Workplace Diversity

minarri · #1 by **minarri** » May 13, 2011 12:21 am

Hi all. This is my first post.

I am researching a question for a paper I am writing and I would appreciate your thoughts.

"Employees with children have less flexibility than staff with no children, due to their parental responsibilities. It is reasonable then, to roster childless employees in preference to those with kids".

Thanks
Minarri

Durro · #2 by **Durro** » May 13, 2011 2:18 am

Hi Pam and welcome to our little corner of the electric interwebz.

In response to your question, when I was a Manager for 10 years, I always selected staff on their ability and not their social situation. It's not only good practice, but it's against Aussie law to discriminate against staff based on their social situation or family obligations (as well as gender, sexual preference, political leanings, race, age, handicap or trade union activity). In short, I chose the best person for the job.

One aspect of employment is that staff have to be available to fulfill their duties. One legal question is something like "are you able to fulfill the normal duties as rostered?" or the like. If an employee cannot fulfill the role, then you do have grounds for not selecting them as the best candidate. If two equally viable candidates are being decided between, and one is more available for duty than the other, I will usually take the available one.

If an existing staff member has a family, it gets a little trickier. I experienced a lot of female staff members who went on maternity leave and demanded to come back into their role in a part time capacity instead of full time. The thing is, their leave and position was for a full time role and as the employer, I was obligated to (and happy to) hold their full time position, but if the needs of the business could not be met, I was under no obligation to offer a reduction to part time hours. I was fortunate that I was able to keep some excellent female staff in a job sharing role when more than one wanted to go part time, but I butted heads with a couple who wanted part time work after maternity leave when it wasn't feasible for the business.

When it came to on-call for parent employees (I work in health care where 24 hour on-call is an integral part in some centres), I rostered them as normal for anyone else, but allowed them to swap, change or give away their on-call nights as they desired with another staff member. In doing so, I rostered fairly and without discrimination, but allowed for family circumstances to amend the published roster. Same for shift work and weekend work - dished out fairly, but staff were welcome to swap or give away shifts.

Hope this helps.

Durro

gleniedee · #3 by **gleniedee** » May 14, 2011 6:24 am

Employees with children have less flexibility than staff with no children, due to their parental responsibilities. It is reasonable then, to roster childless employees in preference to those with kids.

I was a middle manager in the Australian Federal public service for some years.Not only is such an argument not considered reasonable,it is also unlawful under our discrimination laws.

Arrangements are sometimes made voluntarily between individuals with management's consent. However,people with children do not have any special entitlement and do not receive special consideration unless required by law. eg: BOTH parents may receive paid parental leave after the birth of a child.

I usually took my holidays outside of school holiday times, so my friends could have time off with their kids. This was a act of friendship,and a minor inconvenience. I did not do so out of any sense of obligation.

Grimstad · #4 by **Grimstad** » May 14, 2011 6:51 am

As a boss I never had to deal with the issue of holding a job open for someone, but as a coworker I REALLY got tired of covering for their "family emergencies". I almost always said something to them along the lines of, "gee kids. I'm going to have to grow me one of those some day." My passive agressive way of telling them I thought it was bullshit.

Durro · #5 by **Durro** » May 15, 2011 7:51 am

That may very well be a valid observation Grimstad.

However, in my own personal situation (for what it's worth), the vast majority of "sick" days I've taken in the last 5 years have been to look after my own sick children who have had to stay home from school, or from when I've gotten a call from the school saying that they are sick/injured and need to come home. Apart from hurting my back lifting my own gargantuan puppy and needing 3 days off in a row, I've taken perhaps 2 or 3 single days off for myself in 5 years, and approximately 7 or 8 for my kids' benefit. I've also had to leave work to go to the school about 4 or 5 times - in most cases, I've brought them back to work with me (I work at a medical centre) and continued with my duties.

In each of these circumstances, the understanding of my co-workers is appreciated. My wife and I also "take turns" taking sick days to look after the kids, unless one of us is on-call or otherwise highly committed to something at work that makes taking time off more problematic than usual. We don't have relatives nearby that can take the kids for us and our friends mostly have schooll age kids and work, or are DINKS and work, so can't look after them either. Taking time off from work is unfortunate, but unavoidable.

minarri · #6 by **minarri** » May 17, 2011 2:46 am

Thanks for your considered replies and it has been a great help. I realise it is against the law to discriminate between childless and people with kids but that was the question in the assessment. I really appreciate your input. Thanks all.

Durro · #7 by **Durro** » May 17, 2011 2:55 am

No problem Pam. Good luck with your assessment.

LucidFlight · #8 by **LucidFlight** » May 17, 2011 6:37 am

Durro wrote:Apart from hurting my back lifting my own gargantuan puppy...

When Durro says gargantuan, he means gargantuan:

Durro wrote:Here's me and my 11 week old puppy...

Grimstad · #9 by **Grimstad** » May 17, 2011 6:46 am

I'm sorry if I seemed to cast aspersions on working parents, that wasn't my intent. In the example I gave at least half of my coworkers had kids and seemed to do just fine without me needing to share the load. Shit happens, I know. But when it's real shit, you can usually see it on their faces.