is my employer fair to decline this? Would yours be the same?

[amazonsl]

I’m not asking strictly speaking, obviously I know legally they can decline it. I’m a single mum (no relevance to the company obviously) with one dc and due to go back to work when they are one. I wanted to use my holiday to work three days a week for 6 months. This would have massively reduced nursery fees and would have helped me adjust. We work from home a lot but condensed working (4 days squeezed into 3) was also declined. Just wondered if other places would have declined this too? It’s a progressional place and I do have quite a bit of responsibility but I’m not at the top, either. I’m going to struggle so much as they’ve said I could go back four days but that doesn’t save much on nursery and im
not sure I will cope!

Mine agreed one day. There’s also a precedent for compressed hours. So they’d struggle to decline.

My work would decline this request. Having been the boss, I understand why this would prove difficult in my workplace. Also, in my workplace if it was granted for one person, regardless of circumstances, it would need to be granted if others made similar requests. It would prove very difficult for planning & continuity with certain projects. My original request to reduce my hours from FT to PT (2days) after having my 1st was met with being told I might need to spread 2days over 4 as that might be easier for planning projects in my workplace. I wasn’t keen but knew they wanted me to return FT so I accepted this. However, my line manager had a change of heart nearer to my return to work date, & the 2 days were 2 full days. A few months later I was then approached to make my days 2 consecutive days - I’d not requested specific days etc, I let my work dictate what was best for them. I did as requested as I knew I was only going to be there a few more months as I was expecting again (but hadn’t made that public knowledge).

I've done something similar at my job but using parental leave and annual leave so that from now until July I'm only working 4 days a week while my husband is away. I think 2 days a week might be a bit much and my parental leave is unpaid so that probably made my work happier about it

If you already work four long days I don't see how it can be condensed further?

Also have you been able to find nursery places etc?

Also earning £60k is an ok wage and you won't get any help.

You must have a lot of holiday days left to take, given you've also accrued them over your mat leave. When have they suggested you take all those weeks of leave if not spread out over several months. Would they prefer you took large chunks of leave?

I did this albeit for two months not six. It was no issue for my company- it was an office job and tasks could wait until my next working day.

What is the decline reason? Does someone need to do the job on your days off? In which case if cover is needed it is fair for them to decline.

Squeezing 5 days into 4 is just about doable - each day you have to achieve 25% more than you would in a normal 5-day-a-week spread. However, I am not sure how viable such a pattern is for a single parent because the hours of nursery opening are usually just about enough to do drop-off, get to work, do 8-8.5 hrs of useful work and then get back to nursery in plenty of time for their collection deadline. If a nursery is only open 8:00-18:00 (10 hrs) and you are supposed to be working for 10 hrs then there's no flex there for travelling to and from nursery , and all handovers between you and nursery have to take zero time - not possible. Even if you have a nursery that is open 7:30-18:30 you are assuming a very tight and impractical schedule for transitioning into and out of nursery.

Squeezing 4 days into 3 is a much bigger step - on each day you have to achieve 33% more than you would in a normal 5-day-a-week pattern. I don't believe that it's unreasonable for your employers to refuse this. I don't believe anyone is going to be as effective in the last 2 hours of a 10.5 hr day as they are in a normal day, and maintain that effectiveness every working day even if the above nursery problems could be avoided.

Are there any other single-mums you know who you could tag-team with? e.g. if you had 2 working-from-home-days in a week where you both stayed in the same house, then one of you could make arrangements to do your work from 8:00 until 13:00 and the works from 13:30 to 18:30 and you both get 2x 5hr working days achieved and look after 2 kids the other half of each day.

Then you pay for 3 full days of nursery during which you can work 7-7.5 hrs with plenty of flex for nursery handovers, and your total working week is a total of 4 days work spread across 5 with 2 days in which you spend a good chunk of waking time with your child, and there are no unfeasible swapovers.

You need to understand the obstacles from your employers point of view and try to find a way to mitigate them.

You've said that your employer's reason was that you wouldn't get so involved in projects. That suggests that daily cover isn't needed - rather you're doing something like BA or project management where the time can be spread out more.

But still 2 days off in a row might mean too long a wait for something to progress. You might have more luck if you ask for non-consecutive days eg Tuesday and Thursday. If that's no go, then perhaps you could have the 2nd day off/week for a shorter time, maybe a month whilst you pick up your new projects, then down to 1 day off/week.

Condensed hours can work if you do substantial work completely by yourself (eg BA designs) but wouldn't work well if most of your job involves communicating with or coordinating other people (who wouldn't be around out of hours). If you can show eg 25% of my work is stuff you do alone, and that's what you'll do in the out-of-hours time, that might be acceptable.

Tbh, they're probably also worried that you just won't be as committed - and that doing 3 days/week you won't feel like you 'own' projects. That can happen, although you're just as likely to get almost as much work done in the shorter hours! Not sure how you can demonstrate that you'll still be committed: maybe highlighting where you've gone above and beyond in the past?

Btw, if you're trying to save the most amount of money, you'd do better to extend your maternity leave - or take the holiday as pay - since nursery costs more per day for 3 days rather than 5 (and 4 barely saves you anything) But of course saving money isn't the only thing.

