However, if the company really want to disallow people missing time here and there to deal with family, I really hope they'd never ever ever consider asking them to work before 9, after 5, or on the weekends no matter how high priority the business tasks are. I hope they're the kind of employer that turns off email at 5.
For me, the time I take to deal with my personal responsibilities at work is more than balanced by the time I take to help my employers out outside the hours of 9 to 5.
I also recommend barring the use of the word "resource" when you specifically mean "person". Capex, opex, machines, buildings, presses, are all resources. Allowing your leaders to talk about people as being "resources" biases them to think in a certain way (or at least risks that).
It is unfortunate that in the phrase "human resources", "human" is an adjective... ;)
I'm recommending a terminology change to always call people "people" as it biases your leaders to think of them as special and different from licenses, machines, money, and black boxes. (It's not my idea originally, but I've seen it play out at my company and believe it to be helpful.)
If I occasionally work some nights or over a weekend? I might take a day or two off to avoid burnout (while making sure there is appropriate coverage in place). Likewise, if I need to have a contractor come over or something, I'll just work from home for that period of time. If I need to take care of personal things during the week where I can't work during that time, I just take care of it after hours or on the weekend as needed.
That said, I've worked at places with strict 9-5:30 (but really it is 6:30+ because of the workload) and they seem to want to have their cake and eat it too in terms of getting you in at a strict start time, get lots of extra hours + weekend time when needed, and then hit you with limited vacation time and pushback when you want to take a comp day. Sorry--doesn't work that way. Maybe when I was young and stupid, but at this point in my career I've lost all tolerance for that. Fortunately it seems many companies are starting to wise up and be fair about it.
But just plain forbidding dealing with sick children is a horrific policy. Unless you want all your family employees to leave or hate you.
Maybe your boss was just uncomfortable and feeling bad/empathetic with your brother's condition and didn't know how to handle you, so handled you awkwardly and stiffly, which you internalize as "a hard time".
If someone gave you an actual hard time over something like that, I don't want to get all internet badass here, but "you have my address; please send my last check there" might be the most appropriate response...
(I'm not in any way discounting the certainty that there are asshole employers out there, and the possibility that you worked for one.)
(Hope your brother is now OK.)
He survived the crash but is quadriplegic now. He was very lucky though, his two best friends died.
What is important for morale is that your single workers not feel like they are the ones covering for Mr and Mrs Familyman without some quid pro quo.
Raising immigration quotas does the same thing and costs less.
But you have to be careful of judging "reasonable" through the eyes of single twenty-something (or any single opinionated person for that matter). In the end you may restrict yourself to young unencumbered people who can afford to live their life according to a universal office schedule. But this can be harmful when you lose out on different experience and abilities. It's not necessarily true that the person working 12 hours every day is outperforming the 8 hour a day clock puncher. If you optimize for butt-in-seat time rather than overall productivity don't be surprised when you have substandard results.
But to your last point, things you have to do to take care of your kids are emphatically not the same as "I have a thing I want to do". These things are all on a continuum, but kids are far more demanding than hobbies. I'm guessing you don't have kids to make such an equation.
Nope, wrong, full stop. Your kids are important to you. They take time to deal with. My side interests are important to me. They take time to deal with. From the perspective of the business, there is no meaningful difference.
I don't have kids. I don't need to have kids to understand that your parental activities are not more demanding than, say, building a startup or developing a video game. But thanks for trotting out that tired chestnut. I'm more annoyed with your sneering attitude towards the childless than anything. You should stop.
Excuses are obviously on a continuum of validity that has nothing to do with kids vs not kids. For instance, if you have to go to the doctor that is a more valid excuse than you want to go to an amusement park and ride a roller coaster. To suggest all things are equal in terms of valid excuses is ridiculous on its face. As a manager you have to recognize that people are humans and that stuff is complicated. With your attitude you will not be able to retain any employees but the most desperate to retain a job.
That's funny, because your life choices always determine how hard you have to work for the same pay in every other context, so why not this one? For instance, try making the same income after committing some crimes.
If you're doing repetitive assembly-line type work, maybe you worry about an excessive smoke break pattern. If you're doing creative and novel work (as most programming is), don't sweat the smoke breaks. Sweat the overall output and contribution maybe, but I don't find time-at-keyboard to be nearly linear with output.
(Context: I'm a non-smoking father of two, aged 4 and 6.)
I once worked at a place where smokers took various breaks but it was not acceptable to just idle around. IMO nowadays I just see it as weak management, not being able to determine and/or say to a person that they're taking way too many breaks.
If you happen to smoke (or are gregarious, or can pretend to be) you'll also meet everyone (for values implying a random distribution of all people working at your company from AP to exec) outside. You might be surprised what you can learn.