Team member working from home is distracted with kids while on video calls - should I say anything as her manager?

Question

I have a team member on my team (I am her manager) who works remote from home in another state.

This team member has 3 small kids at home with her and on more than one occasion in MS Teams video calls with our internal team and with other employees outside of my team, I can see she is distracted in tending to her kids. Some behaviors among others I saw are listed below. There were occasions in which questions or request for feedback directed at her needed to be repeated.

• Getting her kids something such as food, stepping away from computer

• Answering questions from her kids

• Breaking up sibling fights.

I don't know if she has childcare options such as via a nanny or from family members. She lives in what is considered a rural state so I understand childcare options may be limited.

• Should I be giving her feedback as to how she seems distracted? Focus during meetings along with professional behavior is important, and I don't want to be giving other team members the perception that I am giving her special treatment by turning a blind eye

• How can I talk to her without prying into her personal life or seeming discriminatory?

Answer 1

Address it with her in a "how can i help you" way.

• figure out if a shift of the meeting helps her (maybe it is just an unlucky time for her, and the baby sitter is there 10 min later)
• figure out if it is a temporary problem and a reduction of working time or partial handing over her roles for some time solve the problem
• figure out if the roles she has are good for her, for a computational engineer this is easy to solve, but not for a project manager.
• address the obvious issue: you are flexible, but when she tends to her kids it's not work time. You expect that she does the work later and you rely and trust her with that.
• depending on the level of distraction and the requirement for her input/being there tell her that it may be better to briefly stop the meeting and call back later out of respect for colleagues (i very much prefer this in this situation). Tell her that to mute herself an block the camera if she just needs to listen in.

Answer 2

My 2¢:

No, you should not.

Now, let me explain – I know the scenario well – it is currently the school holidays, holiday programs are $$$, and I have kids of my own. I have had to put myself on mute, yell at my kids to behave whilst I am in a meeting, etc. In fact, I have probably done all of those things you listed.

Your employee probably knows that they are distracting and is probably really annoyed at them and herself for it.

Now – apart from the occasional meeting issues – is she otherwise doing good work and completing the tasks she is assigned? If the answer is "yes", then, doubly so, do not mention anything about it.

Being understanding here is the better long-term solution. Her kids are not going to be this age forever. They will grow up soon enough and not be around during work hours – they will eventually not be an issue anymore (probably in a few years or so); then the question becomes what would you like your employee to remember:

• Being criticized for a set of circumstances where she was trying to make the best with the options she had or
• Letting her get on with it and supporting her through a difficult time.

And she absolutely will remember which option you choose, and that will be a factor in future decision making.

Answer 3

Ongoing issues should be acknowledged straight on. Letting the employee know that the children are an ongoing distraction is fair to everyone involved. That includes the employee.

Having a dialog about the issue includes acknowledging that perhaps nothing can be done about it at this moment. That's OK. Let the employee know that you'll accept this situation as it stands and you'd like them to work on the problem.

Ignoring the problem is a problem.

Putting up with or ignoring distractions isn't a discrimination issue. It is a poor management issue.

You don't have to be rude or heavy-handed, nor do you have to pretend that there isn't a problem.

If you don't let them know that there is a problem, you've robbed them of the opportunity to do better. They might not be able to, but give them the chance.

Answer 4

How you remain not discriminatory is not to focus too much on what is causing the issue, but instead focus on its impacts.

First of all, you need to establish if this is indeed something worth worrying about. If you're going to have 5 meetings during school holidays and the interruptions are a mild inconvenience, you can probably just turn a blind eye.

What I would be concerned about is if the employee is actually managing to get their work done in their home environment. Are they able to accomplish their tasks?

If they are not, then yes, you should have a conversation around that.

If they are getting their work done, then I think you should just put up with the mild inconvenience.

Answer 5

You should only say something if you're going to offer solutions

Overall, this question feels like it's being written by a non-parent. I don't mean that as a critique, but rather a statement of fact. If you aren't a parent, there's probably no way for you to know how hard the job is. And for the record, it's hard, and it's all the time.

As indicated in your question, these meetings sound like they're only with other employees and not clients. If these delays in responding are truly problematic, you need to present the employee with solutions that aren't requiring her to pay more money. Some ideas might include:

• High quality, wireless headset to allow her to easily mute and unmute herself while moving about the house. If you go this route, include with it having someone come over and to teach her how it works.
• Have the company offer onsite licensed childcare so she can work from the office while someone else watches her kids. I say licensed because you want to make sure she's not worrying about who she's leaving her kids with.

That's honestly all I can realistically think of for potential solutions.

To give some context on this, during the pandemic I worked from home and it was frankly terrible for me. Plenty of interruptions during my day because of my kids. I'd regularly find myself working 50 hours a week in order to actually just work 40 due to all the interruptions. If anyone from my company was to have given me grief over my kids yelling in the background, I probably would not be with the same company anymore. Things were hard for me back then, I didn't want people making things harder for me.

Answer 6

Should I be giving her feedback as to how she seems distracted?

I think you should only consider this if the occurrence is regular.

And I think you should first allow a generous leeway to the demands of parenting, and then consider whether the disruption is more than trivial, bearing in mind the size of the meeting, the importance and complexity of the issues in the meeting, the amount and importance of the contribution required, and the actual effect of any interruptions on the ability of others to concentrate (I mean visible or reported difficulty, not fanciful speculation).

The length of the meeting, and the amount of notice about the event and the content, should also be considered - with long, unplanned, and rambling calls obviously providing less opportunity to pre-empt or defer attention to the kids.

