allow you to work from home without childcare. Get out early on what your arrangements are. Otherwise all your manager will be thinking about is worrying about bringing it up. Moving past this lets them concentrate on your proposal.

1. Assuming you do have childcare, can you be flexible about your days working from home? If so, sell this. I know someone who got a nine day fortnight agreed without any legal right to request it (not a parent of young children). He did is partly by agreeing that, if things were manic, he would be willing to 'bank' a couple of his days off. You could do that with your home working days if there was stuff that required you present.

1. Be ready with proposals for any technology you need (e.g. secure link to server). You don't have to be a techie bod and I am sure your employer will be able to think through the details, but this shows you've really given serious consideration. Likewise, if you deal with lots of confidential information, how will you secure that (e.g. suggest that they give you a lockable filing cabinet)? Security of information is often a big concern.

Good luck!

Ribenaberry, thank you so much for taking the time to go through that list with me. I love your suggestion of being flexible with days and banking them so to speak.

I also hadn't thought about how Friday would look like a long weekend. Can easily do Thursday so as not to upset anyone!

Love all the suggestions, thank you all so much. I have a few weeks to put this together and really want to be in a good position to sell it to them!

some great advice so far DH is asking for this and these are the tactics he's used.

Do it as a one off once a month or so to prove how much extra he gets done when at home.
Report showing number of phone calls, interuptions etc in normal day in open plan office when trying to get on with report.
Show time sheet with 'quiet' work assigned to home (DS at nursery) and meetings assigned to other 4 days.
Show that travel time to other offices is same or less if travel direct from home rather than from HQ.
Agree that any time which is extra - ie travel from HQ-base=1hr, travel from home to base =11/2hrs will come out of your own time.
Show that you are contactable via landline as well as mobile at home (so we're setting up a second landline to guarentee uninterupted calls and professional answer)
Prove that you have adequete facilities at home (broadband connection, printer, laptop etc)

We are going for friday - it doesn't seem to bother anyone about it being next to the weekend, the important thing is that he produces the work expected in the day, and that he is visible (either logged onto system, sending out emails or on a work call both at beginning of day and end of day)

He generally logs on at 8m as I leave with DS for nursery and deals with email - that registers that he is working.
He sets up any calls or conference calls for 10-12 and then 2-3pm.
Does a final email check and sending final copy of work produced that day to work server at 5pm or later.

Actually he will usually work striaght thru lunch and stop at 3/4pm, have a chat/coffee and pick up DS. Then go back at 7pm and do another 2 hrs. He says it looks bloody good to have emails going out at 8am, calls taken at 11am -3pm and report sent at 9pm.

btw I know you can do some things with kids aorund, but if I was an employer and someone asked to work from home one of the BIG things that would make me refuse on grounds that it wasn't in the business itnerests woudl be if I knew they had a child at home all day and no childcare. I dont' care if they 'say' they can work whle kid is asleep and in the evening, its not the same as having your employee's full and undivided attention on their work!