to take my 'downtime' during work hours?

[wishfortime]

By 'downtime' I mean nice easy things, like online shopping, coffee breaks, and a bit of random internet surfing.

I work full time and have a 90 minute standing/rushed commute.

Mornings are a rush with early start and nursery drop off etc, My DH picks up DC from nursery between 6 and 6.30 pm, and i reach home about 7pm, spend an hour doing bath, bedtime routine with DC while my husband cooks, we eat at 8.30 then its cleaning kitchen, laundry and general housework, and getting sorted for next day while my DH catches up on work emails. Weekends are also quite jam packed as both our families live far away, so more often than not we either are travelling 300 miles (at least once/twice a month), or family/friends are staying with us.

So I don't get any 'free time' at home, hence i feel i need to take some 'down time' at work. My workload isn't always 100% capacity, but its the type of job where i need to be there and available or it impacts the team. Its paid well and often things kick off i do need to work late into the evening, and sometimes at weekends from home. (I don't get paid for this 'overtime', which is how i justify to myself that the downtime at quieter times during the day is ok).

Do members of your team have the same opportunity to "take downtime"? If you glanced over their shoulder and saw that they were MNing or doing their weekly online grocery shop, would that be OK? Genuinely OK?

I think I'm quite relaxed as a manager, and my team work hard whenever they need to and they get the job don't. They know when it is genuinely OK to surf the net and the times it is not. If they were doing something urgent/important and they happened to be surfing the next then I think they wouldn't mind me telling them its not the time to slack/close the page and do your job! Also if it gets to the end of the day and something hadn't been done, they know they would need to justify why and stay late if necessary. that's their choice

So...if your child's teacher, who starts work at 7.30 am and is in work planning and marking until 6pm every day and then taking work home to do unpaid, decided that they needed some downtime during the day...would that be OK?

If they stuck a video on for the kids and went on mumsnet?

If you accepted the promotion, you should be prepared to do the work, sorry, or move aside for someone else who can

There’s nothing to suggest the OP isn’t performing her role to a high standard. Some people work quicker than others. Some jobs have quiet periods.

crunch, quite clearly taking a short break from e.g. a spreadsheet is quite different from taking a short break when in a class full of kids. Don't be so facetious.

So...if your child's teacher, who starts work at 7.30 am and is in work planning and marking until 6pm every day and then taking work home to do unpaid, decided that they needed some downtime during the day...would that be OK?

Honestly, absolutely not! they're are some jobs where downtime just isn't an option at all - teaching is one of them.

My DH picks up DC from nursery between 6 and 6.30 pm, and i reach home about 7pm, spend an hour doing bath, bedtime routine with DC while my husband cooks, we eat at 8.30 then its cleaning kitchen, laundry and general housework, and getting sorted for next day while my DH catches up on work emails

That sounds pretty much like everyone's normal evening to me!

How often are you doing a 300 mile round trip? Our folks live hundreds of miles away and so we just don't see them that often.

then with friends, other family on the weekends in between, then its easy to get fully booked up. Only if you keep saying yes to them.

Change your evening routine if you need more regular 'downtime.' Taking a bit of time during working hours is okay, just not too often. It's your out of work time that needs sorting to be honest, if it's really that onerous.

I am just slightly incredulous that so many people think it's OK to take 2 HOURS downtime in the middle of the working day! You're at work to work not to fart about

Obviously all jobs are different. People teaching, or performing surgery, or operating heavy machinery for example can’t just decide to take down time. People who work, for example, in non customer facing, managerial roles maybe can. I could (pre children), DH can.

Honestly OP you aren't going to get sensible answers from people who have no experience of this type of job. I would guess that 90-100% of people in your type of position do some home admin work during work hours.

Her productivity is lower than it should be

Is it? Has she told us that? How do you know?

This wouldn't go down at all well in my job but I'm public sector and absolutely everything we do is up for scrutiny from the time we approach the building in my place at the moment. Suppose it depends on whether your job allows for it.

It depends on your management structure.
My neighbour works In IT sometimes that's from home all day and sometimes on an afternoon. Her journey from the office to home is logged for time (so no nipping into Tesco on the way) and she has to have her phone on her at all times at home whilst she's working (so no popping next door for a coffee, no hanging the washing out etc)

I've rarely seen such strict conditions imposed on staff, but I guess her firm have had too many people take the mickey too often and are now so draconian that no-one wants a WFH option as it's so strictly monitored.

Also in an office environment, how good does it look to someone from another dept or a visitor, when loads of the staff are on MN, youtube, Amazon ebay, etsy etc. during working hours.
Can you imagine the bosom hoiking that would go on if that happened in public services?