If you're at the point where you are sure there is a problem, then we proceed to the following question:

How do you want her to effect fewer disruptions? Are you expecting childcare to be arranged? Are you expecting stronger discipline of the children? Are you expecting her to work in a quiet room away from the children?

The amount that these things are likely to respond to managerial pressure is probably quite minor.

Any attempt by an employer to touch on money matters, or imply that a large amount of money should be spent which the majority of people on that salary are not spending, is also usually a deeply inflammatory topic from which no good can come.

Once you ask yourself what might be possible to change, it might become obvious that there is no solution. This is a mother in charge of children. So the question then would be what you are expecting to gain by raising the issue at all.

You may also want to consult gently with your HR department, set out the facts, and seek a second opinion on whether this should be treated as a problem, what policies apply to the situation of a mother in charge of children, and whether the company has an appetite for any kind of fuss over the situation.

Also just answering some specific points:

Getting her kids something such as food, stepping away from computer

This could be contemptuous if the children are older than infants, but it could also be a behaviour caused by acute embarrassment and a desire to relieve the interruption as soon as possible.

Answering questions from her kids

Breaking up sibling fights.

This is to be expected to some degree from children.

Answer 7

If this situation happens regularly at many meetings, some possible solutions are as follows:

(1) First Attempt: Privately, Get Anonymous Feedbacks From Other Attendees.

You can privately ask other attendees if they feel distracted by this situation, and if they would like to you to fix this situation. The identity of the people who write feedbacks will only be known to you.

If one of them say they do want you to fix it, then you should honestly and professionally pass the feedbacks to her. (But, do not tell her the identity of the people who write feedbacks) . I am sure as a professional worker, she will find a way to fix it one way or another. This is all about professional business.

However, if all attendees say that it is OK, they don't mind, and they don't need you to fix anything, then you don't have to worry about anything, and it is all good.

(2) For important meetings that have the upper level management and clients, you definitely want to inform her in advance a few days so that she can hire a baby sitter or ask a relative or a neighbor to watch the kids during those important meetings. She should be able to find a way to make it work for these important meetings. (Obviously, you don't want to lose a client if they happen to be at that meeting).

(3) For small and regular (daily or weekly) team meetings in which people simply go around and briefly report their status like in a 5 minute daily meeting in a sprint, you can let her talk first quickly and briefly, and then ask her to mute her microphone or even turn off her camera while other team members talk (This way, she can talk to her kids and does not distract other team members). She still can turn on her headphone so that she can hear the manager and other people talk and if they want to ask her a question, then she can turn on her microphone to reply.

(4) Another suggested solution is that you can tell the whole team that from now on during the meeting, everyone should turn off their microphone when they are not talking.

This solution is applied to all team members, and there is nothing personal, and does not hurt anyone's feeling.

In many companies, it is natural to turn off the microphone when you are not talking during a video meeting. I have been in many meetings like this with different teams in many companies.

Answer 8

I think this depends on the nature of the meeting. Therefore I think you should pick your moment to express your concern, so you come across as trying to be reasonable whilst noting that you consider it to be an issue.

1. If it is an unscheduled call, or a scheduled one-to-one meeting with another employee, distracting kids isn't a problem, and can lighten the working day.

2. If there are a large number of people on the call and she is just a fly on the wall, then it may not be a problem. If necessary you can ask her to mute, or tell you are muting her remotely.

3. If she is presenting to several employees, or if clients are present, then it is a problem. Bearing in mind that it is currently the school holidays, the solution is to ask her when the meeting should be scheduled so that the kids do not distract.

Answer 9

If this person is just a "fly on the wall" at these meetings then you should question whether they are even required to be there.

However, per "There were occasions in which questions or request for feedback directed at her needed to be repeated.", it is clear that their presence is important.

These recurring behaviors are not okay during a meeting:

• Getting her kids something such as food, stepping away from computer
• Answering questions from her kids
• Breaking up sibling fights

They are a paid employee and should act as such. Yes, life exists and urgent issues arise but the aforementioned behaviors indicate that they deem the meeting and attendees unimportant.

It is possible that your company has a bad meeting etiquette culture; and if it doesn't then this person is going to be the seed for others to follow suit.

You should consider a company-wide remote meeting policy which can be referenced if the behavior persists.

I do not think you should speak to this person directly until you have a policy in place. If you already have a policy in place then a conversation should be had. Not a disciplinary one but rather one which is an open discussion about workload and/or meeting overload.

Answer 10

Number one item that you need to realise: An employee costs the company. Basically the salary plus taxes, the office space, the management cost. On the other hand, working benefits the employee: The salary, minus taxes, minus cost of travelling, cost of childcare etc. As a reasonable employer, you want to arrange things so that the employee gets as many benefits as possible, while costing the company as little as possible. (Not saying that all employers are reasonable).

So what is your actual problem here? Do you think she is unprofessional, and repeatedly? Why do you care? Does the work get done, that’s what you should care about. Do you want to force her to hire a baby sitter at high cost? There goes a huge amount of benefit for the employee. Which means the benefits you offer are not competitive anymore. If you expect eight hours work a day, then check if you get eight hours work a day.

If she has breaks caused by children and adds the time at the end of the day, you lose nothing. Quite the opposite, if an employee says “I was able to raise my children properly because my company supported me”, you will have a good and loyal employee for a long time.

@HAapy idiot: Just plain common sense that the company will take actions if possible that have little cost to the company and lots of benefits to employees. And avoid things that are costly to employees while giving little benefit to the company.