To think there should be more part time jobs

[Banana99]

I'm unemployed (by choice because I thought I would get something else).

I've had employment agency on the phone again offering me full time work. I've had several agencies tell me if I could work full time I would be employed tomorrow as they are desperate for people!

Except I can't work full time, my childcare options are rubbish (older primary child) especially in the holidays and DHs work is long hours and unpredictable.

Why don't they split more jobs in 2. Literally could tear my hair out with it.

I'm very lucky to work part time in a professional role. Personally I think my employer gets a great deal. 100% commitment but only 0.7 of the FTE cost. Similarly, myself and two colleagues doing similar cost our employer 2 FTE salaries but in return the company gets 3 committed brains, ideas, etc. Very difficult to move to a similarly well paid flexible role elsewhere so generally us part-time employees deliver low staff turnover (and lower recruitment costs, training costs, etc). Also, I can be flexible with days worked so virtually never lose a day to sickness or looking after a sick child or a hospital appointment, dentist appointment, needing to get to the bank etc. I do all of this on non work days and when I'm at work I am exclusively working. Full time colleagues definitely have more ineffective time and lose more time during the work week to deal with out of work life. I always think it's a shame more jobs aren't advertised as part time but then it's not in recruitment agencies own commission based interests to advertise PT as their fee would be proportioned accordingly. I LOVE part time. Feel very lucky and amazed when some people say they see lots of PT advertised! I can only assume it's very low paid work as I never see well paid jobs (eg at least £60k plus) advertised as PT sadly. Companies are definitely missing out.

Well I'm on nothing like 60k plus, though I'm not I'm in the SE either, and I do see a number of jobs advertised in my field PT. And my employer gets a brilliant deal from me too! Much less fucking about.

I think my employer would bite my hand off if I offered to go 4 days a week but it's hard to see how the workload would change so I think I'd just be under loads more pressure and 20% worse off. I'd love to job share but I'd need to find someone who only wanted a day or two a week as I can't afford to drop much more than that.

"Feel very lucky and amazed when some people say they see lots of PT advertised! I can only assume it's very low paid work as I never see well paid jobs"

Yes, I'm talking about low paid work. Those of us with low and modest income need to work full time to live! Very easy to say you work part time on 60k, half of that is still way about the average full time wage.

I was talking to a friend today, she works in a supermarket. They have nothing but part time roles but they are arranged now to suit students, even though they are generally a disaster.
Because she has been there a long time she does get better shifts (a mixture of school hours plus some weekend and evening work that start when her husband gets home).
She said she couldn't work for them now if she was starting new.

Banana, I heard that supermarkets do a lot of part time work or split shifts to avoid giving breaks.

I think employers should be more flexible about working hours.
DH recently reduced his working day from 8 hours to 6 hours so he has more time for this other commitments (a part-time self-employment and family). His workload was not reduced and that has not been an issue for him as he can get his full day’s work done in 6 hours. He only takes 1 short break and is more productive and focused for the 6 hours.

Part time does not always have to be a half a week. I’m sure working 9am to 3pm for example would suit lots of mothers and there would be no need to hire two people to share the job. I know this would not apply to every type of job but in my industry it could work. I work 8 hours a day and find the days can feel long and boring so I take regular breaks to give my eyes a rest from the PC and also to browse the web for a few minutes to recharge my mind. It’s hard to focus on one task / a string of similar tasks for hours and hours on end. I am expecting my first child this year and am hoping to negotiate something similar for my return to work and I believe that a shorter day will not affect my productivity. It takes me an hour to get to work and I start at 8am but the crèches only open at 8am so I don’t know how I will manage otherwise but I guess I can cross that bridge when I come to it.

I employ quite a lot of part time staff in my team, including some on quite good salaries. Not only admin roles but specialist roles and some managers. Hours range from 16 to 32 hours per week, worked in various different patterns. Some of these posts were recruited as part time posts, others used to be full time but then switched.

There are some advantages to having PT staff. Some are willing to increase their hours in peak periods, so that gives us extra flexibility. However, not all PT staff are willing or able to do this, so it isn't a benefit that can be relied on. Other advantages include a reduced impact of any annual leave (having a PT worker off is less disruptive than a FT member of staff) and perhaps a wider range of skills and experience within the team. And most importantly, of course, having a happy, motivated workforce who believe that they have a good work life balance.

However, there are disadvantages too. There are extra costs - not only the extra NI payments but also more training, more IT/DSE equipment, more management time etc. More time has to be invested in communication, too, to ensure that everyone knows what's going on. It becomes almost impossible to have meetings with everyone present, due to different working patterns. And inevitably, no matter how hard you try to manage it, FT staff do end up having to pick up some of the slack, which isn't really fair.

What about doing casual work?

We have a bank of casuals where I work. Some of them are getting full time hours in but only doing the shifts that suit them. Others have a cut off point that they have decided and won't take any more hours on if they don't want to.

I work in HR and tend to find that most employers will want any job above the most basic level (eg admin/sales assistant) want a full timer because the minute someone has a position of responsibility it becomes an absolute nightmare to make decisions when they're not there or pass decisions between two people if its a job share.

