Return to Office policy will make it impossible for me to work!

[SamSam786R]

I started my job four years ago under a hybrid policy, although my contract stated it was 9-5, Mon-Fri. In these four years I have managed to work from home and office with a degree of flexibility. After I got pregnant with my third child and returned from mat leave in April 2025 things changed drastically. They tried to remove all flexibilty that I had (rigid 9-5 working hours when I had worked reduced hours in the office and made the time up in the evenings). I've subjected to nasty comments like 'You have baby brain' and 'your performance has suffered since you got pregnant'. Now I must juggle two pick ups (kids and nursery) the school doesnt offer afterschool provision and I cannot move them. My child is settled in nursery but the 9-5 hours wont allow me to pick him up on time - I'm alrrady stressed and sick at the thought of being late to pick up and work. For me to return to the office five days is impossible and extra nursery days and hours plus additonal travel would put me at a loss of ~£600. Going part time would also leave me at a loss because I'd still be paying the same in bills and childcare costs. I feel like I have no choice but to leave once this policy comes into action but there are male colleagues of mine who are: able to work one day a week due to relocations, have manged to negotiate late starts so they can go to the gym, not to mention our HR person (also male) comes into work after me most days and does not even come inot the office regularly himself. I feel like they are pushing me out. Please note my manager is based abroad and I work in comms - similar roles I have done fully remote. This was along the lines of what they emailed us: "Over the past five years the business has operated a discretionary hybrid working trial. This trial was a temporary, non-contractual arrangement and Following a comprehensive review of our operational needs and performance targets, the business has made the strategic decision to formally conclude this trial."

This.
Why doesn’t your husband request flexible working?

Someone should let ACAS know then! - lots of legal websites, including theirs, discuss the fact that actual practice over a period of time CAN override a written contract:

https://keyhr.co.uk/custom-and-practice/

https://www.acas.org.uk/employment-contracts-and-the-law/custom-and-practice

Please get advice OP, from an employment law professional, not mumsnet

Sorry OP but this is wrong “a contract might be binding to HR but the law overrides everything”. Your employment contract is a legally binding document and will take precedence unless any terms of it are contrary to the law (so for example an employer would not be able to enforce a term that said you got less than the legal minimum holiday entitlement). The law says the employer is entitled to set the place of work, which yours has done. The law also gives you the right to make a flexible working request, which your employer can only reject for certain specified reasons. However, if you are not performing well working from home or are working with children around they would be entitled to reject your request.

That's great but who said your performance is suffering?

Was it someone lower down the food chain than the person who has decided to award you a bonus?

If so, report them. If not, watch out.

How can the business claim WFH is a 'trial', when you've been doing it for 5 years???!!! That's not a definition of a 'trial', that I recognise!

From what I'm understanding, you are picking your children up from school/nursery, during the time you are meant to be WFH? You're then looking after the children after school/nursery in the afternoon, and making the hours up in the evening? You have now been told you need to be working 9-5 in the office every day?

The above is what the issue is, in my opinion. You don't appear to have any wrap around care, once your children finish school/nursery. The company don't want you working in the evenings, they want you finished at 5 pm. Therefore, it's easier to say 'no WFH, you need to be in the office 9-5 every day'.

I would suggest you seek proper advice from ACAS. You can submit a flexible working request, your employer has to consider it. Given their stance, I suspect it will be refused. Your childcare issues are not your employers problem, they are yours to solve. You will need to look into proper childcare before/after school/nursery and the school holidays. Can your husband/partner not help at all? Do you have your parents or in-laws nearby who could help? Or you need to find another job, that offers the flexibility you want. No employer is unreasonable for wanting their employees to be present and working, during core business hours though.

Where is the children's father? Can he help? I have three kids, and although they are much older now, when they were very small working from home was a lifesaver. I hope you get this resolved.

Your childcare issues aren’t your employers responsibility to find a solution to though.

If you choose to have a job which involves three hours a day of commuting, it’s not then the employers responsibility to create a huge amount of flexibility yo accommodate your childcare issues.

You can ask them, and you may be valuable enough to them to accommodate it - but they aren’t ’forcing you out of your job’ if they say it won’t work.

I would be talking to a solicitor. I'm in Ireland though and it's more common here.

I don’t really see why in the world of digital communications, that working from home some of the week shouldn’t be encouraged if it allows for more reasonable working hours. DH and I both commute to London (about 1.5hrs door to door) and we alternate days with both of us having a 2 day in the office commitment. This means that whoever commutes does a full day and whoever works from home does a full day and still manages to get the kids from childcare at 6. This solution works far better for our employers than one of us having to leave the office at 4.30 every day - which plenty did pre-covid. It’s not the kind of job I could find locally, but buying a family home in London wasn’t an option financially.

Yet still my place keep threatening to have us back 4 days a week for no reason other than the big bosses like it to look buzzy when clients come in. I have a flexible working agreement that comes with a clause that they could change it at any time should ‘business needs change’. If they do, I’ll have to leave.

I already do at least 2 extra hours once the kids are in bed every day because there’s too much to do and they take the piss, so it’s not like I could make up the hours elsewhere if I left early.

Legally, you are wrong, the employer has a duty to consider flexible working requests, and the threshold for refusal is higher for women with childcare responsibilities as this can amount to indirect sex discrimination. There have been numerous employment tribunals that have upheld this in the employees favour.

It sounds like OP has a couple of different issues -

She can’t get home in time from the office collect DC from nursery before it closes.

