Work meetings clashing with school pick-up are making me anxious

[LiquoriceAllsorts2]

I have received several meetings that clash with the time that I need to collect my kids. Where possible I have tried to make it work and have my husband collect but there is a couple that I can’t make work due to him being away. I will tell work I can’t make it and will need to leave early but I feel so anxious that it will reflect badly on me and hate that I have been put in this position.

feels that however hard I work, sometimes it just can’t be enough.

dont know what I am looking for really, just want to rant and get my frustrations out. I hate that this needs to be an issue.

1. Block out your calender from 5pm every day - set it as recurring daily.

This them makes it clear the meeting is being scheduled when you are not available.

1. Who is organising the meetings for that time? Have you any influence to change them? Nobody really likes 5pm meeting anyway. Can you proppse new times, suggest that they are set weekly at same time in the morning.

1. Is it a situation where your manager has influence and will support you.

We have a rule (albeit not rigidly enforced) that all meeting should be between 10am-4pm for this reason if possible and if you have to leave a hour between 12-2 for you, if not, you must provide the lunch. As a result most meeting are schedelued for 10am or 2pm.

The OP says she is contracted to 40 hours per week but doesn't have a set start and end time

(understood (f) )

Edited: that was supposed to be a sympathetic bunch of flowers

No the indirect bit refers to women. There is significant statistical evidence that women take on the bulk of child care responsibilities. Therefore this is an issue that will primarily impact women.
That doesn't mean some male primary care givers won't be impacted, but statistically this is an issue for women.
There are a number of examples where a very similar situation has been ruled as indirect discrimination based on these exact reasons.

I hear you. It's tough. I had an agreement with my previous employer to leave at 5pm every day for childcare. They had no problem with it, but I felt horrible every single time I had to leave a meeting even though I KNEW I was making the hours up (and more!) at home.

I am now an employer and all but one of my female employees has school or club pick up responsibilities. I try really hard not to schedule meetings at these times, and I really don't care if they nip out for half an hour every day, because they are all worth their weight in gold.

Try not to feel so awful.

This situation is literally what employment lawyers use to train HR teams on what indirect discrimination looks like. As PPs have said, not all of the women have to be similarly affected, and if men are also affected that doesn’t neutralise the potential claim. It’s a technical area of law but this is a classic example of it.

Yep, I run a lecture on equality and discrimination and this the exact example I use to demonstrate indirect discrimination!

Ok I stand corrected! But I would imagine this in practice is impossible to prove.

I thought that was what I read, and was confused as I am not sure why she doesn’t simply assert herself and state that she cannot do meetings after 530?

Came here to say this.

Just block it out whenever you do pickup with "private appointment".

Of course they are - wonderful helpful men going above and beyond!

Absolutely this - if you knew you needed to be free of work at the time of school pickup you should have made this clear from the start. Hoping it'd work is not professional.

Just make your hard stop at 5pm know and hold your head up that you're protecting your work/life balance. Don't act apologetic or guilty. Noone can think you're flaky for needing to leave work at 5pm. I bet they're in later and would decline an 8.30am meeting.

Block out your calender from 5pm every day - set it as recurring daily.

Absolutely this. You have family commitments and a 5pm finish is perfectly acceptable. As someone said upthread, the best thing to do is start saying 'no' rather than tying yourself in knots after you've said 'yes'

Hi - I had a similar position to you for many years. I had no problem making all meetings within core hours but there are hard and fast deadlines for pick up from after-school clubs. No trouble fitting in my full hours but don’t see why someone’s preference for a lie-in and late start trumps my evening deadline. Suggest holding a couple of meetings after 7pm instead? Saying “no” consistently does get through eventually and these days (in many/most) industries it would be a brave person to accuse you of being unreasonable.

If you are contracted to work 40 hours a week there must be some sort of policy about what hours that must include, otherwise you could work permanent nights if you wanted to. Have you committed to core hours past 5pm? If you haven’t just block your diary out between 5pm and 6pm every day. My boss has to go at 5 every day because he has the same issue so we never book meetings past that time.

Asan ex HR person I think honesty is best policy

Our local primary has after school club, til 6pm. Costly though, anything nearby or at the school?

Ops already using after school. She needs to leave work at 5pm or the house at 5.30pm to get to afterschool and nursery.

Shes doing everything she could reasonably be expected to do to make it work for her children too.

I had a similar position to you for many years. I had no problem making all meetings within core hours but there are hard and fast deadlines for pick up from after-school clubs. No trouble fitting in my full hours but don’t see why someone’s preference for a lie-in and late start trumps my evening deadline.

Very good point @NimbleNavyFinch

She already uses this.
The issue with meetings being scheduled beyond their opening times.

But they are in working hours, so unless you have some special arrangement they are entirely reasonable to schedule meetings at that time. If you have an arrangement you don’t work then you need to woman up and say so. It’s unreasonable to bitch that people want you to do meetings during your working hours.

Why are meetings scheduled so close to when people get off work? Nobody likes this...

How do you define working hours when the company doesn’t?

I have the exact same arrangement. I am always concerned about the time between 5-6 and others have a completely inconsistent approach to it. When you have many different stakeholders you can’t just demand they all work the same hours.

40 hours a week can be 9-5, 8-4, 10-6 or it can be different everyday or flexible - and the latter is generally what companies expect, that senior staff will attend a meeting at 8am or 5pm. But that makes family life impossible, because childcare doesn’t work around those hours plus commute