I find that a really old fashioned and disappointing employer attitude in this day and age of emails and mobile phones. Of course decisions can still be made on a timely basis. It does of course require give and take from both the employer and employee but surely if a decision is urgent you pick up the phone and talk? Anyone working part time in a responsible position surely understands this?

I would advise you just to apply for full time jobs and then negotiate if you are offered it/ when you have been there a while.

If you need to work then you might have to suck up being full time for a bit to get yourself back in the door. Once you are in an organisation (especially a large one) you normally find more opportunity (a lot of our recruitment at present is "internal only" )

You aren't being unreasonable to wish there were more PT jobs, but I don't think employers are being unreasonable to look for FT employees if that is what the role they are looking to fill requires.

As a PP said, job shares can be a more expensive way of filling the same role as it means to sets of NI contributions and pension contributions, so it's understandable that this is not always an option.

I am job hunting at the moment and the only jobs available are part time or a insulting 8 hours per week. As a single mother to a 12 yr old there is no way i could survive on 8 hours a week. And also a lot of the companies want you to be fully flexible when it comes to hours worked which means that you cant get a second job because you wouldnt be able to organise your shifts because they change from week to week.

I recently started a new job after years working for myself from home. The job wasn't advertised as either f/t or p/t, but I knew I couldn't do full time at 40hrs when I went for the interview, and was honest with them.

I asked for school hours (plus a couple of extra hours) five days a week, which works out at 32.5 hours and suits me and my employer perfectly. I might go f/t in the future when DCs are at high school.

"works out at 32.5 hours"

Not really part time is it? If all you want is a tiny reduction in hours that must be much easier to find.

job shares can be a more expensive way of filling the same role as it means to sets of NI contributions and pension contributions

Not true. NI kicks in at around £8,000 per person, so an employer hiring two people on 10k would pay NI on 4k, whereas they'd pay three times as much hiring one person at 20k. Pension is usually a percentage, so no change.

There are areas with additional costs (training, specialised equipment, additional payroll costs for example), but the benefits usually outweigh the costs (which are often low).

For many businesses, having a two half-time people that can both do more hours to cover the others holidays, or at the very least having someone in even part time is a huge benefit.

Additionally, people who want part time are often willing to do it for less pro rata than they'd accept for a full time role. But there's a lot of poor information and ignorance surrounding part time work. There are some roles that need to be done full time, but there are also people who don't like it because their way of thinking is outdated and inflexible.

The organisation I work for has 26 staff of whom 1 is full time and the rest of us are part time. Our lowest paid staff get the true (original) living wage and most get considerably above the industry average. I work mostly from home as do others occasionally, we try to be fully flexible about shift swaps etc. However my daughter has a p/t job allegedly for 12 hours a week - I don;t remember the last time she actually only worked 12 hours it is usually anything from 20 - 35 BUT they only tell her one week in advance when they want her and will still often phone her up on her days off to go in and cover or on a working day to change her hours. There are good and bad p/t jobs around the difficulty is getting one of the good ones!

PS I know I am lucky and will not be leaving until I retire.

I think she's confused why this woman likes going abroad during the school holidays when she doesn't have to.
It doesn't trump - it's just why her request gets refused.

So part-time with hours that suit should only be available for those with kids?

So what age should the children be when people are told they must change their pre agreed working pattern?

Is she on a zero hour? It's outrageous the way employers get away with expecting staff to be available whenever without having to bother paying a retainer.

Another point that makes PT very beneficial for many, though I appreciate not the Exchequer, is that for people on a lowish to average wage, the 4th and especially 5th days of the week are much less lucrative. If you're on 20k with a 1999-2011 student loan, your take home is £1378. On 16k, it's £1170. That doesn't include pensions, which are important for many people, but you only need to have high-ish costs of working for that final day to actually be costing you. £45 a day in combined childcare and commuting costs isn't that much, and if you go any higher there's less money in your pocket, at least in the short term. The tax system allows people to keep hold of quite a lot of their money before income tax kicks in and that can make a huge difference.

I work in the NHS and find that part time posts are becoming rarer (in my healthcare trust anyway).
I'm a single parent and also find I have to opt out of the 7 day working pattern due to lack of childcare options at the weekend. This is never easy and I always have to evidence the lack of options available to me
Both my line managers are men - one who's child free and the other is married with a child so they don't understand the difficulty.

The NHS has a workforce that's 77% female so where is the flexibility for working parents? Why are there not more job sharing posts?

Several of the jobs I have been offered through agencies have been NHS and been 8-6.
If they pay 2 agency workers with no pension contribution I don't see how it's worse to have 2 people (I know 2 people to train - however they are 'desperate' for people)

I changed my pt hours to 9.30-2.30 so I can do the school run! I'm a lone parent so its a huge deal to me!! No way will I ever ever leave my job. I think myself very very fortunate, and its not a minimum wage job.

PrancingQueen People without children, and people who have children but share the responsibility with another adult, have private lives too, and theirs are as important to them as yours is to you.

And many of the things they want to do are only possible at the weekend when their OHs or relations or friends are not working.

So if you are meeting resistance to "opting out of the 7 day working pattern" I am not surprised, and it's probably got nothing to do with your managers' gender or family status. If you don't work your share of the weekends then others must work more of them, and they probably don't like it. Your managers have to be fair to everyone.