To think 4 days a week isn’t really part time?

[MrsCremuel]

I went back to work after mat leave last year. Asked for 3 days but they could only drop my hours to 4 days. I really don’t feel I have the balance right and I am struggling to do what feels like a full time job in less hours. Don’t get the time with my son I wanted and am feeling miserable.

4 days is the worst of both worlds.

4 days is part time and cannot be full time.

If you feel you are doing 5 days work in 4, it is for you to raise this through official work channels.

Complaining on MN won't really get you anywhere.

I work 4 days, and I don’t work on the 5th day. In my line of work, that’s very hard to do, you do have to be very disciplined and quite ruthless about saying no and switching off (literally - I used to shut my phone in a drawer on Thursday night). I am very good at my job, and very efficient when I am there, which means I am well thought of despite being ‘part time’. But I haven’t progressed, because certain client accounts just wouldn’t accept it, so I’m “stuck” with the “nice” but not challenging ones that do. Which is fine for now, with young kids I don’t particularly need challenging. But when the youngest is at school I’ll probably go back to 5 days, so I can progress, and because 20% more pay would be nice!

@littlepattilou Don’t wanna kill your buzz but I just dropped from 5 to 4 and I don’t work on a checkout/or any other job with an infinite workload.

Posted too soon: I explicitly wrote on my flexible work request under ‘how will this affect the company’ ‘I will be doing 20% less work’ and then how am I going to negate that ‘take a 20% pay reduction’.

Unless you’re in the kind of job where you’re already doing Saturday/Sunday to catch up it’s a bit silly to start doing that after you take less money. If you did it frequently before anyway, meh, no change.

Depends on the job.

I did a temporary job and they wanted me to go permanent. As it wasn't ridiculous workload I asked for four days and got it. Most jobs that are four days are full on full time crammed into four days for 80% pay.

@Daphnise oh what, mumsnet fix it for me?

What’s the point if no ‘complaining’ is allowed?!

Appreciate the responses. Think a lot of it is being a new mum in lockdown and finding my return in general hard, which I’ve been honest about at work. Will raise it and persist but finding the balance is hard. I tend to log on due to anxiety too, hey ho.

I reduced my working days from 5 to 4 a few years ago and my workload did not decrease at all, I felt no benefit just lots of extra stress.
I then reduced to 3 days and had to change job role as my previous job role needed someone on 4-5 days. I found it a lot less stressful on 3 days.

@MrsCremuel I don’t know what you do, so this may not be applicable, but I’ve noticed that with my job, there will always be work, no matter how many hours I work. It never finishes. Finishing my to do list on one day doesn’t mean it will be shorter the next, because something takes it place. And conversely, the list doesn’t keep growing forever. I think it’s to do with the expectations of others - if you deliver something to them, they ask you for more. If you don’t do it (or don’t do it quickly) they ask someone else, or do it themselves, or find they don’t need it after all. You do need to be disciplined, but it gets easier. I could quite easily log in and do work on my day off. But I’ve learnt not to let myself. It is easy to worry about what’s happening while I’m not there, but I find physically shutting things away helps. I could never work part time hours during the day- eg. finishing early - because it’s so much easier to not start than to stop.

[quote MrsCremuel]@Daphnise oh what, mumsnet fix it for me?

What’s the point if no ‘complaining’ is allowed?!

Appreciate the responses. Think a lot of it is being a new mum in lockdown and finding my return in general hard, which I’ve been honest about at work. Will raise it and persist but finding the balance is hard. I tend to log on due to anxiety too, hey ho.[/quote]
Don't log in due to anxiety. The lack of a proper break and the "always on" feeling well make the anxiety worse, not better, in the long run.

Depends on the job. The job I do now is definitely 0.8 and i'm not being 'covered for' or having things pile up on my day off.

In my previous job though, I worked 0.9, finishing 2 hours early twice per week. There was no reduction in workload and I often couldn't leave on time if something had cropped up, or I would have to clear the backlog the next day.

Before children I also had a role where I did one thing on a 0.8 basis and another slightly better paid role on a 0.2 basis. In reality, nothing was taken off my plate to allow for this so i was really just doing 1.2 for what worked out as about £10 per week more.

MrsCremuel Returning can be really challenging. I think it took me a good 6 months to feel back in the swing of things with my first. Many women can have a bit of a crisis of confidence and find dealing with the logistics of childcare picks ups a very different way of working to pre-children days. Lots has to shift especially if you are single or from a dual working household.

I am on 4 days - again - dropping days and increasing for 13 years now.

I had a bit of a problem that at one point two of my colleagues weren't that happy with me being part-time (more about the logistic than anything else) and would leave work for me to catch up on Monday (I work Mon-Thur).

In the end I sat down with them and said that if this continues I will ask for a full salary as it seems I am still doing 5 day work but only get paid for 4. I was fed up with having to play catch-up on Monday and then running behind all the time.

It worked for a while and when I moved down to 3 with a proper job-share they realised how much work was there actually left behind (the job share person wasn't the best, so they had to help out even with her in place) and we got more staff approved.

When I started on 3 days after maternity before going to 4 at one point I definately had less work left behind but I also got less interesting work. So from that point 4 days work for me.

You say you don't get time with your son, why not? Even with WFH I don't touch my laptop, don't reply to WhatsApp and make sure that my call re-routing is taken out. Unless there is an emergency (twice a year apprx) I don't do anything work related.

"I was warned that when I went to four days after having a baby I would end up doing five days' work in that time. I figured I would push back, it would be fine, I know my boundaries.

