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!

Have you asked your job share partner whether they communicated better with her?

They didn't - she wasn't in on the day it was announced so it was me who let her know.

Notawhale I think communication was shit here, and surely there should have been a formal interview process?

That's what I would complain about.

Why do you think the lack of courtesy is because you've got school though? It sounds like they are just s bit lazy, eg no formal recruitment process.

Because you've got dc not school

Because before I was first pregnant my career was really on the up. My boss talked to me frequently about progression, long term goals etc etc. I was often asked to attend key smt meetings to make contributions.

Since coming back from mat leave, it's very different and I've felt very out of the loop and overlooked. I've been trying really hard to overcome this and assume the position I had before, but it's undeniably different. The old me would have been informed!

Rain

For me its not about being pt, When you share classes (It happens with ft and pt), communication is the key.

With a class and a defined curriculum you can say at the beginning of Sept "I'll teach A, B, C. You teach X, Y, Z".
We all know the complaints from parents that can happen when classes are shared.

For a management position the information that is shared has to be exact and comprehensive every single week (this can take a huge amount of time to write up and read) otherwise it can cause mayhem.

IMO, some positions shouldn't be shared.

Roller but if I am doing a good job and the rest of the week is being filled in by another person also doing a good job, no I'm not seeing why that is automatically better than just having me in day after day.
And again, being part-time in schools does not necessarily mean having a js partner. The school may want to cut hours anyways, someone else may increase theirs, you may take on a NQT - all of these can happen as well as an actual partner.
Boney I have been in middle management and pt and don't recognise the problems you describe.

Rain

Was that just you doing the job or did you job share?

With a job share

• you have to have 'overlap time' to allow you to brief each other on what's happened/where you are up to. Paying more than you would for 1 ft staff member
• Meetings have to be repeated wasting other staffs time or scheduled at time you are both available
• different approaches to the same role can cause issues, e.g how differently would you deal with bad behaviour
• lack of consistency (even if something as mundane as your teaching style)
• if someone leaves harder to fill the role with specific hours being needed
• it's harder for hr / management to manage 2 pt employees rather than 1 full time, double the appraisals, payroll queries, etc
• if someone wants to speak to you, not your job sharing partner, about something you have done they are left waiting until you are back in work. Of course this is the case of you are on holiday, at the dentist but those are rare occurrences not regular situations.

What rollergirl said. I have had fantastic managers that have turned into one half of a job share and it becomes a nightmare.

So much time is wasted unpicking and redoing work to manager B's way after manager A asked you to do it only to have manager A complain about manager B and ask you to put it right.

Big decisions end up waiting until Wednesday (when they can discuss it together and agree on a decision) - you end up tearing your hair out. Inconsistencies are bound to happen and everyone ends up having to alter their working to fit this.

Roller of that list, only the second last one (two appraisals etc) is recognisable to me at all. And overlap time was certainly not built in, different days were worked. (Sometimes there is overlap if one member is full-time and another p-t, as there is much call in schools for 1.something in a particular subject.)
I am reachable all the time thanks to modern technology! A curse and blessing.
Boney I have actually done both, one saved my employer a fair bit of money so they were happy too.

Again, lots of the concerns (redoing work for a different manager etc) wouldn't happen in teaching, managers are not involved in our daily tasks in quite the same way.

Other issues with job shares:

• if there is a need for training, both persons need to be trained and scheduled for training at different times.
• Information needs to be briefed twice.
• How seamless is it for people who interact with the job sharers? Are there jobs that reside solely in one job sharer or is there a complete handover each week?

My job share and I have an overlapping day each week. We do other, none class based roles on that day, so don't cost money that wouldn't have been spent anyway, and we always get to do a full handover. We communicate regularly on our days off too and our styles and approaches are similar.

My job share and I have an overlapping day each week. We do other, none class based roles on that day

Surely that does cost though, paying two of you having a non contact day.

