To think my flexible working request will not unreasonable?

Still denied. Literally a year of evidence it could work and still denied

The question is how it worked though and whether that is sustainable. We have a similar situation with one person having enough leave to basically do a 4 day week for six months. A few others have accumulated a lot of leave and are taking it as large blocks (6 weeks to enable decent travel). It ‘works’ because everyone else shoulders the gap and works longer hours as the work still needs to be done. That actually goes to a business case of why it won’t work in our situation.

Can you not trial a Wednesday off? That way nothing is getting left for any significant period and you may not have to pass much over to others to complete.
Otherwise if the part time hours are important you could suggest doing 3 days and finding a job share for the other days.
They don’t have to accept your request but do have to show they’ve considered it. I’d try to understand the issues for the business and mitigate these concerns, or look for a part time job elsewhere.

Not sure what type of industry or role you're in, but what do you think the response would be if you say you'll have to hand in your resignation if you don't get flexible hours?

How quickly replaceable are you? The employer would be forced to choose between the hassle of re-hiring someone new or working around your needs. Ultimately that would be down to them and you could lose your job, but maybe if more people were assertive like this employers would get the message that employees are not slaves and flexibility can actually improve productivity/employee satisfaction.

I'm lucky to be in a role where I'm part of a union who has fought these battles for us, so within my field I actually do have a "right" to work part-time. This has led to greater retention of employees, particularly women and those with various disabilities.

Which is why op said 'for 80% pay" in the op? She doesn't want to work full time.

Cannot be a Friday or Monday for sure. Wednesday off worked well for me when dc were little.

I'd suggest a super human effort to get everything done on Thursdays and hand nothing over for the next month or so before you make the request, but if others have to pick up your work or stuff is delayed until the next week I do think it's reasonable to reject (unless perhaps very little new is started on Fridays and there is always someone in the team with slack, but I'm not sure that's the case).

From a managerial perspective, four days is an absolute pain the arse. You lose 20% head count pretty much permanently (you will find it’s ’restructured’ to an 0.8FTE on the books). That means two things, first, the rest of the team/department gets to absorb 0.2FTE worth of work, and secondly, as you will never get that back, if the person leaves you are stuck hiring another 0.8FTE as you gave up your headcount. It’s shit.

I find three day works much better as you can tend to get a 2 day a week person (generally a woman who has young kids wanting to keep their hand in to transition back more hours when kids go to school; or even someone transitioning out to retirement who will go 0.4FTE over 2-4 day and then you backfill them with a full time 1.0 FTE). It’s really not feasible to hire someone for one day a week so you don’t permanently lose your 0.2FTE, so while I’d be supportive of three days, I’d pull out all stops for a business case for four days due to everyone else having to absorb the 0.2.

But your lack of imagination about how different working patterns might impact on different companies wouldn't actually hold much sway in an employment tribunal. If the company can demonstrate that the OP's proposed working pattern would have a detrimental impact on their business, your inevitably uninformed opinion on whether or not they're managing the business effectively is pretty irrelevant.

I went back and did 4 days FOR A YEAR - using A/L. I achieved more on that year than every before, hugely increased income, built a new team etc.

Still denied. Literally a year of evidence it could work and still denied.

I left

I was under the impression that the business reason had to be really strong

Thing is, "really strong" is massively subjective, and what really matters to a business can be so easily brushed aside by those in pursuit of something they want, so the best you'll get in law is something like "legitimate business reasons" - which it certainly seems they have

Probably best to look elsewhere for someone who really needs only 4 days a week, but I'd leave any reference to child care well out of it since this simply isn't an employer's responsibility

Anyone has the legal right to ask for flexible working, if qualifying conditions are met. Being a parent doesn't give you that right, and nor does it allow you to assume that your request will be granted. You're not the only parent who works, and it's not all about you.

Your manager has told you it's not working and they will likely refuse due to business reasons. That's reasonable of them, as it has been tried but not possible as it puts more work onto your colleagues and doesn't allow work to be done to deadlines, it is important to keep to client deadlines.

Your best way of getting this approved it to suggest an alternative that will work better for the team and business, so as pp suggested a different day might work better.

