is it unreasonable for me to not plan my staff’s schedules around their dogs?

[ResidentialBusiness]

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I supervise a small team of seasonal staff in a resort community. Most of my team lives a short drive or 10-minute walk down the road from our main office and compound. About two-thirds of the work we do is based out of various buildings in the resort town, all within about a five-block radius (short walking/cycling distance or a short drive, though nearby parking is at a premium on busy summer days), which are usually scheduled in half day chunks (morning shift in one location, then lunch, then swap to a different location a short distance away). We also have some duties that take staff 30-45 minutes’ drive away. (Think: collecting fees and talking to visitors in smaller outlying campgrounds.)

I don’t watch the clock when it comes to staff taking time moving between workstations in the town, because part of our role is to give out information so it’s common for staff to be stopped by visitors asking for directions, and some staff prefer walking versus cycling or driving, and we have a rough sense of how much time it takes to travel to do the duties outside of town and that driving time is accounted for in the staff schedule. We provide work vehicles and bicycles for getting around. Generally, staff have been very reasonable and don’t dilly-dally between workstations, especially for visitor-facing roles as they are scheduled to be in front of the public to provide a service at specific hours of the day. The schedule has worked well for the last five years or so — we’ve come up with a good balance of how much time it takes to get between workstations and making sure everyone gets their breaks while also having consistent opening hours for our public services.

We have unionized roles, so our collective agreement dictates that staff have two paid 15-minute breaks per day, plus a one half-hour unpaid lunch break. These are generally taken as three separate breaks in our work unit (morning coffee break, lunch, mid-afternoon break). In the public-facing duties where they’re staffing a building (like a visitor information center or campground kiosk), staff can step away for their short breaks with a sign on the desk if we can’t relieve them, but we always relieve them for their half hour lunch so there isn’t a long break in service. The expectation is that your half hour break is half an hour away from your workstation, not half an hour away plus “commute” time somewhere (which would make it a 45-50 minute lunch break, and against the collective agreement, plus a scheduling challenge for relieving other workstations for their own breaks).

Most staff have their lunches with them and eat at the staff picnic areas tucked in shady areas around town or in our small office kitchen if the weather is poor, but some staff who live in town prefer to go home for lunch. I’m fine with whatever they choose to do — that time’s their own — provided they’re back in time to resume work as scheduled.

My question is around dogs, and to what extent I as a supervisor should be scheduling around what my staff tell me are their needs. Some staff who live in town have dogs at home, and prefer to let them out at lunch to pee. This isn’t a problem 80% of the time, as they can get there and back and still have time for lunch within their half hour, when they are scheduled to work in town all day. The challenge has become that now that about half of my team have dogs, several staff have started to push back on me scheduling them for duties that take place outside of town, or on public-facing duties too close to lunchtime.

I haven’t had to worry about scheduling around the question of dogs before, because I generally consider staff taking care of dogs like taking care of dependent children, or other home duties like an appointment with a plumber that has to happen during the work day: not really something that is my primary role to solve. They have their collective agreement-mandated breaks, and we have different kinds of PTO for family-related care, personal leave, things like that, if they need to take time away from work.

There is some flexibility in the schedule and I say yes when I can, but I don’t have infinite flexibility and have to consider impacts on the work of other members of the team or impacts on the services we provide for the public. We have legitimate work reasons to have them spend the morning, afternoon, or whole day out in the field away from town, or public-facing duties at specific times right before and right after their lunch break. My staff do have a reasonable amount of warning. I usually set the schedule at least a month in advance, unless someone calls in sick and even then it’s usually modified duties based on what the staff members that are available are able to do.

Once, I scheduled a team training session on a topic that several people had been asking for more training on, and planned to bring in an external expert to deliver the training. The best place to do it was outside the public eye about 30 minutes’ drive from town, at a quiet scenic picnic spot. I gave them three weeks of warning that we’d be spending the day out there with the trainer I’d brought in, but three of my staff requested that they only take half the training because they needed to drive back to town to let their dogs out at lunch. When I pushed back a bit, asking if they could make alternate arrangements, such as a family member letting out their dog for this day so they could take the whole training, one of them even said I’m party to animal abuse (!!) because it’s unconscionable that the dog stays inside all day in their house without AC. These dog pee breaks keep coming up and I keep getting asked to change work schedules to accommodate them. I try to be flexible when I can be but I cannot always find alternatives that work for the dog owners without it being at the expense of work duties (for instance, having to close a building to the public) or giving a disproportionate number of certain kinds of shifts to the non-dog owners on the team. I also can’t go against the collective agreement when it comes to breaks by extending them.

I’ve never owned a dog myself, but I do love them, and I’ve lived in a house with a roommate who had dogs so I’m at least a little bit familiar with their needs. I’ve never encountered this issue before, and neither have any of the other supervisors of other teams I’ve asked who work on site (many of whom also have employees with dogs). What do other working people do when it comes to dog care during the day, if they are gone from home for eight hours plus commute time a day? How much should I reasonably be accounting for dog pee breaks in my staff schedule, particularly when accommodating their requests would impact our public offerings?

Yeah, this is not reasonable of your employees. They took the job understanding where the work was located and what the expectations were. Figuring out how to balance an eight-hour workday and half-hour lunch break with the rest of their lives is something most working people figure out on their own.

Generally people with dogs leave them at home during the work day, have someone stop in mid-day to care for them if the dog can’t be alone that whole time and they can’t easily get home on a break themselves (such as hiring a dog-walker), use doggy daycare if more care is needed, or find other solutions. They might occasionally have a dog-related emergency that they need to ask for additional flexibility from their job to accommodate — but that’s a rare thing that’s defined by its being out of the ordinary, not the routine, day-to-day care plan.

You absolutely should be flexible with people when you can without putting an unfair burden on the rest of the staff … but it sounds like you already try to do that.

The one thing in your letter where I’d maybe be more sympathetic to your staff’s stance is with the all-day training outside of town. If they took the job assuming they’d always be close enough to run home at some point during the day, I can see why they asked about ways to modify the plan. Even there, though, it’s generally understood that this sort of thing might come up at work from time to time — and accusing you of being party to animal abuse is way over the top, and says that they see figuring out their dog care as much more your problem than it should be!

It sounds like you need to sit down with the people who have been pushing on this and approach it as, “I want to be really clear about what the scheduling requirements of the job are, so you can make plans that work for you. This job provides everyone with two 15-minute breaks and a half-hour lunch break every day. Sometimes those breaks may come when you’re scheduled for duties outside of town. I understand that you prefer not to be scheduled for duties outside of town close to lunchtime, and I try to be flexible when it’s possible, but sometimes the job — and fairness to other staff — mean you’ll need to spend the morning, afternoon, or whole day away from town, or doing public-facing duties right before or after your break. I will always give you advance notice of your schedule so you can plan around it, but these are the requirements of the job because of the services we offer.”

Hell, you could add, “I understand some of us have commitments to animals, and it’s because I understand that commitment that I want to be sure we’re on the same page about the job’s requirements and what is and isn’t possible in our scheduling, so that you can make realistic plans for pet care.”

You might also try to head some of this off at the pass by being clear about the scheduling requirements when hiring people. Before anyone accepts the job, you could say, “We hire a lot of people who live nearby and are able to run home at breaks for pet care and so forth. I’ve learned to warn people that while that’s possible on many days, it’s not possible on all days because sometimes you’ll be scheduled further away from town.”

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