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Ask a Manager: Working from Home
A reader writes:
What are reasonable expectations for managers whose employees are now working from home? For myself, I can adhere to my normal schedule while homebound, but I have a great employee who, having gone above and beyond in normal times, pleads child care issues now that she is home. She is productive, but putting off some time-sensitive tasks because her toddler demands her time. Her husband is also at home.
Is it reasonable to expect an employee to find a way to work her normal schedule even while she is telecommuting? It is frustrating to hear “I can’t” do such and such when she would have been able to do it easily in the workplace.
Response
No, it’s not reasonable to expect someone caring for a toddler because schools and daycares are closed to work the same schedule she worked in the office without a toddler around! It’s also not reasonable to expect her to achieve the same productivity levels as before.
How would that happen? There’s a toddler there!
Yes, your employee’s husband is also at home, but assuming he’s working as well, they are presumably splitting the child care.
How exactly is she going to stick her office work schedule when she’s supervising a small child half the time?
This isn’t a question of her needing to “find a way.” There is no way.
Your employee didn’t choose this; it’s not like she decided to work with a toddler lurking around in order to save on child care expenses. We’re in a pandemic and a public health crisis. She, like millions of parents across the country, is an impossible situation and is trying to make it work as best as she can.
And of course there will be times when you’ll hear she can’t do X or Y now, even though she would have been able to do it before. There’s a toddler there.
This is a completely different situation than employers have had to deal with before. In the past, it was reasonable to say people couldn’t care for small children at the same time they were working from home. You can’t say that anymore because it’s now unavoidable.
In the past, it was reasonable to expect people to stay more or less productive throughout the workday. It’s not anymore. That’s not because people are lazy or taking advantage or somehow not understanding what work you expect of them. It’s because there is a global pandemic that has changed everyone’s reality. It needs to change yours too.
This is someone who you say is a great employee who has gone above and beyond. You need to treat her as a human, not a work-producing robot, and you need to accept that These Are Not Normal Times and she is almost certainly doing the best she can. You need to give her, and others, as much flexibility as you can find. You need to radically adjust your and her priorities and expectations right now. Everything is different.
If you want to keep your great employee and ever have her go above and beyond again, it’s your turn to go above and beyond for her. That’s the only way managers can rise to the occasion right now.
What are reasonable expectations for managers whose employees are now working from home? For myself, I can adhere to my normal schedule while homebound, but I have a great employee who, having gone above and beyond in normal times, pleads child care issues now that she is home. She is productive, but putting off some time-sensitive tasks because her toddler demands her time. Her husband is also at home.
Is it reasonable to expect an employee to find a way to work her normal schedule even while she is telecommuting? It is frustrating to hear “I can’t” do such and such when she would have been able to do it easily in the workplace.
Response
No, it’s not reasonable to expect someone caring for a toddler because schools and daycares are closed to work the same schedule she worked in the office without a toddler around! It’s also not reasonable to expect her to achieve the same productivity levels as before.
How would that happen? There’s a toddler there!
Yes, your employee’s husband is also at home, but assuming he’s working as well, they are presumably splitting the child care.
How exactly is she going to stick her office work schedule when she’s supervising a small child half the time?
This isn’t a question of her needing to “find a way.” There is no way.
Your employee didn’t choose this; it’s not like she decided to work with a toddler lurking around in order to save on child care expenses. We’re in a pandemic and a public health crisis. She, like millions of parents across the country, is an impossible situation and is trying to make it work as best as she can.
And of course there will be times when you’ll hear she can’t do X or Y now, even though she would have been able to do it before. There’s a toddler there.
This is a completely different situation than employers have had to deal with before. In the past, it was reasonable to say people couldn’t care for small children at the same time they were working from home. You can’t say that anymore because it’s now unavoidable.
In the past, it was reasonable to expect people to stay more or less productive throughout the workday. It’s not anymore. That’s not because people are lazy or taking advantage or somehow not understanding what work you expect of them. It’s because there is a global pandemic that has changed everyone’s reality. It needs to change yours too.
