Overlooked for promotion because I'm pregnant

[NotAWhaleOmeletteInSight]

Very long time poster with a new username as I couldn't get my password reset to work.

I'm on holiday at the moment but back at work in a week. I've been with my organisation for 10 years and am very experienced in my field. I have an excellent track record and performance management history etc. A couple of years ago my manager was talking about my career progression and where I could be in a year or 2, if I wanted.

Immediately after this conversation I became pregnant and now have a 1 year old. I'm back at work part time.

A role came up recently that would have been a step up for me and which I could have job shared part time. It's the sort of thing that comes up very very rarely. I expressed an interest and presented a case about how I could do it with a colleague (who also expressed an interest) as a job share. We're both part time. Management seemed very positive. A week later I found out I was pregnant again and let my boss know. I said I intended to come back again and that I was still interested in the role.

I then found out a few weeks ago that a new starter has been given the role. This was just casually announced in the morning meeting for all staff. He'll be full time. He's got 3 years experience and a similar track record to me, only less of it obviously.

Am I being unreasonable to feel overlooked because of being pregnant? I've always intended to keep working and kept in touch on my previous maternity leave. I've worked really hard for years and until my first pregnancy I felt that my career was taken seriously.

Now it's like I've hit a glass ceiling. I like the new starter and think he'll be good in the role, but I don't like how it was handled. Should I ask for an explanation when I get back or just let it go? Feel free to tell me to get a grip!

Agree with Rollergirl.

The thing is with this is that the very first part of the job the OP didn't want to do.

The OP suggested a job share meaning that the job was/is ft. It may just be that they don't want a job share management position they want a ft manager.

As a parent, I really dislike it when teachers job share. I've got one experience so far in primary and one in secondary. Not much, but neither have been positive experiences for the classes involved, so I completely agree with schools trying to avoid it. A child's education should not be compromised to enable people to work part time.

"came back ft as it would be ridiculous to try to manage people part time."

Bullshit. I've been managed by, and managed part-time. What determines how well you do as a manager is first and foremost, whether you work in an environment where you have the backing of the senior team when you make the difficult decisions that are part of any management role (best manager in the world can't succeed without that), and second, whether you are any good at managing. I would consider myself shit at managing if my teams fell apart when I went to the dentist or took a holiday. Being part-time is pretty much the same.

I consider it important to be there when my team is so I can be there if they need me, like the time I had to tell a woman her son in a diff country had been in a car crash, if I hadn't been there it would have been someone else she didn't work with so closely telling her there had been an accident.

I agree you can manage part time but it is never as good as managing full time, if you're the right person for the job it's better to be there fr than only half the time. Although a good pt person is better than bad ft person but it's the same person whether pt or ft.

Staff, imo, have a right to be managed properly, and to me that means full time so I'm there when and if they need me!

Haha to bring or being the same as going on holiday or the dentist. You seem to have a great grip on reality there!

This isn't one manager managing either full or part time.

It is about two people being able to to manage as a single entity and being able to do so in such away that provides fully for a team of people and not increasing the teams workload.

I have never seen a job share at management level be able to do that and it always increases the workload at least for the second in team as they have to work as an intermediary for the two managers.

I would also point out that if a manager can manage a team part time then they and the team are under utilised and the same goes for two people that have the time for a full and complete hand over.

I would consider myself shit at managing if my teams fell apart when I went to the dentist or took a holiday. Being part-time is pretty much the same.

You seriously can't compare the two

Both candidates (or three, in this case) were not interviewed for the job and one found to be the best though, were they? That would be appointing the best person. The process should be as transparent as possible.
Not sure why I have worked where management being part-time worked, and yet it is so hard for others. I suspect it comes down a lot to attitude.
The OP is a teacher - how many teachers are female proportionately? How many work part-time? Ban the practice and watch how hard it is to fill vacancies in the future.
Also lets not forget that employers often want p-t staff to fill a particular need, and not pay f-t rates.

I also suspect some of the managers mentioned on here are micromanagers

How many times have you seen complaints on here about shared classes? Information not being communicated correctly.

It's a fundamental issue, though isn't it?

If we want women to be "more like men" to fit into a working world set up by & for men, and male life cycles (which don't include pregnancy), then what several of you are saying is true.

But what about thinking about ways of rearranging the workplace (and domestic life) so that it accommodates or - gosh - even works by and for female life cycles? What would have to change for that to happen?

Employers should be accommodating of pregnancy (a purely female issue) I think businesses are accommodating of pregnancy in that pregnant women are a bit of a protected species in the workplace.

parents, men & women, should be realistic and re-arrange their lives around what works for them work wise once they have a child. When you purposely change your circumstances (as parents do when they have a child) you have to be prepared for that to have an affect on other areas rather than expecting other people ( or businesses) to accommodate your choices.

But then I am a bit of a capitalist at heart and think businesses should be run as businesses not social experiments.