Obscured, how does having to have her phone on her at all times preclude her from popping next door for a coffee or hanging the washing out? If it's a mobile, doesn't she just take it with her and answer it wherever she happens to be?
(also, is she required to take it to the loo with her and answer it mid-shit if necessary? )

If you do unpaid overtime then I suppose it is reasonable up to a point to do what you're doing. But companies don't always see it like that. I don't think your hectic schedule means you can put your feet up at work though. It means you should reduce your hours if you can't manage your work.

In my old job, I probably took an hour most days for non-work stuff. I was pretty senior and responsible for my own time, plus I really put in the hours.

Despite that, any more than an hour and I would feel like I was taking the piss, to be honest.

This is how salaried jobs work - you're paid to get the job done, not to work every minute of 9-5 (or whatever hours are in your contract). Hourly-paid work is different, as well as jobs where getting the job done really does take every minute (teaching, surgery, etc).

I'm paid a large salary because I do something very specialised and I'm not easily replaceable. My work comes with deadlines that mean sometimes I work 12 hours a day for a full week. The next week I might not have a project, and admin/background tasks don't take 37 hours a week. I will be browsing websites and reading interesting articles and whatever it takes to fill my time.

It's how many jobs work.

I do. I have alerted my manager 5 times since September that I don't have enough work. It's the project phase we're in. Next year I'll be overworked.

How often are you doing a 300 mile round trip?

It’s 310 miles away so a 620 mile round trip for my parents, about every 6-8 weeks. Then in-laws are about 250 miles away so 500mile round trip again maybe every 6 weeks. So We probably travel once or twice a month or a bit more often and then both sets of parents visit us in between.

Another one who thinks that if you're paid to work, you should work.

Ask for TOIL if you think you deserve it, but surfing the web during working hours is a sure way to get yourself sacked.

Ah, I see. I thought it meant in a measurable way ie she isn't making targets/deadlines/agreed work goals.

If that isn't the case then what is the actual problem?

Just to add that part of my role it is understood that is i I’ll deal with all ‘out of hours’ requests. Which is anything after 5.30pm and at weekends. So it is usually odd email, query but sometimes I do need to sit down for a few hours late at night (once or twice a week). I never switch off from work though and I constantly monitor emails. During working hours the team can do a lot of it which is why I have more ‘free time’ if that makes sense. There are of course tasks that are my responsibility and no one else’s, which take up about 60% of my working day the rest is monitoring and dealing with issues, which is a 24 hour responsibility but doesn’t take much time if that makes sense?

There have been multiple studies into how much time the average office-worker spends actually working, and it's considerably less than 8 hours per day. (e.g. www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/in-an-8-hour-day-the-average-worker-is-productive-for-this-many-hours.html)

Some estimate it as low as 2-3 hours of real productivity a day. Even if we go suuuuper conservative and put it at 6 hours, that's still 2 hours a day everybody is wasting. The funniest thing is that everybody has to hide it and pretend they never do anything but work. Literally every colleague I've ever known when working in offices has spent significant time every day on bbc news, reading blogs, browsing amazon/ebay, etc. This is normal and there's nothing wrong with it, assuming you're fulfilling your job to the extent expected of you. But we have to pretend we don't do it. Absurd, really.

That's part of the reason I gave up working for a company and began working for myself, tbh. Now I can happily (openly) spend half an hour on mumsnet, because I know I need a break and I know it makes me more productive in the long run to half a good break every hour or two. And now I have no dumbass middle-manager breathing down my neck trying to force me to work to his ideal.

@wishfortime

I think I'm quite relaxed as a manager, and my team work hard whenever they need to and they get the job don't. They know when it is genuinely OK to surf the net and the times it is not. If they were doing something urgent/important and they happened to be surfing the next then I think they wouldn't mind me telling them its not the time to slack/close the page and do your job! Also if it gets to the end of the day and something hadn't been done, they know they would need to justify why and stay late if necessary. that's their choice

THIS.

If you treat a team as responsible adults with a little flexibility, my personal experience is you generally get more back.

In some cases people will think it's an opportunity to take the piss. They don't stay long, funnily.

However, allowing an extra bit of down time here and there, in return for them staying 3 hours late when they are not contracted in an emergency, NO, offering too..., is a big difference.

You reap what you sow.

And I see that play out differently with my partner who travels extensively yet who's company thinks he should be happy to travel for 8 hours on a Saturday of his own time. Does he get it back? No. So he wants more money of course.