Working condensed hours on 80% pay

[Notsure2023]

Recently went back after maternity leave, before I left I agreed flexible working 4 days per week. Agreed my pay would be reduced to 80%.

im in a client facing management position. My clients were changed and I was given more responsibility when I returned to work - I now have our biggest clients (not discussed with me first).

I’ve kept the same job title and I’ve not got a pay increase.

It’s becoming apparent I’m doing the same amount of work across 4 days. No one covers for me on my day off. AIBU to expect full pay?

It's actually so so naughty of employers. They know we want to spend time with our children, and exploit that.

It does happen and it’s unfair, but I’m not sure what the answer is.
Work probably can’t get someone with experience/qualifications for one day per week and why should other full time staff be expected to pick up more unpaid work to benefit you?
I would go back to five days and use the extra money for more help around the house etc.

This.

This always happens with a 4 day week IMO. It sucks.

Not necessarily. I reduced to 4 days when I went back after mat leave and my manager actively tells me to remember I shouldn't be taking on the same workload as full timers and trying to squash it in over 4 days. She actually tells me off if I try to do that!

Ugh I remember this battle well - paid for a 3 day week but worked 5.

In the end I went back up to 5 days a week but guaranteed WFH for 3 of them. That gave me the balance I needed for the kids once they were at school.

Depends on your hours - if you're contracted 9-5 for 4 days and that's what you're working I don't see an issue. If you're contracted 9-5 but you're actually working 9-7 for 4 days then you're being cheated out of a day's pay every week. If this is the case, what would happen if you only worked your contracted hours?

I'm in this predicament and it pisses me off. I work 5, 6 hour days a week I stead of 7 hour days which would be full time. I end up working late every day and probably do 33 hrs a week

I have the same work load as I would if I was full time.

But I work early days with no lunch break and it means I can pick the DC up from school and be there in the afternoon so for for now I am sucking it up and will change in a couple of years when they start secondary school....

If your contract is 80%, then you should only have 80% of the client portfolio, so if your FT colleagues have 50 clients, you should have 40.

If they don't do that then you need to negotiate FT condensed hours or go back to working 5 days a week, either way for 100% pay. If you can't do that, you either need to quietly drop less noticeable aspects of your role, do remote meetings instead of in person etc to save time and/or be ruthlessly efficient even if it means being less 'perfect' about your role - good enough is good enough.

Think of it as hours not days.

Monitor your hours for a few weeks. If you are working FT hours over 4 days, you should raise this with your manager and expect to be paid for this one way or another, or to reduce your commitments so you can do it in 0.8 of FT hours (usually 30-32 depending on the job).

If you are working the shorter hours, but more effectively, save it for your annual review. Make a big list of all the extras, your massive efficiency, how you are delivering for the company, and go for negotiation of a pay rise then.

I think this is very common, sadly. I suppose for the employer the problem is that they have nowhere else for the work to go - how would they recruit to a 1 day per week post? In some areas of my organisation they will only allow full time or 2.5 days because the odd bits of posts are impossible to fill.

Unfortunately employers will ultimately take the piss. I went back to work after ML to 3 days a week and reduced responsibility. Over the last few years I have had responsibility slowly loaded back on. I have asked for an increase in hours which has been refused as the budget has been spent elsewhere. In September a colleague left and the role isnt being recruited. It's just been assumed that me and another colleague will pick up the work. No extra pay. I've submitted a formal request outlining the extra responsibility I have taken on, but don't expect anything will be done as I'm public sector and there is no money.

@HandbagsnGladrags

Keep a keen eye. Things have habits of slow creep until you find yourself caught. But being aware, as you are, is a major bonus. Just identify if the creep is happening and sort it then.

This happened to me, same amount of work for 80% of the pay. That, combined with a lack of support or progression meant that I left after a year.

If you’re physically doing the same amount of hours then document this and explain

however I think a stronger case is that your responsibility has increased so you need a pay rise.

I work 4 days, and on average I think I probably work harder than my colleagues over those four days, often running round like a mad hatter. However I am careful to not work barely at all on my day off (I may check messages to see if anything urgent) and the rest of the week work normal hours, and no extra. However although I’m client facing I run concurrent small projects not big ones, so over the course of the year will run less than FT colleagues.

What solution do you want OP? You need to have that in mind, plus the evidence of the hours and outputs, before you talk to your manager.

It’s a different conversation if you want full pay or less work. Either way plan out the conversation and outcome you want, and stick to your guns.

Many roles aren’t effectively hours-based ones. Nominally on your contract, it might say working hours are. 8.30-5.30 but the reality is people are there are 7 and leave at 7 and regularly work far more than their ‘hours’. It’s a task-completing role in reality rather than an hours based one.