It is tough going back to work. For a long time I felt I was just 'in the wrong place' when I was at work. But you'll be OK - and so will your baby. (and you'll love the uninterrupted lunch break!)

My place (MNC, software dept) is pretty flexible with all sorts of working patterns. These would be declined too I’m afraid. They’re already being generous allowing you to have one day off using your A/L.

As PP have pointed out being available half the week means someone else will have to cover when you’re off. As you’re getting paid FT where’s the extra money going to come from? Also as parents themselves they probably know you’ll need days off for child sickness, issues/holidays of nursery etc if you have used up all your A/L where will that come from? There’s parental leave but that has to be booked in advance.

60K isn’t a bad salary. Nursery is expensive but it will be a short term hit. If it’s that expensive such that you make a loss and have no way to cover then you’re better off asking for official PT surely?

My work would’ve likely approved this but they’re very hot on compressed hours and flexible working. My old employer would’ve declined it.

I used to work for a FTSE company for over 30 yrs and they had WFH before it had become a thing. The abuse was awful and they did also allow compressed days but again it wasnt what you would think. I worked with someone in Marketing who told me she didnt really work much after 1730 as there was no one around but did send the odd email to 'prove' she was there.

I know the thread isnt really about WFH but ultimately could people who try to do this sort of thing, annual leave every week for 6 months, compressed hours etc please also think of the team they are working in. Is it really going to work?

There are plenty of people judging by some of the threads on MN where they think they can work with babies and kids in the background. What tends to happen is that there were lots of working parents (sadly mainly women) who you just couldnt get after 1530. Calls declined and if there was an emergency call to discuss a particular client issue they were never available.

Yes, its the companies fault sometimes for changing our line managers endlessly but also its down to US. Dont abuse the system, think you have found a little weeze or state everyone does it so why not me. We all know the slackers and they are truly awful in a mixed management team. I once reported one of the team to their line manager. We all ended up doing her role and covering her work. Manager was too scared of her so nothing was ever done and he then moved on so she got away with it again and again.

I was customer facing and we were not allowed. Our clients worked business hours and we were expected to cover those hours.

I think their compromise of 4 days a week sounds fair

How did you propose to do the job 3 days a week?

When we get such requests we have to look at them in the round - there is no one-size fits all. So we would look at how it impacts on our workloads and capacity; affordability etc. To be honest those would be hard eough. But we also look at childcare. We absolutely do not permit childcare of any sort during working hours. So if you were expecting to have baby in your care whilst working, that alone would lead to refusal. One of our directors was dismissed for childminding her grandchild whilst working from home. Anyone else, it would probably have been a serious warning. But she was attending Teams meetings with the grandchild on her knee - and it was her job to uphold and enforce the policy!

I did exactly this. It worked well and helped me work out what worked best for both work and family.

Tbh wouldn't really be relevant. What one company are able to accommodate another may not. Even if the business was in the same field.

The only thing that's relevant is what your employer can offer.

I was allowed to book two days off a week and work three days. The two days I booked off were my admin days. So didn’t affect the team etc.

Well that's an ineffective management problem you have surely - why not performance manage the slackers instead of putting a blanket policy? In all honestly it doesn't matter what people are doing at home as long as the output was the same. If people take the piss and there's no noticeable drop in output they're being underutilised. The company's fault for paying them to do nothing.

I do agree though the OP has to take a business-like approach - especially as she seems to be at a middle management level. You're paid to do a job - you primarily have to think about how to deliver within that scope. The problem with decision-making responsibility is that your higher salary is based on your expertise. You can't just farm it out to anybody else, unless you've trained them in advance. And it's not fair for other colleagues (more junior or otherwise) to be held responsible for the results of making decisions that aren't even their main job anyway.

Did you do any of the grunt work pre mat-leave OP? Train up your staff? Identify what part of your job could be delegated, and what couldn't?

As someone who worked in HR and recruitment for years I don't know any employer that would approve this. Its basically means a part time person in a full time position for months. It's impossible to cover as it's a full time role. You can't recruit a part time person as the full time role is taken and it could potentially mean other employees can't take those holiday days for months. It also potentially creates another problem in that if the employee needs annual leave they have none to use. If you want part time hours you need to do a part time role.

At my workplace they much prefer that staff take chunks of leave. It's much easier to allocate projects/work if they know someone is off for a full week than odd days here and there.

Would be declined at my place as who would do the other 40%? Can’t employ someone and the rest of the team would end up picking up the slack

Wow that’s awful. My son’s friend is planning to look after their baby when his wife goes back to work, 3 days a week whilst also working! How he’s going to do his job with a 4 month old baby I’ve no idea. If I found out someone in my team was doing this I’d also take action, perhaps a warning but after that yes dismissal. People are taking advantage big time of working from home

That's a complete piss take.

Thats exactly why my work wouldn't allow it. Someone taking 2 days off a/l every week would really impact on others ability to get time off

Im public sector and involved in projects and my employer would have said no to both of your requests due to not being able to find someone able to 'cover' the missing days. They are extremely flexible but genuinely neither of those two proposals would have worked for them (and I agree).