Do you ever take leave, Roller? Does your entire team coordinate leave so that for five weeks of the year, none of them are in the office so you can take leave too?

What if you'd been at an offsite meeting, at the dentist, having a smear test, having knee surgery when your team member's son had their accident? By your logic, such a thing would be a dereliction of duty, because you weren't there for them on one occasion. So, you never leave the office while there is a single staff member present?

The reason I'm comparing them is that almost all management roles involve enabling your team to work without constant supervision. With the exception of some roles which require a person at a particular level to be onsite. Frankly, though it may feel really really good to be "needed" that much that your team would suffer if you're out for a day, it really isn't doing anyone a favour.

Frankly, a regular, planned absence where you have plenty of time to agree suitable escalation arrangements is the easiest scenario to deal with. An occasional dentist appointment or flu or holiday for a team that's micromanaged, and they go into a flat spin if anything out of the ordinary happens - I've seen it, and it ain't pretty.

Schools are not businesses, yet. Thank fuck.

Slightly

This isn't about holidays or dentists or, doctors, this is about two people sharing a job and sharing the responsibility not covering for an absence.

This is a regular weekly update, containing all of the details and pertinent information that is passed on in the entire school and a school department every week.

Schools exist for the benefit of students, not for the convenience of the teachers.

I do take holidays and my team manage fine, I don't think they fall apart without me but I do think there's a benefit in being in the office rather than not. If there was no difference whether I was in the office or not I wouldn't be doing very good and there wouldn't be a ft position for my role.

If there is a benefit to having someone in the office part time what if the downside to having them in the office full time? I do not micromanage at all but I do like to be there if they need me. Very big difference.

I don't think it's a dereliction of duty, you seem to have jumped to that conclusion yourself.

Listen carefully, in nearly all circumstances

If you do a good job, it's better to do it 5 days a week rather than 2.5

Don't forget business don't give people holidays cos it's good to make everyone cope with less staff, ideally it's better if the people who are employed are in, that why vast majority of management roles are ft.

Maybe the vast business has got that wrong though and you're right.

I appreciate schools aren't businesses but the thread had moved on from the op's specific situation to talk about the fundamental issue of women(mothers) in the workplace as mentioned by the poster above.

Any organisation (a business or school) should not have to accommodate and pander to parents at all costs. I would say it's

pupils(if applicable) needs
Business needs
Staff needs

Employees all have employment rights, even if they are vocationally minded saintly teachers.
Seriously, in a similar vein to "shorten the holidays and watch the massive recruitment/retention crisis", schools would struggle massively without part-time staff.

Exactly blueshoes!!

I genuinely believe some parents expect to much just because they are parents, if parents were more realistic in areas like these (ie not thinking they have the right to change a job spec to suit their needs) then we might be able to make traction in other areas that actually make sense, flexible working, encouraging men to share may leave, etc

It is massively insulting to be told you are not doing a good job if part-time, or are hurting your students. In fact I'm much more "charged up" for work when it isn't full-time. And I put in far more hours proportionately than I did f-t.

I don't understand the argument that making women work full-time or nothing, is ever going to lead to more men taking time off? The opposite surely. Men are now able to pick up on the rights women won - my dh has worked p-t in teaching, and I can think of a couple of others (men) in his workplace that do too. That's what starts to make the difference, IMO.

who said your not doing a good job? You may be doing a good job, but only part of the time - Imo, as I've repeated so often even I'm getting sick of it, doing a good job half the time is only half as good as doing a good job full time.

I promise to stop repeating myself now as I imagine everyone is getting bored on me saying the same thing in different ways.

Gosh what a lot of replies! Just been reading through them all. Sorry for the time lag, Internet is a bit patchy where we're staying.

Glad to see I've started a debate!

To answer some of the questions, there wasn't a formal interview process for the HoD role. It was offered to the new starter after he'd accepted the job. By expressing my interest I presented a case about how it could work as part of a full discussion in my performance management. Looking at it now, this is probably not how the role should have been decided, but there you go.

I'm really surprised by some of the opinions on here. When I was ft, before dc, I worked long hours. I was always going above and beyond. Now that I'm pt, I still do, but only on my working days. When I'm at work, I'm at work. I arrive early and leave late, as I always have. I also still take work home, again as I always have. I'm certain that none of my colleagues would question my commitment to the role because I'm pt.

On my days off, I often find myself working when my dc naps, and I often answer emails and take calls. I resent this slightly but I see it as fairly inevitable and I'll continue to do it.

When dc is awake, I try to focus on the reason I took a massive pay cut in the first place - I enjoy being a mum and I love the time spent playing, crayoning, etc (although not so much the soft play )

Thinking about it some more I think that the issue for me is communication. I shouldn't have had to find out like I did as there was no question that I was interested in the role. It's that lack of courtesy which makes me feel undervalued. I don't think it would have happened like that in the past, pre dcs.