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Writing a work at home agreement
I am considering shifting to FT status at work. I currently work PT to balance work and life with 3 kids. My boss has been wanting me to go FT pretty much since I started. So he's pretty much on board to do whatever I want to get me to agree to FT. Problem is with 3 kids it's obviously expensive to work FT. Enter in the proposal for 8 hours of WAH. We've obviously talked about this being a few evening hours during the week plus some weekend time. Time when DH is home to cover the kids, since as anyone knows you can't WAH with kids.
My boss is a little hesitant because he hasn't wanted to ever allow WAH. Unfortunately, he's had too many people just "work at home". Or others who "work at home" when they are sick and really just check in on their emails and little things. Certainly not enough to pay a decent hourly rate for.
Anyway, I want to put together an agreement including policies that could be part of general company policies. So that it doesn't become just some kind of special treatment I get. Do you have any examples of how this could be implemented to maintain consistency and still provide some safeguards to keeping people actually working when at home?
Re: Writing a work at home agreement
I was thinking certain rules along the lines of:
having a set schedule in place.
Childcare must be in place for children.
approval must be granted at least 24 hours in advance.
Obviously, I'm trying to clean it all up and put it in a professional policy. I am also responsible for writing our handbook and company policies anyway.
People need to attend required meetings in person when requested, be available by phone and email during business hours, and that working at home is a privilege that can be revoked at the discretion of the supervisor. If your field has a way of measuring productivity you could include something about the staff productivity level needing to be the same.
I had a job in the past that had no policy specifically so managers could use their discretion to let some people work from home and not others. People can usually tell pretty quick who is actually working at home and who isn't and it works itself out. There was jealously that some people got to work at home more than others, but that's life.
I work at a company now that makes a distinction between working at home and being available at home. If you are working at home, you are paid for 8 hours of work and if someone calls or emails you the expectation is that you respond right away. If you are available at home, you are checking email every so often or maybe doing a little work while watching TV. If you are home sick you have to use your sick time, but during the busy time people still need to be available from home.
Thanks! Those are great distinctions. I was thinking of adding something like that in, about being available during a sick day and using PTO vs working from home and being paid.
Oh, and it's a small practice now but we're working and putting things into practice thinking ahead to when we're 100+ ppl. Thanks!