Woo, Dana!

Aw, ltc. Hope she is recovering.

Yay, Dana!

Yay Dana!!!

Has anyone's work started going back to any level of in-office working and has released a policy for employees with children that due to closed schools and day cares will still need to wfh? Specifically if there are positions that cannot telework?

If so, would you mind sharing with me? Big boss has asked that we research best practices, but most employee policies like this are not made public and I do not know many ppl in local government jobs to ask.

We have semi-reopened office and schools have announced they will be virtual through at least Jan so that is a conflict for us and all non computer type jobs.

My boss asked if anyone had constraints with the school year starting and kids at home so the new director can decide what to do, but I have no idea what that's going to be. We already are at work from home if you can and afaik warehouse workers are either supposed to show up or take leave.

I've been the only one in the office for most of the time. One other person is (supposedly) working Tuesdays and Wednesdays, since she says she can't stand being at home all the time. Today - oh, the excitement! - we had our top person plus three directors PLUS two people teaching a virtual class from our conference room (the lead instructor's home internet is non-netting). He'll be back tomorrow PLUS two more people (one's leaving and is having an exit interview with her director). It's very strange having people here. We haven't officially re-opened, so there's no policy on children. Sorry.

My work said that childcare conflicts would be handled using the guidelines in FFCRA, but that they are complicated enough that each situation should be discussed with HR. So there's no policy. (This sets out what FFCRA provides pretty simply: [link]

We've been back in the office full time since late April (with the exception of people with a doctor's note saying they need to work from home) and we've only been told that they're going to work with people on a case-by-case basis if there's child care conflict due to schools not opening. But company ownership really, really, really hates people working from home, so it's not really surprising.

There are so many people who oppose working from home. On Ask A Manager, there are stories ... people who are required to be in Zoom meetings every day, people who have to report on what they plan to do, what they have done ... even being required to install a monitoring app/program that will report on what they've done. Not to mention the university that was requiring people, if they wanted to work from home, providing proof that they had childcare or a nanny (!) ... which was withdrawn fairly quickly. Do people knowingly hire slackers or are they so unmotivated that they assume anyone who's not being monitored will ... what? ... spend the day goofing off? My office (mostly) assumes that they've hired responsible adults who will do their work, regardless of whether they're working from home or in the office. I know I do some goofing off (hence my presence here), but everyone does it some. But as we don't have to officially take sick leave to visit the doctor or dentist, there seems to be a general assumption that as long as the work gets done, it's fine.

If I had to guess, I'd say it's because of the management/worker divide.(When in doubt, blame the MBAs.) If you're not focussing on anything except maximizing profit, any sign that people care about anything besides The Company will look like disloyalty or an attack.

That's not a universal explanation of course - my first boss at this job came up through the ranks from running a storefront office and he was paranoid as anything about what his employees might be getting away with.