This is someone who you say is a great employee who has gone above and beyond. You need to treat her as a human, not a work-producing robot, and you need to accept that These Are Not Normal Times and she is almost certainly doing the best she can. You need to give her, and others, as much flexibility as you can find. You need to radically adjust your and her priorities and expectations right now. Everything is different.
If you want to keep your great employee and ever have her go above and beyond again, it’s your turn to go above and beyond for her. That’s the only way managers can rise to the occasion right now.
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(And then Parents vs Non-Parents flared up a couple times in the comments, whee.)
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there was a care and feeding this week in which I wanted to make this letter and Alison’s reply compulsory reading for the manager of both the LW and the manager of the LW’S spouse:
https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/04/noisy-toddler-apartment-quarantine-care-and-feeding.html
Dear Care and Feeding,
My partner and I are both required to work online from home while day care is closed, which means keeping our 2½-year-old daughter busy all day, working insane hours, and still not meeting expectations. It’s been a week, and we’re both stressed and exhausted.
We’ve discussed packing up to move to my in-laws’ several states away, where my daughter’s grandparents would be thrilled to care for her all day while we work. I’m worried that this would just be a trade-off in terms of benefits. It could put all of us at greater health risk, leave us far from our regular resources—plus the stresses of living with one’s in-laws. However, neither of us is in the position to reduce our work hours more than we already have, and without day care we’re relying heavily on television and getting less sleep to cover all of our work and child care needs. I know you can’t make the decision for us, but it would be great to have an outsider’s take on all of this.
—Should We Stay, or Should We Go?
Dear SWSoSWG,
I’m so sorry. Households across the world are confronting similar scenarios. It’s a blessing to have the kind of work that can be done at home, but the logistics are complex.
My outsider’s take is that the doctors who know about such things don’t want us to be traveling and moving about. The risk—to yourself, to your in-laws, to the population of the place you’re headed and all the places you stop along the route—is what it is. Then there’s the fact that you yourself note: Home is where your resources are (even if you’re temporarily forbidden access to many of those). If nothing else, it’s where your kid’s toys and clothes and books are. It’s familiar and comforting, and uprooting a toddler might be yet another burdensome task for you to bear.
I don’t know whether you and your partner need to work the same hours or just each put in eight. If it’s the latter, could you devise a system of divide and conquer—giving one parent the bulk of the morning or afternoon/evening for work while the other handles child care, then switch? Presumably your kid’s naptime would afford the not-at-work parent a small window to get things done.
This isn’t that great a solution—you can’t just work or parent around the clock. Can you speak to your bosses and work out some kind of adjusted schedule, akin to what you’d work if you’d relocated across the country to another time zone? These are not circumstances unique to you and your partner; offices the world over are changing how they do business as usual. If your jobs can be performed remotely, maybe there’s a way to get still more creative so you can manage your professional obligations and your personal ones.
None of this is ideal! You should not feel guilty about screen time if it allows you some wiggle room. But I think you should get aggressive and creative about how to better divide all of this labor so that you’re not both burning the candle at both ends, in an endless loop of mom/dad work and then office work. I’m sorry you’re going through this, and I hope you can find a more sustainable balance soon.
—Rumaan
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My wife is working from home, and if anything, her workload has increased because her company provides financial services related to covid relief. We are incredibly fortunate that, for the time being, I have been given a reprieve from work, so in addition to doing the cooking and what cleaning I can, I have been parenting and homeschooling both children. My wife is still doing the grocery shopping—a small number of large trips, in the wee hours of the morning—because I have an immune system disorder. Eventually I will be recalled to work, and I don't know what we will do then.
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If I see one more person snottily say, "Well, children are a CHOICE" to justify why parents deserve no flexibility nor consideration whatsoever, I STG.
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UGH, I HEAR YOU.