Requesting Monday as a non working day and Friday working from home?

[lisloom]

Looking to go part time after baby is born however would love to have a Monday off, and work from home on a Friday, working Tues-Thurs in between. I work in a fairly big office and already work from home every other Friday so it's not as though there's no resilience (it's never been an issue). It would help hugely and means I would be able to visit my family more regularly who live the other side of the country, whilst also doing school run round the corner for DSD on the Friday (this is really important!).

If you were a manager, and your member of staff asked to work compressed/part time hours, Tues to Thurs full time and half a day on a Friday from home, would you think they were trying their luck?

I'm nervous to ask and feel like they're going to tell me to sod off and take time off on say a Tuesday/Wednesday, which would make our lives really difficult.

Trying to do what's best for family/finances etc. DP has already dropped as many hours as he can to do school runs for his DD (he just can't do it on a friday). This childcare malarkey is so tough!

Depends on your role. Tue/Thurs/Fri worked well for me so I was never out of the office for more than one day.

@ADastardlyThing yep, sorry I think I've stated a couple of times that I would be working a half day on a Friday? Should have mentioned it on the OP. I do this already every other week with no issues.

Childcare would absolutely be in place.

But if your position is full time does that mean they simply take 20% of your work away? Who does it instead?

The reason I ask is I’ve seen so many women try and cram full time jobs into 3.5-4 days and it’s very stressful all round.

Otherwise it puts extra strain on the manager to somehow sort the missing 20 % of work that can’t now be done by the part timer, if that makes sense?

It sounds like you have everything covered. I'd put it all in your proposal - good luck.

@glintandglide I'm not looking to work full time?

TBH am flabbergasted by the replies suggesting you're not going to have childcare in whilst whilst working!! But at least it demonstrates what opinions you may come up against.
I work full-time compressed hours with a Monday off. AND I DO IT ALL FROM HOME PEOPLE! And yes, children are at school/nursery!!!!
Totally normal in my line of work and IMO in most modern workplaces.

Be aware though that if you have Monday as a non-working day you will probably not get any entitlement to bank holidays that fall on Mondays (leads to a bit of resentment on my part, that I work a comparative extra week this year compared to my colleagues) but small price to pay really

Good luck!!

It's certainly worth asking. Though whether you get it is going to depend partly on the nature of the job (and, to an extent, the culture of the company: some employers are obsessed with seeing staff sitting at their desks even when the work could be done anywhere and/or is the type of work where people spend more time anticipating it than having to do it.)

@glintandglide my position is just a job title. It isn't full time or part time. It's just - is it not a legal right I request part time working?

@ButterflyWitch Monday is quite good here as I would get the hours back for bank holidays as time off!

Glint, sometimes rather than "taking it away" additional work can be "not taken on". I used to work for an organisation where you took whatever work was available if you had capacity and you didn't if you couldn't. It wasn't really a case of someone else in your team having to cover work. It was then an organisational staffing decision based on customer waiting times, etc.

I'm reducing my own hours from next week, similarly to OP actually. My work is my own, no one covers it, and in order to manage the reduced hours I just have to manage expectations and deadlines for my workstream accordingly and consider the rate at which I can take on new projects. As long as I do what I can, am available to clients when I say I am and am realistic about deadlines and about what I can achieve in the time - no one cares what my working pattern is, least of all my colleagues.

I think it's a great idea - it's pretty much exactly what I do!

I worked full time before my first child, and now I work four days a week (80% pay). Monday is my non-working day, and on Fridays I work from home.

I have a one-hour commute into London, so not having to do that on Friday is brilliant. I tend to start work earlier and try to re-join the family around 4-5pm if possible.

I thought I was being cheeky when I first asked about it and thought the working-from-home day would be denied, but my work was fine with it. Also a team of around 20 people.

Go for it!

@ButterflyWitch there's another thread running at the moment where the OP plans to work at home while looking after a one year old!

@lisloom, bear in mind that I don't get hours back for the bank holidays. It doesn't work that way.

@adaline - really?! OMG!! I can't even pee whilst looking after my 1yo let alone work?!?!?!

@RooKangaroo it does here thankfully!