I am very much in favour of flexible working arrangements, as I strongly believe that we should be supportive of women remaining in the workplace. For this reason, I have bent over backwards to accommodate staff within my team when they have asked to reduce or compress their hours, and I hope that I will continue to do so.

But let's be honest about this, and stop pretending that there is no real impact on the workplace - in my experience, there is a significant impact, and this is especially pronounced when the part time workers are in management positions. Having lots of part time staff makes communication so much more complicated, and training becomes a logistical nightmare. There is a cost when things have to be delivered twice. Then there are issues around continuity and decision-making when people aren't around. Job shares look like a possible solution, but in my experience, they rarely work well and tbh I'd rather split the workloads into two part-time jobs than have two people trying to share between them. At least I don't then have to spend time refereeing between them!

Essentially, I know, when I authorise someone in a management role to reduce to part time hours (or even just to compress their hours into fewer days) that I will end up picking up quite a lot of the slack when they're not around. Some stuff can't wait, and there is nowhere else for it to go - it isn't fair to ask more junior staff to suck up the extra. From my point of view, I'm willing to do this as I have creative, talented people in my team and I don't believe that they should be forced out of the workplace. But from an operational point of view, I'd prefer a team of full time workers any day!

And that's the uncomfortable truth. My views as a feminist are at odds with my experience in the workplace as a manager. I firmly believe that we have to find ways of working around the issues that part-time working throws up, but pretending that there is no impact on the workplace doesn't make the issues go away.

I think the OP needs to talk to her manager, as it seems that they were willing to consider a job share before she announced that she was pregnant. If their decision has changed because of her pregnancy, then obviously, that is discrimination and should be challenged as such. There might be valid reasons for their decision, of course, that have nothing to do with the OP's pregnancy. At the very least, it appears that the communication has been very poor.

I think it is surprising that if a Head of Department works part-time, although their teaching salary is reduced to reflect that, their Head of Department allowance - which could be up to almost £12,000 for the core departments- is paid in full. They work three days a week but are paid full-time for the HOD post.

That means we have to give them the full time allowance to do the post. So if that is 5 additional non-teaching periods, one of their 3 days becomes non-teaching, then they get their PPA time as well so end up teaching 1 and a half days a week on a 3 day contract with a full allowance as HOD.

The school suffers financially for that and the dept is without a HOD 2 days a week but the person has what suits them. There are times employment law does not put women in a good light with employers.

We are asked all kinds of frankly cheeky questions.

'My day off is a Friday but two of the INSET days are on a Friday so I am missing CPD. Can I come in and do the CPD and be paid?'
No because it is costing us two days extra salary plus oncosts. Off they go to the union who says we have to do it as otherwise they are disadvantaged.We say they can do the CPD at 3.30pm on one of the days they work but they wish to go home at 3.30pm and not stay at work. So it costs the school money to suit them.

'Meetings night is always a Monday and that is my day off so I miss meetings. Can you do them on a different night each half-term so I would only miss half a term of meetings?'
No because of all the other events that are scheduled weekly - they would all have to change ever half-term and that affects everyone else to suit you. Member if staff goes to union who come and ask us to explore it with staff as a possibility. Staff think it is a ridiculous idea. Member of staff in huff and union rep tells us she is now keeping notes of things she thinks are unreasonable behaviours by the school.

Sigh! It does feel like we are expected to bend over backwards and anything we don't agree to, immediately becomes contentious and there are accusations of discrimination. The words 'discrimination' 'rights' and 'union' are heard more in relation to women and part-time work or maternity issues than anything else in our school. Yet the unions tell us we are better than most other schools on this issue. The regional rep for the biggest union told us she spends her days dealing with these kind of issues and the messes young teachers get themselves into with social media and inappropriate use of it.

We have teachers who ask not to do duties while they are pregnancy incase they 'get kicked in the stomach'. No member of staff has ever had that happen to them in our school. But as it is a worry for them, we are expected to allow them to not do duties at Break and before and after school. That means other members of staff have to do additional duties. It isn't fair.