But you are not working from home on Friday, you are with your baby., you would be doing a four day job. Nothing wrong with that but it is not full time?

I think the fact you’ve already tried it and they’re saying it’s not working actually gives them more evidence in their argument I’m afraid!

If you can switch days do that

I was involved with supporting workers in all things as a trade union rep so was sort of on their side automatically. Your request is unreasonable as it has already proven to be bad for your workplace. Ask if you can drop any other day. If the mini projects take 2 to 3 days then a mid week day could be argued to chop up the days so you never have a 3 day chunk. I would imagine for business reasons they would consider a Monday.

You can request but as people have pointed out it’s not guaranteed and your workplace would be perfectly ok to say no. People often don’t understand requests like this at all.

This is not indicative of her 0.8 request being unreasonable though, this is indicative of management being unwilling to work around it.

People view the way teams and businesses are structured as universal constants, when that simply isn't the case. A decent management would be able to work out how to work around an 8 hour reduction in the overall available resource. In most cases, it's not a matter of possibility, it's a matter of will. What they risk by refusing to work with OP is losing 40 manhours a week instead of just 8 when she leaves to go to a competitor who will actually do their job and work to make their resources work effectively.

To argue that this isn't possible, that there is simply no way for businesses to offer flexibility (which in OPs case may be taking some other day instead of Friday)? Well it's unimaginative bootlicking.

I genuinely cannot think of an industry where an 8 hour reduction in manhours is completely crippling to a business.

I was going to suggest changing the day you are off. I would rather have had a Friday off when I worked but everyone takes those off so Mondays are sometimes better

I think had OP stated that she’d been taking Friday off as annual leave for the last 3m and that it was all positive she would have been drowned in support. Ie had she said that there had been no impact on her colleagues, that she’d still been able to meet deadlines without delaying output, had developed excellent communication with clients to manage deadlines/expectation and was reassured that there was no impact on their businesses as well as the one she worked for, everyone here would have said - fab, good luck, am sure you’ll be successful.

That wasn’t what she said, though, was it?

It’s not lack of imagination or working-parent bashing when we are pointing out that she is dismissive of the impact of other working parent colleagues. It’s stating that she is being self-centric and could care less about the negative impacts that she herself outlines.

If they've had issues like you mentioned with you being off on Fridays and you go in saying you want to cut to 80% with every Friday off going forward they'll be more likely to say no I reckon, but if you're flexible about which day you could drop they'd maybe give more consideration.

I guess shorter hours every day would be an alternative, but understand that comes with a higher childcare bill!

A Wednesday is a great day off. You only need to prep for 2 day chunks and can be good for toddler to have a more chilled day midweek.
You’ve given good business reasons for refusal.
Manager needs to ensure staffing to get work done in timely fashion. Fridays are also popular for holiday requests. If say there’s 3 of you who does the work it’s a lot of pressure on one person when other is on annual leave and you are not working.

YANBU wanting flexible working, however if I was regularly picking up urgent requests for someone else in a Friday this would annoy me.

Could you look for a role where flexible working is possible or is this time sensitive issue common in your industry?

I simply boggle at the lack of imagination in this thread. It really is bootlicking. Throwing working mums under the bus in the name of corporate hegemony.

Have you read The Cost of Sexism by Linda Scott? Very interesting and touches on the inflexibility of the workplace when it comes to mums.

I think asking them about having a different day off is the best option. If you had Wednesdays off you could complete your work without passing it onto someone else.

But flexi working isn’t the same as reducing to 0.8hrs is it? But it comes under the remit of requesting flexi so will be treated the same.

There are a lot of 'may be's here – there may be a phone manning situation, there may be emails from angry clients. Are there? Only the OP and her boss can tell us, I agree.

or easily accessible with a quick, HR-lead survey of colleagues work output/efficiency/well-being) that would shore up their case
It helps the case, for sure, but we have been asked before, from internal and external HR professionals to demonstrate that we cannot recruit for a job share situation. And that involved putting out an advert and showing lack of applications or refusals of the position on the basis of pay.

When I have been in the position where it is escalated, HR teams have really thrown everything except the kitchen sink at the refusal.

Ps - I get very weary of all the flame throwing at mums returning to work and requesting reduced hours.