That all sounds really reasonable.

It’s not a cheeky ask at it, it’s a very common flexible work request. Obviously they’re allowed to say ‘No’, but it’s fine to ask.

I put a cheeky request in for one day a week. It turned out they needed to cut the budget so it worked really well for all. You sometimes don’t know what is going on behind the scenes. I think my manager was really relieved at my request.

I didn't used to work Mondays but Bank Holidays were pro-rated. You may want to refer to working patterns of other PTimers to see if you're all out on the same days or not. You have the legal right to ask (but you're not legally entitled) to go PT and your employer must consider the request fairly.

Very much depends on the kind of work you do, and also if others are on non-standard working weeks, which days they have off

In my team the first couple of flexible working requests were either Monday, Friday or both. Now there are too many people not working those days, and the business only looks at flexible working on tuesday/wednesday/thursday

So, no harm to ask at all, but be aware of how the work is structured and how many others have those days off

If you don’t ask you don’t get!

I used to organise my own diary to about 80% and was field based, so if I wasn’t in meetings I worked from home (in my pj’s!). Obviously there were meetings that I had to attend, so had no say on these, but they tended to be mid week, as all directors and senior managers wanted to be home on a Friday and not travelling in a Friday rush hour.

I remember once mentioning in conversation it was my sons sports day. If we were working from home they had no problem us attending stuff like this as long as work was done. And as we probably all worked 60+ hours for a 37.5 hour salary it was never an issue. But I had a meeting to attend so I wasn’t going. My line manager who was a director said to me ‘what can they tell you at the meeting that they can’t put in an email?’ She told me to send my decline and go to sports day instead as I wouldn’t get that time again. The interesting thing was she was not a parent. She wasn’t doing it from a ‘I know how you feel’ perspective. She done it, because she knew what kept her team happy. She knew if we were happy, then we would produce 110%.

So ask for it. As long as you can get the work done in those hours, , you have childcare covered, then if I was manager I would grant it. I can’t see a problem.

We're very happy to rearrange things to accomodate this sort of request at my place of work. Certainly isn't a cheeky request, if you don't ask you don't get! It's always your manager's decision so I hope you're on good terms.

I wouldn't have an issue with someone only being in the office Tues to Thurs. So many people work from home on Fridays, you can't have meetings then, and Mondays is the next least busy day in offices (or at least the next least busy on trains I travel on).

As long as you are flexible and will swap days for important meetings that can't be moved I think it is fine and not chancing your luck. What annoys me is the people who refuse to do things because it's not on their working day. I realise that some nurseries are not very flexible and won't let you change your days, and not everyone's partner can be flexible either, but if you have three months' notice of something I would expect you to attend on a non-working day and have a day off in lieu if you could and not just say no because it wasn't your usual day in. For example, if you were a teacher and an INSET day was on a non-working day and was relevant to your role/subject I would expect you to make every effort to attend.

My reply wiped so here's the shorter version.

You have a legal right to request part time and flexible working (once a year I believe and I think they have 3 months to reply to you)
You don't have a right to have it how you want it.

So someone could request compressed hours for a day off (like one of my friends), but they can't say thry want a Friday off because it's best for them.

You've said your job doesn't say full or part time but jobs usually specify in the contract what the working hours are.

If we work on 9-5 so 7 hour working day plus 1 hour unpaid lunch. (Excuse the top of head maths if I've messed up)

Off Monday = 7 hours needing to go into tuesday-friday (so 1h45 needs to go on each day)
That makes Tuesday to Friday 8h45 plus lunch
But on Friday you have a morning only childcare arrangement so say 4 hours of work.
That leaves 4h45mins of work time to be added onto your hours Tuesday-Thursday (1h35 a day)
So Tuesday to Thursday your days would be 10h 15mins plus an hour lunch.

If that's what you were proposing you'd probably stand a reasomable chance of it being considered, but if not (regardless o your current work from home situation) there's every chance it would look like saving on childcare and it would impact on work and they'd probably say no, understandably.

If you get the bank holidays hours back it sounds perfect! Women at my company generally have either Friday or Monday off - normally always Friday.