Kids in the workplace – flexible and engaging or a bad idea?

I recently read an article about a ‘progressive’ employer who permitted employees to bring their children with them to work.  The article sited the benefits of this arrangement for employer and employee.  Some quick research (google) revealed that other companies such as Lululemon and RedBalloon also permit parents to bring children into work with them.

As a parent myself I can appreciate the benefits of having such a flexible, accommodating employment relationship, but I couldn’t help but think of the challenges of implementing such a policy (as well as the potential for energetic little people to cause chaos)!

My thoughts were (not surprisingly) from a workplace health and safety perspective.  Australian Legislation requires employers to ensure the safety not only of workers, but of other persons including visitors.   Employers who permit or encourage workers to bring their child to work are effectively extending their workplace health and safety obligations to these tiny visitors whether they understand or accept responsibility for this or not.

An office or childcare center would, on the face of it provide a lower risk environment and be more conducive to this type of arrangement than the more obviously unsuitable workplaces such as construction sites, manufacturing facilities, or workshops.  With this in mind there is also a danger in assuming that some of those supposedly lower risk workplaces would provide a safe environment for children.

In a tragic 2009 case a toddler was killed while playing under a massage table while her mother had a treatment.  The electric table was lowered, inadvertently crushing the child who had been playing underneath. While not an example of a child going to work with a parent, it is an example of the dangers to children in a workplace and highlights the relevant issues of supervision, unclear responsibility for the child’s safety and failure to identify a foreseeable safety risk to a child.

I am all for workplace flexibility, but employers permitting workers to bring children into the workplace, need to  give such arrangements the appropriate level of consideration , ensuring that all the implications are fully understood and that measures are implemented to ensure their safety.

 

Christina Willcox MHSc; PostGradDip OHS; BBus

Workplace Health & Safety Specialist