To feel part time workers get a raw deal when it comes to progression

[shouldbesleepingnotscrolling]

I went part time after I had my first baby, my employer that I have been with for nearly 10 years wouldn't let me reduce my hours in the current role where I had a small team I managed, so I had to take the only position available in a different department, not managerial but same pay, pro rata'd.

I have since not had any opportunities to use previous transferable skills, promotions or go back to managing, job sharing will not be considered with other part time members. Even when I have been putting in extra hours and taking on additional work and responsibilities.

So I thought Id look outside the company, there are barely any part time roles available that aren't entry level, most are MW. Ive contacted local recruitment agencies and searched online.

My options seem to be stay in a job with no progression or recognition or take something on less pay at entry level with the hope there may be a chance to progress eventually.

My AIBU is to think there doesn't seem to be any decent opportunities for someone willing to work hard with good experience or am I just doing something wrong?

I totally understand this dilemma as we have similar issue at my company but I can't believe there isn't someone else who can step into the breach for the days this woman isn't working?

As a PP has mentioned, its a job share situation surely?

This is a management issue, as opposed to a PT working issue. We had a very senior woman who worked 3 days a week and a less senior but equally competent one who worked the remaining two. With seamless handover it shouldn't be this much of a problem.

Someone pulled this stunt on me last year. I’d advertised a full time role on my team. I used recruiters to get what I thought would be suitable candidates, did the CV sift, set aside time for in depth Teams interviews, etc. This was for a fairly senior finance role.

One candidate, after I’d spent an hour interviewing her, dropped in at the end that she had a small child and didn’t want to work full time. Ideally she wanted three days, oh, and she wanted the hours she worked on those three days to be flexible as well, so that she could compress them into two and a half days if she felt like it.

Not a chance. I was really annoyed that she and the recruiter had wasted my time. I wouldn’t see that candidate again for any type of role. So I don’t recommend this strategy for the OP.

I can see why this would be difficult, for the ft role I interviewed for I made it clear in my cover letter and we were all aware from the start that I was looking for a pt role so was glad they still made the time to interview me.

Oh sorry, I agree it’s a management issue! It’s not on anyone to find their own cover etc. If someone goes on annual leave then someone else is drafted in to take over that role - I’m doing it for someone at the moment. That has a proper handover etc. so everyone is clued in on what’s going on. My company don’t run part time working as job shares. Particularly for project management roles where not all hours are billable through the week, I think it’s seen as something that doesn’t matter if people are part time, whereas actually just because they’re not working billable hours in a block doesn’t mean they’re no needed to swoop into projects at a moments notice to troubleshoot etc.

I’m not sure job shares are always completely smooth in the sense that some clients really want consistency in their team and having different people at different meetings can creat friction and the need for constant debriefs on the state of the union, but I think job shares mostly can be great and I wish we had them more rather than assumed work can be done in shorter days.

Anyway, I was just offering a perspective from someone currently suffering from part time working not being managed properly - I guess some companies don’t see it as worth their time.

Hi - I have worked PT and FT since having kids & managed people doing both. You are looking at this the wrong way round, it’s all about what you want not what your employer needs. They are paying so they decide.

Most jobs operate approx 9-5 Mon-Fri and it’s a pain for employers not to have employees there the whole time. Some limited flex can often be accommodated for someone good eg 80% or finish early some days and log back on. But it does generally make it harder others which the employer must also consider so there has to be some payback eg retaining someone particularly good or gaining flex in return for when something kicks off at the weekend (hard to offer with young kids) etc. I personally don’t think it’s a massive conspiracy against women it’s just the reality of the demands of most jobs. Where jobs are genuinely more divisible there are more success stories for PT (men & women) eg virtually all GPs work part time because it’s easy to see 60% or whatever of the number of patients.

Options are 1) PT & make your peace 2) FT or nearly FT & progress 3) try to move towards a field where PT works better. I agree with others that both parents need to share the domestic load if they both want to progress at work and this needs to be on the radar early on or the man’s salary gets too far ahead of the woman’s and then they may not be able to afford for him to cut back if required. All choices require compromises as there are only 24 hours in the day. Good luck

I think women do this because in the throes of having babies and dealing with hormones, nappies and then nursery pick ups etc it makes sense at the time to take on part time work while DH continue working and providing a constant income (or it did to me). Now we have 2 DC and a bigger house/higher outgoings DH cant drop hours easily as we’d both be earning less until several years down the line when Id (hopefully) caught back up.
Its not doable at this time so I guess I need to stick it out here for a bit.

