To ask if you are part time…

[sikeeee]

Are you ever allowed (occasionally) to swap your non working days? I’m putting together my request and in my head it’s reasonable particularly as they haven’t covered my mat leave, so I can’t see why not.

Yes, we can swap or just take holiday/unpaid leave last minute if we can get someone to cover. I normally work school hours but I can easily work totally different ones if I wanted to and there were people to cover my shift. I work in hospitality though so it's the kind of job where people just work what is needed apart from a few of us who tend to work set hours/days.

It's only minimum wage but for flexibility you can't beat it.

Yes but my job is more do your hours / work when you want kind of thing. To be honest my contract just says 30 hours it doesn’t specify what days (I do 4 days). Probably depends on your job / role

I have swapped my days around before when my child was ill off nursery and family could only cover on my NWD that week.

I'm hoping when she starts school I'll be able to do something similar for inset days

Yes. I’m retired now but I could swap my non working days if I needed to. Also, if the department was really busy (NHS) I was sometime asked if I could change my days to accommodate holidays etc.

If I need to swap it would be usual to ask one of my colleagues who does my job on my non-working days if they were willing to swap. If one agrees then I speak to my manager and check he's okay with the swap we have arranged.

It SO depends on the role.

In some jobs there need to be X number of people in place, in others it doesn't matter when you get your work done as long as it gets done.

Some jobs you can, IF you can find someone to swap with you.
Others you can just say "next week I'm working Wednesday instead of Tuesday".
Others, you can't at all.

Depends on the company, some do and some don’t. I would say flexibility goes both ways though, if your employer allows you to swap when you need, then they may need you to swap to cover busy times/absences

Yes. I have complete control of my schedule. No set hours or days. I just need to make it to my meetings, have a generally predictable schedule, and let relevant people know about changes.

I don’t have the kind of job where I am covering a desk, phone, or even communal task. Only I do my work. If I am there it gets done. If I am not, it waits.

I am also now retired but could do this fairly easily. On the whole, the earlier I shifted, the better as I would mark it out in my diary and make sure meetings were arranged within the hours.
It worked really well for me, especially for school holidays where sometimes for example I would work an extra day the week before and the week after a half term week and take them off during the half term week so my holiday allowance went much further.

It does depend entirely on the nature of your work and team however.

Yes, but I do the kind of job where it doesn't matter if I do the work on Thursday or Friday so long as it gets done, and while I sort of job share there's no need for one of us to always be in. I didn't really do it much until my youngest was in school because swapping nursery days (or finding someone else to have them) was a whole lot harder.

Yes, I'm told they are quite flexible. Although my contract does specify that they can decide which hours I work. My agreed days are M, T, Th but next week I have to go in for a meeting on W. I'll find out tomorrow, as I need to request to leave early in a couple of weeks to get my DS to an appointment...

They've even said I can do home office during my probation if I need to, although my contract specifies I can't.

Yes I can, but there isn't anyone covering me on my non working days anyway as my work can kind of be done anytime, so it doesn't really impact anyone else if I change my days.

Not part time but I do compressed hours and swap my non working day all the time. Sometimes to suit work if theres a meeting I need to attend and sometimes to suit me. V flexible at my place tho, noone really cares when the work gets done as long as it gets done.

Yes, but they promised me a job share partner and didn't deliver that, so I'm basically doing a full-time job in part time hours. So I feel I can ask for those sort of things

I’m a teacher and as long as my job share agrees we can swap and just let the head know. We also have been known to cover each other when sick etc and then claim for the extra days.

It would be difficult in my job and isn’t something that is asked for. We have a high proportion of part time staff.