How to make part time hours work?

[howoldhowold]

I had my second child in 2019 and returned to work - three days a week - at the end of last year.

I just don't know how to make it work. I'm in a traditional office type role, middle management level and have people pleasing tendencies at the best of times. If I see something which needs doing, I feel like I have to fix it. If I get asked to take on something additional, I really struggle to say no even if I know I don't have time.

I've been working evenings and weekends and to be honest my hours are probably close to full time but I'm only getting paid for three days.

How do I fix this? I don't work in a particularly quantifiable job and I don't know how I set boundaries to make sure my workload is realistic. My manager is very hands off which also doesn't help.

I had the same issues after my first was born and in the end I gave up and went back to full time. I was determined to make it work this time but it's already going the same way. Maybe I'm just not suited to part time work?

Anyone been in this situation and how did you do it?

I think it's hard if your job isn't quantifiable. You would have to be really strict with yourself. I went to 3 days after my first but I had a job with a caseload so had a reduced number of cases compared to my full time colleagues. I also had to say no to other commitments such as additional training and attending meetings on behalf of the whole team. It would eat into my other work and not make it viable. I found it hard to do.

I did the same as you OP and went full time after failing miserably at keeping the workload down. Again, a role where it was difficult to draw a line due to work not being covered by anyone else in my absence so some weeks the role created work for a full time week that was difficult to delicate or refuse to do- think public service and potential harm to community of I just decided not to do something that cropped up that week.

You will no doubt have posters tell you about workload management, diary management, good planning skills, working smarter not harder or improving your assertiveness skills.... but for me, I soon realised the role wasn't best suited to part time working unless it had the option of 2 part time workers managing the workload together, which wasn't an option in my working world.

What I found is that each working week I felt like I was taking annual leave... having to spend significant time planning for the days I wasn't in, in case a variety of issues occurred, then on my return spent a lot of time trying to catch up and resolve the issues that inevitably happened off shift that were now trickier to manage due to the delay in me addressing it. So, all in all, I decided to make full time work for the family and I have to say this did decrease my stress levels significantly.

I think you need to ask your manager for help defining some clear deliverables within your role. While it’s hard to quantify there must be some terms of success, and you need to agree what you will and won’t do with your manager. It’s not OK for you to be working regularly additional hours that you’re not getting paid for, and your manager’s duty of care towards you includes helping you to work out expectations as you adjust to part time working. Happy to chat further about this if you need it.

@sanmiguel your experience sounds quite similar to mine to be honest. I think there's a tendency in the public sector to accept reduced hours working patterns because they feel it's their duty to appear flexible, without really thinking about whether it will work in practice. I am wondering about whether going up to four days a week might be a halfway house.

@mirandawestsnewbff I think I probably do need to do this but I'm pessimistic about it - my manager is quite new to the organisation and I don't think she has a realistic understanding of how long some tasks actually take. But I know I need to give it a go.

[quote howoldhowold]@sanmiguel your experience sounds quite similar to mine to be honest. I think there's a tendency in the public sector to accept reduced hours working patterns because they feel it's their duty to appear flexible, without really thinking about whether it will work in practice. I am wondering about whether going up to four days a week might be a halfway house.

@mirandawestsnewbff I think I probably do need to do this but I'm pessimistic about it - my manager is quite new to the organisation and I don't think she has a realistic understanding of how long some tasks actually take. But I know I need to give it a go.[/quote]
Then log how long your tasks take and go with evidence so that your manager understands that things need to change. Can you tell us more about your role for context?

@mrsl2016 it must be easier if you have a quantifiable workload which can be adjusted for part time hours but I don't doubt it still has its difficulties. Training is really problematic, I feel like I should join but unless it's absolutely essential to do the job I'm just not sure it's a great use of my time. I'm terrible at saying no to them though!!

@mirandawestsnewbff I don't want to give too much detail but it is a mix of stakeholder engagement, internal communications and report writing. I have two direct reports, one is quite good, the other is an under performer and my manager basically wants me to manage him out of the organisation.

[quote howoldhowold]@mirandawestsnewbff I don't want to give too much detail but it is a mix of stakeholder engagement, internal communications and report writing. I have two direct reports, one is quite good, the other is an under performer and my manager basically wants me to manage him out of the organisation.[/quote]
Just thinking - you could couch this with your manager in terms of performance and development. Your manager will need to have clear adjusted expectations of what constitutes good performance in your role given your move to part time hours

I also had the same issue when I went down to 3days. I spoke to management about it multiple times and it never improved. They'd rejig the priorities or extend deadlines to fix temporary issues but ultimately I'd still have the same workload and have to work extra hours to get it done.

In the end I decided to go up to 4 days a week. I still ended up working the equivalent to 5 days of hours (even though I was paid for 4days). But an extra 8 hours spread over 4 days is way better than an extra 16 hours spread over 3 days.

Also can you delegate more?

I had this and found that going 4 days was a good compromise, its easier to just not be available for one day so easier to say no and I have a much better balance now than when I worked 3 days

Interesting. I am starting to wonder if 4 days might be a better solution. I know that I probably will still need to work over my contracted hours but I think I will feel less exploited if I'm at least getting paid for 0.8 FTE.

Did you previously do the same role full-time? I think that's really hard because you need to reset expectations as well as set/maintain boundaries.

When you went down to 3 days a week, was there any discussion about how this would work? What would be dropped or covered by someone else? That initial conversation might be a good framework to bring things up with your manager.

Also if you have a role description or job profile, you could use Toggl (or a similar tool) to measure how much you spend on each aspect of that in a week. (e.g. 20 hours project management, 5 hours managing direct reports, etc.) to give you some data to hit people with.

Do you think management really thought about how your reduced days would work and how much you could do realistically with less time? I'd expect it to be a case of delegating some of your work and assigning a contact for when you're not in.

I'm guessing it's one of those public sector situations where it should really be a job share.

Personally I think 4 days a week is a lot more manageable than 3.

What are the days you are working out of interest? I had a colleague work mon/wed/fri and that just didn't work. She was always a day behind.

I think 4 days, with either a wed or Friday works best. Monday's off seem nice but depending on the work there is often things coming in from over the weekend. It's also important to have the daysa in a block.

Like you've said you might end up working more anyways, but at-least you're being paid for it.

No, it's not the role I did before mat leave. That role came to a natural end as it was a project role and the project was completed while I was off. This is a new role, the team wanted more resource as their workload has significantly increased recently.

I don't think management give to much thought to what is realistic in anyone's hours if I'm honest - full time or part time! I like to think I'm quite considerate of this as a manager myself but who knows, maybe my team would say the same. The workload is driven more by demand than by what is a sensible work plan.

I work Monday, Tuesday and Thursday right now. If I were to add an extra day I think it would be Friday so that my 1 year old could have a break from nursery in the middle of the week (she loves it but gets tired on nursery days).

Going to talk to manager today about possibility of increasing to 4 days...