Part timers are viewed as flakey and not committed to their job. I experienced this when I returned PT after taking a year off for mat leave. While my company agreed to my request to go PT they ensured my job role was v different to my previous FT one - so much so that they had deliberately removed all the "fun" parts from my role. I should've known, they hated part timers.
Needless to say I left after a year as life's too short to do a job that you hate. I now run my own business that fits around my life.

Yanbu. I don't think PT workers should expect to progress as fast as FT workers doing equivalent jobs...but at the moment there is no progression without going back to FT.

I think women do this because in the throes of having babies and dealing with hormones, nappies and then nursery pick ups etc it makes sense at the time to take on part time work while DH continue working and providing a constant income (or it did to me).

If you view parenting as a joint job then it doesn't make sense for one person to sacrifice their career.

This, part time roles are extremely rare in my industry and would never be advertised as such. Usually part-timers start as FT and drop a day later into the role. More senior roles tend to do compressed hours

My current job I went for the interview then asked for 0.8FTE when they offered and they agreed.

I think it's true and even though I work part time (75%) I actually think it's not unreasonable. I find part time staff something of a barrier to getting stuff completed. I prefer dealing with teams who have a substantial full time presence, and I have stronger work relationships with them. Meanwhile they are probably wishing I was full time even though I deal with time sensitive stuff on my days off.

Realistically if I want to step up another grade I won't be getting it as a part timer.

I find it quite depressing that lots of people on here are saying that you shouldn’t accept it but their solution is for your husband to take a step back and you work FT!

You should be able to progress whilst working PT and it’s agonising that you can’t. I worked myself into a decent position before having kids and got head hunted for a PT role while on my first maternity leave. I accepted it only to find out that they are shit at managing PT and not only am I stressed and overloaded, I’m at the same time unappreciated and seen as flaky.

my DH also works PT (0.8 compared to my 0.6) and experiences no such issues. He’s also often congratulated for being a great role model for working families sharing the load.

Btw I worked in my job full-time before having DS - it would never have been offered as a part time role to a newcomer

@Iamthewombat

"Not a chance. I was really annoyed that she and the recruiter had wasted my time. I wouldn’t see that candidate again for any type of role. So I don’t recommend this strategy for the OP."

Surely that depends on whether the candidate was prepared to work FT. I was, but it was my preference not to, if that could be accommodated. I made that clear in my interview, that whilst my preference was for part time, if I felt the job was otherwise perfect, I would be prepared to go full time. I think sometimes interviewees forget you're interviewing the company to see whether you want to work there as much as you're being interviewed for the job. I've turned down a couple of jobs because on interview, I didn't like the interviewer, what they were telling me, or didn't think I'd be a good fit for the company. (nothing to do with the part time issue, btw).

Part timers are viewed as flakey and not committed to their job.

Yes, they are. I’m not saying that that is right, or fair, but that is the way things are. So the OP needs to work within the system if she wants her career to progress. @CharlesIsQueensHorcrux spells out her options concisely.

I agree with PPs who say that if more men worked part time, perceptions might change. Unfortunately at the moment part time working is either (1) mums (overwhelmingly, rather than dads) working around children, who are perceived as likely to leave at the drop of a hat in childcare crises/sickness/etc., or to be militant about their hours and unlikely to stay to help sort out problems against a deadline or (2) older people winding down before retirement, who are perceived as having been put out to pasture and aren’t considered for the interesting and visible projects.

If you really want to focus on your career progression, do put your children into childcare. They will get used to it very quickly. That's what I did and I've never regretted it

Anyone can turn down any kind of job offer, for their own reasons. But that’s not what I was talking about.

