Asking for part time when offered new job

[Olivetree23]

I’ve been offered a new job. It’s a new role and one a pool of new people in the newly created pool of roles. I want to ask to work part time - do you think I can? I’ve read a few threads on here from 2015 so 8 years ago and the advice was mixed. My husband thinks it’ll annoy them. Does anyone have advice please? It’s a full time (35) role. I could compress that into try o 4 days and need to given childcare availability

This is incorrect .

If a role was advertised as full time there is no way we'd be able to flip it to part time due to business need .

If part time was possible we'd have advertised it as part time

I have always asked on offer of the job and both times it has been accepted. I know it will depend on the job/ employer but I would always advocate asking on offer. You have so much more leverage than once you have started.

@namestevalian im sorry but it is you that is incorrect. I have twice applied for a job that was advertised full time, had an offer made and then asked for part time. After discussion/ negotiation it was accepted.

So it may not be possible in your line of work but it can and does happen.

I work in HR and in my career haven't seen it happen in any industry I covered sorry 🤷‍♀️

It's risky strategy

In our business it would depend on the role.

Some roles cannot be part time, we would need someone full time but have flexed for earlier starts/finishes to suit childcare.

Some roles can be somewhat flexible, so we could drop from 5 days to 4 or 4.5 (Here we sometimes have to slightly encourage the hiring team as they initially don’t think it can work)

In our business there aren’t many roles that could drop from 5 to 3 but yours might well be different.

I would ask for a conversation to discuss and remain open to different options to see what works for them and you. Ultimately though, you did apply for a full time role and there is no obligation for them to make it part time.

@namestevalian

I’ve seen it happen just 3 times in over 2000 hires. Once was early finish 1 day a week and catch up later, one was drop to 4.5 days and the final was drop to 4.

It’s rare but does happen.

@namestevalian I understand that’s your experience and by all means add your view point but it’s not right to say that it never happens because it does all the time. Like I said, I’ve experienced it twice.

If I was the OP I would ask as I dont think she’s got anything to lose. Maybe they can offer it, maybe they can’t but if she doesnt ask, she wont know. And if they take issue with her asking, well I wouldnt want to work for a company like that anyway, so I would walk away.

All depends on how much you need the job of course.

I just think we’re still in this culture of feeling like we have to be grateful to the employer/ not want to upset them at the expense of our own needs.

If the OP would benefit from part time and can make it work for her employer, why shouldnt she at least ask and see?

The fact that they have employed multiple people for the role sounds like there may be flexibility there

I just find it extremely frustrating as someone working in this space - for someone to ask this at the final stage - this should be disclosed at the screening call .

Waste of everyone's time . Ask as early as possible !

Many larger companies have specific part time roles & also return to work programmes that they can share details on when this is raised early

It would usually be something I would ask at the interview or put in my application, I’m not surprised when companies can’t get staff or people don’t end up staying long when some employers have such an inflexible attitude, I think it’s something that needs a discussion rather than people automatically being screened out

If the job was advertised full time then I don't think it's ok to immediately ask for part time.

OP hasn’t wasted anyone’s time. fine to raise any Ts&Cs matters post offer.

You can discuss this at the interview if you haven’t had it already. My employer has hired people on part time hours to fill a full time requirement on many occasions, it works well for us but may not for other employers depending on their set up and requirements.

If it’s not discussed and agreed in the interview then your employer is under no obligation to consider your request until you have 26 weeks service and put in a flexible working request. They’re also under no obligation to accept that request and there are a number of reasons which they can legally deny the request on.

Personally, I think it’s a risky strategy to ask after the offers accepted and before you’ve started as there was opportunity to discuss this at the interview.

The paperwork is very helpful in documenting the panel's wishes, IMO.

I'm surprised at people saying in rare. I've done it twice, applied for full-time and negotiated part-time and I know many others who have done so too. Doesn't feel that rare to me, and they can only say no.

The way I see it when I go for a job, I am interviewing them too.

@namestevalian people ask at offer stage rather than the initial stage as the employer has got chance to know the candidate by then and can see the skills and experience they can bring. They have hopefully built up a connection too and are therefore more likely to be open to a discussion as opposed to a ‘computer says no’ response at the initial stage.

While I can see it might be personally frustrating for you, you cant experience this often? Because if you did, surely you would be adapting your roles to the market and offering more flexible part time roles upfront to attract the best people to your organisation.

@CornishGem1975 completely agree

I've done this before successfully, got 30 hours instead of 35. I think often there is some flexibility if you're not looking for a drastic reduction in hours. I'm hiring at the mo and it is a full time job but I would be open to someone asking for 30 hours, or compressed hours, or even job share.