There is no after school wrap around care.

I’m assuming she may also have the more immediate problem of it currently being school holidays.

Financially she will be worse off.

Some of these are easier to solve than others.

How much earlier than 5pm would you need to leave work to be back in time for nursery pick up? 30 minutes? An hour? There is case law for indirect sex discrimination on employers not allowing women to amend their working hours in order to collect children from nursery. If you requested to reduce/amend your hour and they denied this you would likely do well at tribunal on this. Note they do not have to keep pay the same. If you have to leave an hour early they could pay you an hour less and not allow an arrangement where you get paid the same. But the point is there should be a way around this one where you get to still have a job and can pick up your child.

After school wrap around care - the school might not provide it but there might be other organisations like after school clubs or childminders that do. Hopefully you can find something before term starts again.

If you have a more immediate school holiday issue I don’t know how you solve that one, so many holiday clubs don’t cover a full working day. University Nurserys often run them that cover a full day. Some may have spaces but that’s another £45 a day easily gone. If you’d have put a plan in place with your employer in advance then it would have been easier. But also I’m making assumptions, maybe you have the holidays all worked out.

Financially I’d probably do what I could to manage with the extra costs now whilst I looked for a different role. I assume you’re better off with this job than without out? Don’t jump ship without having one to go to.

Thinking about Nursery. If you wanted to change nurseries (I appreciate that’s a big thing) then you’d need to start in September for the free hours to work. So if you need to give your current nursery a months notice than you need to sort that asap before we get to August.

I’m sorry OP the juggle is really hard.

Personally I become self employed because I got fed up with all the corporate crap that just put barriers in the way of me getting to do the job I want to do and trained very hard for but I’m lucky I have a job where I can do that. I work from home all the time, DC have childcare 3 days a week and if I need to work more I do it at the weekend so DH can look after the kids. Some weeks I work 5 days, some weeks 3, some weeks less, it depends on the demand/what else is on.

Pretty much all of this is wrong.

I’d suggest you check your sources, as that ACAS page you linked actually says “Something cannot become part of the contract through custom and practice if it contradicts a written term”, which is exactly what I said in my post. I am an employment lawyer by the way.

Please stop stating this - you would think so, logically (and it's in HR depts interests to act as if contact overrides all else and hope no one knows different...), but in employment law, this is not always the case, see:

https://www.acas.org.uk/employment-contracts-and-the-law/custom-and-practice

On how working practice can override contract in a work environment. The OP should seek advice from someone who's qualified...

Where is your husband in all of this? What is he doing in terms of nursery/school drop offs? Any childcare costs would be his to share as well.

I wish people would stop conflating WFH and Flexible Working, which are two different things.

WFH obviously allows you to be 'home' at 1 minute past finishing time but it doesn't automatically allow you to 'pop out and collect the kids' any more than you'd be able to do working in the office.

They’re not really two different things, flexible working is a defined term in law. Working from home is one way of flexible working.

This!!! People working from home while they have 3 kids in the house??? Entitled! Sorry I know I’ll be piled on…but it just isn’t feasible.
Can somebody explains what ‘comms’ is please?

Second this - it’s discriminatory and harassment.

i think how you handle this comes down to what you want to happen.

You can make a formal flexible working request and they are required to implement it or provide a clear reason why they can’t (from the options in the legislation)

You can lodge a grievance about the comments made to you, which are completely inappropriate. (Someone recently won a huge award at tribunal because their employer made comments about their ADHD symptoms instead of actually supporting them to improve performance)

You can lodge a tribunal claim for sex discrimination and harassment. It takes a long time but if everything you’ve said here is accurate and you can evidence it then you’d have a decent shot.

Any of these actions has the potential to risk how you are treated at work even further so you have to weigh that up. For most people the judgement comes down to whether they want to stay in the job, and whether they want to deal with the stress of an ongoing dispute.

I’m furious on your behalf. I’m sure you’re getting good advice on here. Talk to your union, talk to ACAS, look at your organisation’s policies.

I would find a good employment lawyer and pay a few hundred for some proper advice.

It is so worth that investment for the peace of mind that comes from knowing what is and isn’t legal and what you can and can’t do about it.

I would hold off submitting any flexible working request until you’ve had that advice, and I would start preparing myself mentally to face the reality that the best solution may be that you find another job.

I haven’t said the employer doesn’t have to consider requests, I actually say in my first post to make a formal request, as then they will be obliged to give a formal response.

And - I also say that employers may be flexible to accommodate employees.

But if an employee lives very far away and so cannot manage work, the commute, plus childcare - the onus isn’t on the employer to find a solution. Someone living too far from their place of employment would be something a recruiter would be concerned about for precisely this reason.

There is no such thing as reasonable adjustments due to childcare responsibilities. You do however have the right to request flexible working.

This lady won a case with a 1 hour commute. The court didn’t decide that it was just her problem to deal with.

www.clarkewillmott.com/insights/refused-flexible-working-request-made-for-childcare-needs-can-amount-to-indirect-sex-discrimination/

I’ll refer you to my previous post, and to your own source material which states the opposite of what you are claiming.

I’m sure the employee (such as myself) can easily manage childcare if they are allowed to slightly adjust their hours and do some home working. Your assertion that employers are not obliged to make accommodations is just plain wrong. No, they don’t have to find childcare solutions, but they do have to make reasonable adjustments, which, unless you are a surgeon, a few days working from home clearly is.