I couldn’t agree more with your point about Managers (and leadership as well).  I’ve seen the wheat separated from the chaff very quickly (with some allowances for parents/carers who have suddenly found themselves with a juggling act they never anticipated) .  It’s been fascinating to observe, and I’m sure there will be lots more insight to come out of this experience for all of us.

We’ve allowed our parents and carers to request temporary reduced hours if they need to, or take unpaid parental leave (which helps them and reduces our salary bill simultaneously).  We’ve told everyone else that for the next few months, it’s all hands on deck and flexibility is essential from everyone, particularly from those who have less work to do right now and need to be redeployed.  To give you a simple example of that working in practice, we’ve got a business origination assistant preparing some ‘health and safety whilst working from home training’, with input from the right people of course, but he is doing the bulk of the work.  It’s a small business though, so easier to put this in place as the relationships between people are already there.

Yes this is going to be a tough one to deal with longer-term.  Helen in our team has school-aged kids and so she’s been able to work pretty much as normal (if there is a normal now) while her kids have been doing school work and then dips in and out to spend time with them when they need it (we were on a call yesterday when she was baking banana bread with them!).  Sun in our team is in Madrid and has a four-year-old and a baby so that’s much harder for her, but she’s been sharing childminding with her Husband and doing some work when the kids go to bed (no pressure from us but she says it’s keeping her sain!)  Ultimately it’s going to be a very individual thing that managers will need to discuss with each parent to come to the right arrangement for their circumstances and ideally, so they keep their job and aren’t worse off financially.  I think those of us without small children can appreciate how hard it is on them and are happy to pick up extra work to get through this and save our teammates!