I have recruited 100’s of people as a manager and would not be in the least bit offended if someone asked at the offer stage if there was a possibility of pt hours or amended hours.
Also there’s a good chance I would recruit for a ft role as a preference but would consider a pt employee if part of a number of employee recruits or they only wanted slightly less hours.
Ive just accepted a ft job myself I want to be pt but as this point with this role I don’t believe it’s worth asking . Once I’m in and I know the deal and have proven myself I will probably make a flex work request!

You have a legal right to REQUEST these hours but they dont have to be accepted. However they will need to provide valid reasons why if they refuse them. There are only 4 legal reasons they can say no they cant just not agree to them. Also youre condensing your agreed hours youre not asking to go from full time to part time. Look at "requesting flexible working" on the government website

If you knew me you'd know I'm very involved with Flexa and another prominent fb work from home group sharing actual flexible , wfh / part time & job share roles that support many people into work that works for them .

In my career unfortunately the organizations I work for are as yet not supporters of this . Also the areas that we hire in, we have an oversupply of candidates so it's not like the business is encouraged to change due to lack of candidates - sadly .

At the moment I'm on a zero hours contract with an agency and have worked at the same place for over 2 years. I'm meant to work 3 days a week but I'm often cancelled. A year ago the company took on a few agency people part time- these people had already been part time (20 hours/wk) and they were asked to increase to 25 in order to be taken on. I realised that this would work for me so asked to be considered for a similar contract ( I do 24 hours atm) and had no response. I finally spoke to the manager and he said there're only taking on full time atm (40 hours). Then last week he asked 5 agency to go full time.
I'm quite upset about it as the ones who started part time last year often compress their hours into 4 days and I feel I'm a good employee. The job suits me and I enjoy it buy I'm not feeling appreciated though when I'm there I'm the one they ask to do important jobs.

I applied for a full time role and asked about part time. It was accepted. Slightly different as I reached out before I applied and asked if they would consider 4 days. They said yes, for the right candidate. I love working there now!

I can’t see how asking would hurt!

We've just had this and said no. It was only one position we were recruiting for and, before advertising, we'd discussed what we were looking for and what flexibility we could accept before deciding that, with such a variety of patterns already in that department, we needed the new person to be in consistently. This was specifically mentioned in the ad. Before the closing date, we had at least two calls asking if those hours were set and, when we said yes, they said they wouldn't apply. We then had someone ask at the end of their interview. They were a strong candidate but we had at least two other strong candidates so we confirmed they couldn't be changed and they withdrew. Therefore, it was particularly annoying when one of the seemingly strong candidates announced after having been offered the job what working patterns they would consider doing. This included a slightly later starting time twice a week when one of the things mentioned had been that they would be part of the team opening up the office. Just no!
It felt like a real waste of our time but was also frustrating as it hadn't been a fair process. The people who'd spoken to us before the closing date could have been excellent but we'd ruled them out. For that matter, there could have been a number of potential applicants who ruled themselves out as they didn't want a full time, office based role. If the person who raised it earlier in the interview process hadn't done so, it would have been a toss up between them and this person who got through to the next stage so this person had taken advantage of that.
We did this is all knowledge that they could put in a flexible working request once they start. However, we also had a clear business case for why we'd reject that.

It's worth asking, but it's bad form to ask after they've already offered you the job. You should really have told them you need this working pattern beforehand.

This isn’t clear cut everywhere though. I have mentioned earlier in the recruitment stage (both application and interview) that I was looking for part time hours, and have had the hiring managers get snippy about it because they didn’t want to be accused of factoring it into the decision process. Different approaches will work better for different sectors or industries. There isn’t a one size fits all approach.

Perhaps I should add that we our ads often include the words "our preference is for this to be a full time role but flexibility around hours can be considered" as well as stating whether it is wholly offices based (as most of our roles are) or if some wfh might be considered.
When I applied for my role, I wanted to be part time and that wording was in the ad. I spoke to them before applying to understand what it meant, had the first interview as usual and then, after the second interview, had a separate chat about various working patterns and my line manager to be was prepared with a whole set of numbers so we could both see the impact on the salary. It was a really productive conversation. As @CornishGem1975 says, I was interviewing them as well and it gave me a good insight into how the business actually worked, that for a few weeks a year it's a "all hands on deck" environment and their main concern was that I'd be able to fully pitch in then. We agreed an annualised salary on the understanding that I will always work more hours than usual for those few weeks