And with part-time working, especially 4 days, you often find you work as many hours as anyone else, or at least do some work all of 5 days. I can think of multiple people who have Friday ‘off’ but always need to do a few hours or take a few calls and often work at least half of that day. It’s not what they want but they accept it. They take it in return for having a day when they don’t need to go into the office and can drop the kids at school and pick-up.

This is the trouble for women, they ‘pay’ a lot to do a school run and accept a lot of crap and extra work in order to get it. That said, lots of other workers doing 50-60-70 hour weeks do too.

I think a lot of it is the culture of working well beyond your hours and having jobs that can’t fit into the working hours of one person (or one part timer) that is the problem. And women are made to feel like shirkers and as if they can have no career progression,nor even keep at their current position without being on call 24-7 to the job.

This happened to me after returning to work after second maternity leave. It was only when someone in the team who worked 4 days like me told me they were on a condensed arrangement earning 100% pay that I realised I was being mugged off. We were doing exactly the same hours and I was picking up more work so it was a relatively easy case to make and I got moved ti 100% pay. I've moved roles twice internally and hung onto those working hours

Same story here. Dropped to 4 days after maternity leave and took a 20% pay cut but the expectation was that I still manage the team and workload as before. In the end I went full-time as no flexibility was available. I found it much better, I could leave on time every day and muchbless stressful

If your contract is 80%, then you should only have 80% of the client portfolio, so if your FT colleagues have 50 clients, you should have 40.

This. We have individualised job plans which show the hours we have a available in a working week and our clients and tasks are mapped onto that. Mine has a full day physically greyed out so there's no space for things to be added to that as I'm not there. Hence I get allocated fewer clients and tasks than my FT colleagues. When our work capacity is mapped out there in black and white by our managers it's hard to argue we can take more if we're at capacity for our hours!

Surely all this is something to discuss when you negotiate a part-time return in the first place? It's not necessarily something that an employer is going to bring up because by avoiding the conversation they are hoping for full-time output for a reduced salary. But the employee should be raising it? Before I went back part-time (ok, years ago but actually before there were such good formalised regulations in place) I presented my employer with a rationale for dropping to part-time and a plan for any bits of my role which could be reassigned/should never have been part of the role in the first place/had become irrelevant etc. Working part-time, I was definitely still working faster and more efficiently and like others said had to drop the lunches and even leisurely chats in the office but I didn't feel completely overwhelmed and resentful. I don't think it does anybody any favours to try and cram a full-time role into reduced hours.

Its easy to get shafted working part time. However I'm not sure how much you can play on the 'getting bigger clients' card, unless the size of client is specified in your job title or job description. Eg if you are 'medium client manager' then you should be getting more money if you're effectively doing the job of 'large client manager'. But if your job is just 'client manager' and clients are distributed by business need then a raise would not be automatic

Talk to them just make sure you are clear if you're asking for a raise because its effectively a job with more responsibility or if you're asking to be paid the same rate but for the hours you do I.e. you want to do condensed hours.

Do you end up working on your day off or in the evenings? What hours do you want formalised? Eg work 8-6 on your working days instead of 9-5. What would happen if they respond with 'just work your contracted hours and we will find someone to pick up the work when you're off', if you dont think this will work and you want condensed hours then think about customer impact etc

I work 4 days and instead of my work load reducing it has increased over time. I have got promoted and payrises because of it.

I really value the extra day off because I'm less stressed because of it and I need time to sort out family stuff.

It's acknowledged at work by colleagues and bosses that I have a raw deal. This is just life unfortunately. If you don't like it go full time.

Not sure I totally understand - if you are working condensed hours, I thought this means you do your contracted hours but on fewer days?

So, if you have a 35 hour contract, you do your 35 hours in 4 days and have the 5th day off?

Am going to try condensed hours on a trial basis as several others also do it, but they have out of office saying they have the day off, so no expectation of being able to get in contact, and work phone is off.

I’ve worked 4 day week for 12 years in 3 different organisations and whilst accept it’s not right, I’m afraid it is a very usual outcome - I also work in HR!
Condensed hours (ie working more than the usual hours in a working day) have not been an accepted practice in the organisations that I’ve worked in. The main reason being that most workers part and full time do more than their contracted hours in the day to get the job done. Another reason is well-being/ health and safety of doing too many hours in a day, another reason is availability of stakeholders and team outside of normal hours when you are working.
I’ve just taken the reasoning that my non working day is worth the reduction in pay.
However, i have recently changed to a 9 day fortnight which gives me every other Friday off and has given me loads more balance with a salary boost too.

I'm really surprised that most of you dropped to 4 days with 80% pay as everyone I know who works 4 days, condenses full time hours into 4 days so still receives 100% pay.

I suppose to employers it's obvious really, they were never going to get someone else to cover just 1 day a week. Therefore know generally the work will still get done over the 4 days but they're paying less.