Flexible working question

emg

I wonder if HR are worried that if anything happens to the child while you are working they might be somehow liable? Often these crazy Health & Safety rules are about companies avoiding lawsuits and compensation claims. In which case you think they might just make you sign some sort of disclaimer instead.

Spendless

onlyroz wrote: »

The way it seems to me is that it is virtually impossible to have a household where both parents work full time, without making use of some form of childcare. In most of the families I know, one parent (usually the mother) has to work part-time, or is in some sort of educational job where the hours are the same as their child's. I am one of those awful women who want to have it all - and I don't see why I shouldn't be able to, to be honest.

I don't want to reduce my hours, because my income is the largest in the household, and my husband cannot work any more flexibly than he does because he works on a help desk that must be manned between fixed hours - they've already changed the help-desk hours to allow him to leave early on Thursday and Friday, and they're not going to do any more than that.

Yes, I could hire a child-minder to take the kids to school and nursery, but I don't want to do that partly because of the additional expense and partly because it would take away from me even more of the little time that I get to spend with them each day.

And to those of you who ask how I can get in 2-3 hours work in the afternoons as well as watch the kids, make dinner, clean up, wash the dishes, get the kids to bed etc - well isn't that what women are meant to be good at? My company might say that during this time I've only got half my mind on my job - but like I said to them - I might spread the same work over a longer period. So in the office I might do 2 hours solid work, but at home I might do the same work in 3 hours - but I'd still put 2 hours down in the time sheet.

My immediate boss was happy with my working arrangement for the last 18 months. He knows that I get the work done fine, and he would be perfectly happy for me to make up my extra hours however I please - and he knows that I'm always available on the phone or MSN if he needs to contact me when I'm out of the office. He even let me work from home for all of September-December last year, because my son was only at school for half-days during that period. It's *his* boss that has now decided to crack down on the flexible working - and that's largely because people started taking the !!!! - by emailing in the morning to say that they weren't coming in that day. So then of course HR dragged out the rule book and decided to impose the working-from-home guidelines to the letter.

Anyway, I think I should be off to bed - it's looking like a 6 am start for me in the morning...

This bit is so 'of course' to me, it comes as a surprise to me that it seems a surprise to you - if that makes any sense- lol. The only 2 f-time working parents I can think of where you would not need to use any childcare (including relatives helping out) is where 1 is working as a childcare provider themselves eg childminder or where the parents are able to split shifts eg 1 parent being a permanent night worker. This needing someone to watch them whilst you are at work continues for many years eg I would need to find someone for my 10yo.

The problem you've got now that HR have said what they have is that you are not keen on using paid childcare for your school age child, whilst still wanting to retain your and hubby's full hours. I can't thini of any way round other than what's been suggested already, other than to go back to HR and see what their particular concern is and at what age are they likely to say it's not a problem eg would they be ok with you doing 10 hours at home if your child was 9 or 13?

Hope you get it sorted.
xx

JodyBPM

I'm a part time worker who works from home one day a fortnight, and when I requested working from home one of the stipulations was that I wasn't providing childcare at the same time. It's company policy where I work. No idea if this is anything to do with H&S as that wasn't mentioned, but I thought it was a reasonable, and fairly standard request. No one I know who works from home looks after their child at the same time.

TBH I think its quite reasonable, its just irking you because you have been allowed to do it for some time.

The silver lining to this cloud, though, is that you will be able to spend much more quality time with your son, as you won't be trying to work whilst you're with him!