If I advertise a senior finance role that is full time, and the job description clearly states that it is full time, and I brief the recruiters that I won’t consider part time because of the breadth of responsibility and volume of work involved in the role, then I’m justified in being annoyed at having wasted time reviewing and scoring the CV of, and interviewing, a candidate who is not willing to comply with the requirements of the role. Which she wasn’t, in the example I gave.

Perhaps she thought that she’d dazzle me so much that I’d say, yes, I’m prepared to have 60% of somebody (or a 50% time commitment if she’d got her 2.5 compressed days wish). Which is ridiculous. Even if she had been brilliant, I couldn’t accommodate that working pattern in a finance team run off their feet, and her deceitful behaviour, and willingness to waste my time, made me question whether she was somebody that I’d want working for me.

Apply for new jobs. When a company is really keen on you, tell them you want part time / job share.

@Iamthewombat

It's this part that I was picking up on: "role. So I don’t recommend this strategy for the OP."

For you, it's not something that's going to work, but for the OP it might. We don't know what job role or industry she is in. Both myself and at least one other poster here have found it a useful way of getting 0.8 part time roles. So it can and does work, particularly if the OP does find an otherwise perfect role that she might consider going FT on. If she applied, being prepared to work FT if necessary but asks the Q, she might well find that she doesn't need to work FT, Not all employers are as inflexible as you, thank goodness.

Likewise, I interviewed someone myself recently, they also made some specific requests, but as they were otherwise perfect for the job, we offered it and met the requests of the person. We didn't get what we advertised for, but we got something much better!

Unfortunately employers who claim to be flexible rarely are. Part timers are generally seen as less committed to the role and to the company so a lack of progression isn't seen as a problem. In a previous company we weren't allowed to hire part timers, no ifs or buts (regardless of the legality lol) because the MD wanted people who were 100% focused on their job. By definition a part timer is less committed because they are not willing and/or able to commit to a full time role.

In most companies to go part time you have to demonstrate that you have been able to be a good full time employee for a few years first. Generally once you go part time your progression stops though - that's why a lot of people prefer to prioritise their career over other commitments like family until they've reached a point in their career where they are happy to stay at indefinitely.

I can see that you are desperate to convince me that what you did was acceptable, which you seem to be very sensitive about, but I’d recommend that you give up.

I’ve been on both sides of the table in this situation : as an employer and an employee.

I went to four days a week when I was pretty senior and quite well known in a small profession. I had to ask about the four days at the end of the interview, because it was virtually unheard of when I did it. ( it wasn’t for family reasons). It wasn’t a problem with either clients or colleagues , because it was always the same day and I made sure there was nothing left hanging. However, my department head told me that they would like to put me on the board, but only if I went full time. Of course, I declined. The whole point of being four days a week was that I had stopped grasping the wheel.

I have also experienced working with and interviewing people ( mainly but not exclusively women) who wanted to work part time . In my field, part time as in less than four days a week was very difficult to accommodate at anything other than a fairly mundane level, because more involved and senior roles required more continuous input. There is also a perception which was all too often borne out that people who were working part time to accommodate parenting were more likely to be unreliable in the face of parenting crises.

I don’t know what your field is, but could you consider being a contractor, pitching for specific projects which you could deliver to a timescale but on which you worked at your own convenience? I had a roster of people who could for example handle a specific amount of date processing , the task was what was paid for, not how long or when they performed it.

I can also see both sides. Part timers are not available as often as full time workers so it can be annoying and are often primary contacts for child emergencies.
On the flip side I know that I am very focused and organised at work and also used to managing time and multitasking more so than some full timers. By discouraging pt working, the workforce is effectively excluding a big chunk of potential resources.

Part timers are not available as often as full time workers so it can be annoying and are often primary contacts for child emergencies.

That's part of the problem though.... why should one person be the primary contact for childcare emergencies? Why isn't that shared between parents?

@Iamthewombat

"I can see that you are desperate to convince me that what you did was acceptable, which you seem to be very sensitive about, but I’d recommend that you give up."

It clearly was acceptable, and even accepted, as I've already said, I was offered two jobs this way. So at least two employers think it's acceptable as they have accepted it. Like I said, it's a good job not everyone is as narrow minded as you, as others have testified it can be a good way of getting part time work. I know plenty of people who have done it. I've had two great jobs out of it. and two very happy employers.