We had one who was suffering hot flushes and asked us to provide 3 electric fans in her lab. We refused and HR told us we had to do it. Being in a school they have to be pretty robust things. Cost £150. That money comes from resources for children.

Of course many women make no fuss, just get on and expect no special treatment but we are seeing a growing culture of 'being pregnant means I am entitled to all knds of adjustments'. It does women no favours with employers.

And I say that as someone on maternity leave for a year with an 8 month old DS. I did my break duties, didn't ask for any treatment other than the usual, never missed a day and will go back full-time next January even though I would like to back part-time but I know the issues it would cause for the rest of the SLT.

I can see how job shares might be very difficult to accommodate for schools because of the nature of the work. I think it's totally reasonable that in such cases turning down a request for PT or job sharinf would be justifiable. It's a great pity the process in this case wasn't particularly transparent so that the justification could have been made and conmunicatex to the OP who now sadly feels undervalued. I work in the civil service and an increasing number of people, both men and women and at a range of levels, job share. There are definitely roles where job shares are easier to accommodate and in my experience job sharers often produce a better result as they can bounce ideas off each other and bring a wider skillset to the organisation. That's not to say that there aren't challenges in making them work of course but some of them work pretty well IME.

Rain

I (and others) on here have had different experiences.
I have worked as a second in department to a job share and the slack that I picked up was huge.

Parents that wanted one focal point in the department.
Staff issues that had to be carried by someone that was there all week.
Acting as the handover for both of the people in the job share as there was no overlap.
Taking over the running of insets because the job share manager that was supposed to do the job wasn't in on that day and it was "unfair" to put it on someone that wasn't in the department when it was discussed/organised.

these are just a few of the issues that I have had to deal with.

Lets not forget that a good hand over whether it be job share or shift work is not a trivial matter, from experience an end of day hand over would be at least 30 minutes to an hour, an end of shift rotation (complete staff change) can be in excess of 2 hours.

Another thing to think of is that your manager maybe happy but it doesn't mean that your team is happy. (this is not in anyway a judgement of your abilities)

Lulu, do you feel you never missed a day of work due to your strong work ethic? Do you think perhaps there is an element of luck and there-but-for-the-grace-of-God to whether you are the one suffering from day long morning sickness, threatened miscarriage, high blood pressure, crippling SPD etc. It does not benefit women to judge each other's pregnancies. You do not come across as very sympathetic to your employees or even very respectful. How dare women have pregnancies, want to improve their work/life balance, expect risk assessments when needed? £150 for fans? So did the staff member take them with her, or are they now a school resource for anyone who might be in need of them?
Let's hope disabled people do not get talked about in this way by their managers, when they have to put in place adjustments to enable them to work. Though given how hard it is for disabled people to find employment, I suspect they are viewed as even more of a nuisance than child-bearing women.

We talk at apples and pairs here - every workplace (even different schools/different departments in schools) runs differently and its daft to say a blanket "job shares don't work" as we really just mean they don't work in x environment. My handovers consisted of a weekly email each way - no need for any more.

Rain

It is equally as daft to say "All job shares work".

I did post "IMO, some positions shouldn't be shared."

And I base it on my knowledge and experiences in the work place.

Sorry Boney I mean that more generally, as several posts mention job shares being a bad idea. No one would be daft enough to claim that all shares were successful, any more than that all employees are successful!

I don't think job shares should be in schools really at least primary (not sure which age you work with) we have just gone though a year of three teachers; think Mr Y and Miss X one three days, one two then it changed to Miss X and Mrs Z. Going to be entering a new ear of Miss Y mon-thurs and Miss Z fri.

It's not worked very well so far as the children are picking one teacher as the one that is who they like and the one working less days as some temp who they don't trust or go to for issues.

HoD should be a full time members role that's a lot of extra work to then have two people need to be consulting on it to make the choice of what happens. I don't know in any of my teacher friends who think it would be a good idea to be part time and HoD.

Reading all this, I am inclined to think that job shares are even less likely to work in schools than in offices.