How to set boundaries with manager contacting me in personal time?

[Anonincase]

I work at my main job 26 hours/week (ranges between 21-31 depending on project cycle - shifts termly) and am having a hard time with boundaries.

My manager expects me to work 4 x 12 hour days - start at 8 am with start of day call and regular evening meetings 7-9 pm, always checking in every evening (obvs I work daytimes doing my actual work, hosting external meetings etc). I don't work one set day a week, I work somewhere that day, my manager always contacts me that day for a phone planning. Most weekends she will ring recently saying she was driving to visit inlaws so we can use that two hours to work - it was a Sunday morning.

All staff were given a mental health day last month by ED since covid we've been working extra hours for no extra pay. My manager told me we don't need it and scheduled all day planning meeting that day for our department.

While my manager is a very nice the way she works 24/7 and her expectation others should do the same is v hard. I work this job plus another 15 hours/week at another job. My reviews are v positive, in the last month my manager has received two emails about the difference I've made for two external projects I work on. I'm also a single parent with dc including dc with complex disabilities. That Sunday am call resulted in that dc having a meltdown, with more limited verbal skills change in routine hits v. hard.

My manager does not react well when given boundaries, seen it twice from other depts and was shocked. Yet, I need to set boundaries. In Sept my hours will go down to 21 hours and I want to set boundaries that is 3 days/week not 4 x 10/12 hour days, plus a few hours each weekend. This last year has been hard and I need evenings with my dc. I need more balance for me too.

How would you recommend doing this as a single parent that really needs this job? I feel like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Btw manager contacts me on personal cell, home phone and home email outside of work hours. It isn't a work phone I can just shut off. And yes, she is also a parent (though older dc than mine, sometimes I feel she's forgotten what it is like - her dc are at Uni).

Maybe turn it on it's head??

A conversation where you ask for an adjustment of your contract to reflect the hours you work?? She can't say it's not required as you are doing those hours anyway. If she refuses then only do your hours and say she needs to hire someone else.

I ignored the calls one evening and my manager acted like she thought I had died when I contacted her the next day when I started work. I actually apologised to her! Piss take.

Good luck with it OP

If she is contacting you at your other job then tell her you that she wouldn’t like it if you were taking calls from another job whilst working for her and it’s not fair on your other employer.

You need to be less available for all this contact

I had this. Manager and dept manager would call me on my days off to just ask questions that really weren’t urgent and could’ve waited til the next day. I’d always answer. Then one day dept manager was off on leave and I needed to know where she’d put X as I needed it urgently, so said to manager I’d call her. Manager said, no don’t call her on her day off.

So basically it’s ok to call me, my time isn’t as precious?

Week later I was on leave having coffee with a friend, phones goes, it’s manager. I ignore. Phones goes again it’s dept manager. I hang up. They haven’t called me again when Im out of office

I’m not sure if this is the best advice at all, but I had this once with an awful manager.
She even called me at 2am once after I was stupid enough to give her my mobile no, I tried ignoring, then bringing it up to HR, and then I flagged it up to the CEO. There were other issues alongside this too.
Nothing was done, so I decided to play her at her own game and started calling her constantly and emailing her at all hours, making things sound really urgent when she was in meetings so she’d have to take the call, calling her manager up if she didn’t answer etc. It wasn’t my finest moment, but she did start avoiding me like the plague 😂
Sorry you’re going through this though, it sounds like she’s taking the piss. Ignore anything outside of the hours that you work.

OP if it is a charity where people (including your manager) are given a lot of autonomy, I suspect you won't get anywhere going down official routes about asking for extra hours or time off or engaging a trade union rep. I've worked for charities and there was a clear expectation that I did extra (unpaid) to support the charity as there is usually an ethos that everyone is expected to muck in and be a team player. I was seen as the problem, not the culture.

I don't think they will be able to convert the role to full-time, as it is likely to be down as a particular salary in the funding bid. But it might be worth a try if that is what you would like?

I have been part-time for quite a few years now and my advice is:

• the stronger the boundary you put down around working hours, the more people respect it.
• never give out your mobile number or personal email, even in the early days when you are trying to be helpful.
• never accept a meeting that you can't do - try to steer the time towards one that works for you. Most of the time people don't really care, they just suggest the first time that comes into their head!

Hope that helps - she sounds appalling by the way.

Ime of working for two charities, they were worse than private or public sector. 😢

Get two mobiles - one for personal use and don't give out the number to anyone who has anything to do with work. The other just use for work, set OOO for emails to say when you'll be returning and ignore at other times unless pre-arranged and agreed by you.

Funnily enough the above situation with me happened at a charity too.

Are you getting paid for these extra hours or not. I work part-time and my big concern was the potential for job creep. It turns out that My company pays everyone less than full time As an hourly employee. So when I work extra, I make more. If you aren’t getting paid, you need to set your hours and stick to them, reserving exceptions for rare occurrences. If you are getting paid, you have to decide how much you want the extra money.

I think you need to deal with the root issue which is her expectations, changing phone no's etc means she is likely to leave voicemails expecting a quick turnaround of a callback or send texts if you turn the voicemails off.

I agree with this. The way to achieve it would seem to be to have a separate number for work, and have a voice message as a pp suggests, detailing your working hours. And stick to only listening to voicemails/dealing with requests in those hours.