Employer insisting I attend training courses on my days off

warby68

I suspect your contract allows them to vary your working days/times and location but not sure if it obliges you to work extra hours in a given week which seems to be required here.

However the reality is you need to find a compromise solution rather than a contractual opt out if you want to keep your job.

What about the 3rd week in your pattern? Do you have scope then? Can you manage a couple of the courses and perhaps defer some until later in the year? What are your regular back up child care plans? Is it always just you or dad? What happens if one of you is ill?

You need a face to face here and to be able to offer at least something. If you simply say you have no back up child care plan, it won't really reflect well.

Zeni

Also, as said previously it could be that these courses are only held on days that you don't work?

Think its worth weighing up the pro and cons of this. Are you prepared if you don't do the courses to loose your job or is it not worth the fuss? Definitely find out if you would be paid for attending these course on days you don't work, and then this money could be used to subsidise childcare for those days?

TBagpuss

I think that you, as well as your employer, need to be a bit flexible.

I'd suggest that you look into whether the courses will be available after April, and how soon (and depending on your employer, consider whether they have a strict training budget so *have* to get these courses into the current financial year)

That might allow you to speak to your employer but to be offering solutions as well as raising the fact that there is a problem. I don't think it would be unreasonable in the circumstances to ask for time off in lieu - after all, there would be a day where you were not in the office, if you were doing the course on one of your normal days, so there would always be a day when you were out of the office either way

It would also be worth your husband enquiring whether he can take a day or two as unpaid time off, and if that would be possible you could then ask your employers to confirm that they will pay you for the extra day they are asking you to work.

Do you know whether full time staff members are ever expected to attend courses outside normal working hours? If not, then I think it is harder for them to justify expecting you to do so, so that might be an argument to raise to support a request for time off in lieu rather than simply paying you overtime.

jobbingmusician

There is no doubt in my mind that your employer is obliged to pay you for your time in attending these courses. Could you not use this extra pay to buy in childcare, if your husband can't cover?

(However, I do think your employer is being a bit unreasonable if these courses are actually held on days on which you work. I suspect that your manager has not realised he's going to have to pay you for the time when you attend the courses - because that's what your contract of employment says.)

Just to clarify - what are we actually talking about here? Four courses - are these one day courses, or week long courses, or.....??????

It also seems to me reasonable that your employer should require you to attend a low number of days' training on days when you wouldn't normally work. It DOESN'T seem reasonable that they should suddenly demand that all or any of these courses are taken on days you don't normally work within the next 2 weeks, which is what they seem to be saying! I think in your position I would say that I totally understand the need to do the training, and that I am willing to do this and arrange my life so that I can work extra hours for the company, but I feel that a 'reasonable employer' (important phrase! ) should give more than two weeks' notice - surely a minimum of a month - for any requirement to undertake such training on non-standard days.

FBaby

So is it the case that you were given the days you were asked to attend (are they full days?), all these fall on days you don't work, and you've looked into childcare and despite all your attempts, cannot accommodate any single days? Who looks after them on the Thursday and Friday you work? Can't they help? Doesn't your 3 yo attend free sessions? If so, have you approached the provider and asked if they could do a full day on these days instead of the arrangement currently in place.

Really the question is? Did you actually really tried to be accommodating and explained this in some detail in your letter, or is it a case of principle that you should have to do training on the days you don't work and just wrote to say you wouldn't be available, end of?

Frogling

FBaby wrote: »

So is it the case that you were given the days you were asked to attend (are they full days?), all these fall on days you don't work, and you've looked into childcare and despite all your attempts, cannot accommodate any single days? Who looks after them on the Thursday and Friday you work? Can't they help? Doesn't your 3 yo attend free sessions? If so, have you approached the provider and asked if they could do a full day on these days instead of the arrangement currently in place.

Really the question is? Did you actually really tried to be accommodating and explained this in some detail in your letter, or is it a case of principle that you should have to do training on the days you don't work and just wrote to say you wouldn't be available, end of?

My little one attends nursery on the Thurs/Fridays I work, and on Wednesdays the other week to accommodate my daughters hospital appts.

If you read my original post, I wrote to my employer explaining that it was difficult for me to attend the training courses and detailed the reasons why. I have no intention of being difficult, or trying to make a point - it's about compromise, which sadly my employer does not want, I've been told it's their way or the highway.

I love my job, it fits around my husbands work and my family life perfectly. I know how lucky I am to have that, so don't want to jeopardise it. The courses are all one day each, and I am doing my best to arrange things so that I can make them, it's just extremely difficult and causing me no end of stress right now.

silvercar

Could the childcare arrangements you have for the Thursday and Friday you work offer you extra days? I'm trying to understand if it is the childcare that is the problem or paying for it?

happyandcontented

I think that you are going to have to pay for childcare for the extra days as you will be being paid for the extra time. Your job sounds very flexible in all other ways and sometimes we have to be prepared to sort out issues rather than rail at the inconvenience of it.

Are they set days? If not perhaps you could stretch them out over a few months rather than all in one month?

Spendless

If I've got your rota correctly you work
week1 - Sat and Sun

week2 - Thurs and Fri

week 3 -Off

Why can't you ask your childcare provider to take your child on the Thurs and Friday of either week 1 or 3 when you wouldn't be working those days and do the course then?

takman

Frogling wrote: »

My little one attends nursery on the Thurs/Fridays I work, and on Wednesdays the other week to accommodate my daughters hospital appts.

If you read my original post, I wrote to my employer explaining that it was difficult for me to attend the training courses and detailed the reasons why. I have no intention of being difficult, or trying to make a point - it's about compromise, which sadly my employer does not want, I've been told it's their way or the highway.

I love my job, it fits around my husbands work and my family life perfectly. I know how lucky I am to have that, so don't want to jeopardise it. The courses are all one day each, and I am doing my best to arrange things so that I can make them, it's just extremely difficult and causing me no end of stress right now.

I don't understand how it is anymore difficult than arranging childcare for the days you normally work?. All you need to do is find out what days you need to attend the course and book your child into the nursery on those days also. There is no need for it to be difficult or cause you any stress...