Children/family members visiting workplace

brark

We have had situations where employees will bring their children to the workplace (public library) for 2 - 3 hours when their daycare arrangements fell apart and/or where family members come to visit the employee at work. Do any of you have policies regarding this? I'm guessing some may prohibit it. Are there any of you that permit it and/or have "family friendly" policies? Under what perimeters? Thanks in advance!!

System

I think our policy allows brief visits but leaves it to supervisors to deal with it.

If they're little rugrats, they'd need a lot of supervision and would disrupt the workplace if they're there for an extended time. I'd discourage it except in dire emergencies. Older kids could sit and read, since it's a library.

James Sokolowski
HRhero.com

Rockie

We're a medical practice and we don't allow employees to bring their children to work. It would be very disruptive in our work environment and given the fact that we have a three story building (stairs), it would be very dangerous to have them underfoot.

marc

We do not have an official policy, however we discourage it unless an emergency has arisen. Even then, we mostly counsel the EE to utilize time from one of their banks and take the children home.

It does get sticky when you have a key EE who is on a deadline. In those circumstances, we allow it and just put up with it.

While we pride ourselves on being EE and family friendly, their are just to many liability and distraction type issues to make it a policy.

Jez

We too have this issue and it is very controversial. We don't have a policy per say but a year or two back I put out some guidelines. Here the are:

At XY Company it is not uncommon for employees to bring children to work for a variety of reasons, i.e., for staff to meet a new member of the family or for annual events such as Career Day.

It is also recognized that unforeseeable circumstances sometimes arise, making it necessary to bring a child in for the entire work day. Although we do not have a policy regarding this, it is important to keep the following guidelines in mind to keep disruptions to a minimum. Please ensure that your staff is aware of these guidelines.

- Before bringing a child to work for the day, an employee should check with his/her supervisor.
- Children brought to work must be supervised closely and should not be allowed to roam freely.
- Since these situations invariably cause some work disruption, these instances should be kept to a minimum.

Thanks for your cooperation.

Don D

Your policy in effect gives employees permission to turn the workplace into a daycare center on occasion (?) and you even require them to pay close attention to them which means they don't have to do their work, but should spend the day with the child. You've painted yourself into a corner. If you challenge one of them, all they need say is, "I'm doing what the policy allows and what it says I must do".