Then Covid and the threat of redundancy happened, and now I'm actually doing six days' worth of work in four days and grateful I still have a job. Hahaha fucksake."

This!

I find that my targets are less, and also when work is divided out I'm not always given 20% less. Also the day that I'm out is very quiet for meetings which although means I dont miss things, the downside is that I spend proportionally more time in meetings talking about work rather than actually doing my work.

There are benefits though. I think mainly in career progression and how you're viewed - I've had promotions working 4 days but I don't think anyone working 3 or fewer days in my work has. I'm never forgotten about like some people doing fewer hours. I'm kept in the loop. Most people can wait one extra day for something once a week. I think for me 3 days would have been much more relaxing at home when the kids were little (one day to catch up on jobs and one day to actually get out and have fun etc and they would have been able to try more classes and activities) but long term I think career benefits make up for this

Threads like this remind me of one of the reasons I left teaching. I did full time teaching and ran myself ragged, staying till 6pm, running home to have dinner, working till 10pm and then all day Sunday. I then took another job, mornings only so less pay... still stayed to 6pm each night but it meant I got my evenings and weekends! Only had to work an extra 30 hours above my contracted hours to get it

I now do 4 days and definitely work 5.
BUT I like the fact that I can book something in for a weekday eg. a walk with a friend at 2pm today, or have a lie in one morning, and that by officially working 4 days, but actually working 5, I mostly get almost two days off a week which feels like luxury.

How do the conversations actually go though?

‘I’m not in tomorrow, it’ll be done when I’m back in’ can’t be argued with. Unless I’m being naive, I do work in a male dominated industry/company and family always comes first for everyone from top to bottom.

@FTEngineerM

How do the conversations actually go though?

‘I’m not in tomorrow, it’ll be done when I’m back in’ can’t be argued with. Unless I’m being naive, I do work in a male dominated industry/company and family always comes first for everyone from top to bottom.

For me, it wasn't direct. It was just things i'd come back to on my desk. Mine was quite a reactive job, so if something happened in my area of responsibility, someone would acknowledge reciept of the issue, but the message to contacts would be that MrsTophamHat will deal with it when she is back in.

So when I would return, I would have that day's work to do, plus any actions from the issues when I was out. Whereas had I been in, it would have been dealt with there and then.

I think the tide is turning. I was in a meeting about 2 years ago, pre-covid. Every one of the 6 or more people there but me was male. Someone suggested a meeting at 8am one day. I braced myself, knowing that would be hard for me with school run, but not wanting to be the one to speak up. And at least two of the men there refused, saying they needed to drop off their kids at that time. They didn’t look like they’d had to summon the courage to say so, either. I think if it was a man who’d decided to work 4 days, they wouldn’t have a problem not doing work on the 5th. They’d just say no, sorry, they don’t work that day. It’ll be done when they are in work. As long as people - women - continue to work 5 days in 4, companies will let them. I mean, I would. Pay someone less for the same work, what’s not to like?

The ones saying '4 days is fab' have either not gone from 5 to 4, OR they work in a job, like on a checkout or in a shop or cafe, or restaurant or something, where they don't have an allocated workload, like you do in some sectors...

Nope. Senior specialist, I don't line manage but I do get paid very well for my work. I prioritise, I say no to low value stuff, I've differentiated myself in my team and with my skillbase and so I can say that I'm going to focus on stuff only I can do. I don't work or check email on my nonworking day. Thanks for the vote of confidence though.

TuckMyWin I also think the more senior you are the more you can just say no to things but I do think men get away with it more. My husband was fawned over by recruitment people when he said he needed to do drop offs. All the agencies were like ‘we love senior men to set an example to staff’ blah blah blah. Bet they never said anything like that to the women.

I work 3 days and I’m still cramming a full time job into those days. It’s really stressful while I’m there. I also do odds and ends on my non working days (just emails and stuff) but generally, having 4 days off does make up for 3 really busy, tough days!

Working 4 days is absolutely and definitely part-time. As it is less than full time.
If your employer is expecting you to cram 5 days of work into 4 then that's the problem. It means your request should potentially not have been granted in the first place if your role cannot be divided up so that you only have 4 days worth of work.
Some jobs absolutely can.

I think it depends on the job when I was working FT I worked a lot more than my contracted hours. Now I am on a 0.7 contract (was previously on 4 day week) and I work FT hours. I resent working excess hours more now though!

*The ones saying '4 days is fab' have either not gone from 5 to 4, OR they work in a job, like on a checkout or in a shop or cafe, or restaurant or something, where they don't have an allocated workload, like you do in some sectors...

I went from 5 days to 4 days 3 years ago. Public sector role - workload and targets adjusted to 80%. Lots of people in same role (and in other roles) working various contractual hours. Pays well. Not a checkout or cafe in sight

I find this too, but I knew I would before I dropped my hours - I actually do 4.5 days over 4, which I pushed for rather than my boss's preference for me to reduce to 0.8 because I knew I'd keep my full time workload either way so being paid 90% feels less galling than being paid 80%. What I didn't think about before was the impact of going with my boss's suggestion that my day off be a Friday, as we don't have many meetings then - I didn't think enough about the fact that not missing many meetings means they take up proportionally more of my time and I lose the long stretches of uninterrupted time that I used to get on a Friday. For me it's completely worth it to have the day at home with DS, though - I worked full-time from when he was 6 months to when he was 18 months and life is so, so much nicer with that extra day with him.