Going down to 4 days - which day off works best?

[Nesski]

I'm about to start mat leave and want to go down to 4 days a week when I go back, however, I'm not sure which day would work best. There will be a trial period to see if it would work for my company, but I'd like some insights. Friday for example is a bad day because it's delivery day (I work for a consulting firm), Wednesday's could work well because I'd start the week off with the team and be able to leave them to get on with it on Wednesday and then pick it up again until the end of the week. Monday because bank holiday usually falls on this day (these days a pro-rated).

[mrsbyers]

If office based Weds , at home a Friday

[SirB0bby]

Re the bank holidays, my company used to allow 25 days holiday (full time entitlement) plus bank holidays. If you worked part time, your holiday was proRata plus you were given a "bank holiday allowance" calculated according to the number of days you worked.

So in a normal year, there are 8 bank holidays. If you worked 4 days a week, your BH allowance was 4/5 x 8, so you had a bank holiday allowance of 6 days. Any bank holiday that fell on your working day was taken as a day off and deducted from your holiday entitlement.

Therefore, those who normally work on a Monday always had to take 4 more days holiday than those who didn't. Often they had to eat into their normal allowance to cover all of the bank holidays they had off whereas those who didn't work Mondays often ended up with an additional couple of days depending when Christmas and New Year fell as they didn't have to use their allowance for the 4 bank holiday Mondays.

Hope this makes sense!

[SirB0bby]

In fact it was nearer 6.5 days BH allowance.

[Trustisamust]

I'm a teacher and so Mondays don't work for me due the the bank holiday issue. You can't just take another random day off in the school week instead.

[Scrumbleton]

Monday when I did 4 days - worked well -deadlines don’t tend to fall on Mondays and Fridays are a quieter day in the office as lots of people take Fridays off or WFH making it a great day to catch up.

[TotorosFurryBehind]

I love having Wednesdays off. I think childcare is a factor, nursery is tiring, so DD also gets a break mid week.

[Laserbird16]

Wednesday, you gain momentum of two days in a row to work on things.

Things are quiet on Wednesdays. You can take a super long weekend by taking a Tuesday off if there is a bank holiday. Fridays tend to have a nice atmosphere in the office