P/T how many hours?

[Shouldhavebutdidnt]

I’m very fortunate as DH earns enough for me not to work and I haven’t (apart from very few hours since DC were born). Background is professional with a collection of qualifications.

But I’m bored & want to do more, DC is lower primary. My MH suffers if my brain isn’t busy - my brain starts obsessing over things.

Perfect job has come up but it’s full time, before I even talk to them about it informally how many hours would you want to work to maintain balance of brain being stimulated whilst also focusing on kids? Will need to do some commuting but hoping for mainly wfh.

How many hours / what days is perfect for part time?

Thanks

three or four i would say
have you got some sort of childcare

Currently no childcare but there is an after school club they could go too. But not sure I want them there too much as they are very young.

What is your plan for childcare in the holidays?

There are holidays clubs and the job I’m looking at will be less busy in summer… and it gives 30 days holiday

but holidays are a concern

I think three days is optimal.

I work mornings til 12 and that's a really good balance. Always around for school pick up, sports days, Christmas fairs etc and still feel like I can get some cooking/cleaning in (or more importantly a coffee/lunch with friends) before school pick up.

A maximum of 9-1pm 3 days a week as I presume you will need to drop them off and you’ll want to pick them up with the commute.

Yes or possible 9-12pm x 4 days

This will be a total lifestyle change for you. It’s not just that you will be out of the house working more (which may be a good thing), in all probability you will still be expected to pick up all the donestic duties that you are currently doing

I'm semi-retired and work 17 hours pw over 3 days, Tues-Thurs, so basically 3 long mornings.

Every weekend's a long weekend, and it gives me plenty of time to do other stuff when other people are at work.

The other bonus is that because most bank holidays are on days I don't work, they add hours to my annual leave to compensate for the statutory holidays that I don't get, if that makes sense. God knows how it works, but this year it added almost 2 weeks to my leave allowance.

I work 2 days a week for the reason of being there most of the time through the many school holidays they have.

I do 22ish hours over three days, also have children in primary school and it works really well.

Just a note of caution though, I know there is lots of advice online about negotiating a full-time position down to part-time hours but I’ve done it a couple of times and it was so stressful. Employers are more than happy to reduce your pay to reflect part-time hours, but are less happy to genuinely reduce the scope of the role. You have to set boundaries of steel to keep your workload proportionate to your hours.

I think this is less of an issue in roles which are shift based or front line, but it doesn’t sound like it’s that kind of role.

My current role was advertised part-time and it has worked out so much better than when I’ve tried to do a full-time role in part-time hours. But I appreciate that part-time roles aren’t advertised often.

Everyone with kids will want the same time off as you and there will be others without kids who also want summer time off/christmas holidays. So do have a backup plan.

I also agree with this. If it's advertised as full time negotiations are going to be tough. Even with the new flexible working regulations

I work thirty hours a week which is perfect for me, but I don't have children or childcare costs to worry about.

I would say don't rely on being able to always use your annual leave in the school holidays though!

I do three days (22.5 hours) over 4 or 5 (flexible) during school hours. It's perfect for me and I have one conplete day off a week during school holidays and use holiday clubs, play date swaps and family to help with childcare. I also work from home and now they're older (10 and 9) they can be home sometimes when I'm working, but that's only been for last year or so.

Also, there's a difference between them agreeing part time as 4 days per week and agreeing 9-12 or 9-1 3 days a week as some posters are suggesting. I think no matter how helpful we wanted to be we would struggle to facilitate a role that was so few hours where I am. Maybe if there was a job share where someone else did 3 full or 4 full days.

She asked what might suit her as an individual, not what might suit an employer.

I think that’s generally the point of a flexible working request, you’re not asking for compressed hours on less pay, you’re asking for what would have been called job share.
Whether or not they accept depends on how well you fit the role and how desperate they are to recruit right now.
And others have said of course they won’t have a job share individual right now so they would be agreeing to having someone do only part of the job and in all likelihood you would be expected to Pick up some of the extra work

I’d say no less than 3 days. I’ve done a mix of 3-4-5 days when my kids were young. Largely part time due to health, back full time now and kids never suffered.

Yes if you’re part time don’t work a Monday as then you get the extra time to use when you like.

I work 3 full days Tue-Thurs and feel it is the perfect work-life balance!

If I had still had primary aged kids and could work closer to home or from home, I would consider the middle slot of 10am-2pm 5 days a week instead. Then you could do all drop offs and picks ups!

That’s the point though. Employers will often approve these requests because they’re desperate to recruit, because HR have told them they need to be more family friendly, or because they want to save money. But before accepting a request, employers should also consider how to make it workable for the employee. And very few actually do, in my experience. Then it’s the employee who is left picking up the pieces when they’re expected to do a job which can’t realistically be done in part-time hours.

Recruiting a jobshare to cover the rest of the week is a great solution but very few employers seem to consider this automatically. It costs them a lot more, for one thing.

It’s not impossible and lots of people do it but before negotiating a part-time contract the OP needs to be aware of this and feel confident that the employer is genuinely going to reduce the role to part-time hours. If they have a clear plan in place (e.g. we’ll recruit someone else to cover the other two days, we’ll reduce your caseload to 60 instead of 100 per week, etc) then great. But if they say “oh I’m sure that’s fine, we’re very family-friendly here, I think Jane in accounts is part-time isn’t she” then it’s a huge red flag. In my opinion.

I work 50% which is 17.5 hours. I do one full day and then two days of 5 hours - 9.30 to 2.30. These hours are perfect for me.

I'd say 3 days is good with little kids, and consider whether it would help to have them slightly shorter, e.g. until 4 or 4:30

As mentioned upthread, Mondays off is ideal from a holiday balance point of view

This isn't what you asked, but it's worth considering in advance how you will handle the inevitable "can you just pop online for a quick chat/meeting/come on-site to just sort something/attend this full day event" on your non working day. I get asked to do something out of working hours probably three weeks out of four. It's often different people asking and they sometimes take no badly because, to them, they only ask once or twice a year and why am I so inflexible. They don't understand that I've already "just" worked my non working day twice this month. My solution (suggested/agreed with management) is that quick calls need to be in a set window eg 9-10, and any time on site needs to be compensated with TOIL - but you'll come up with your own boundaries

I'm currently working three days and have my toddler home the other two. It's stressful now but when he's in school, I can see this being my ideal set up. Gives you two days a week to blitz the chores, run errands, schedule appointments and still have a little bit of time to yourself.

Thanks for the comments everyone.

PP commented that I am focusing on what’s right for me, I have no idea if the organization are going to go for it or not.

I guess we will see

I work 30 hours a week on average (ten 12 hours days per month) and I find that a good balance with 2 very young children but 24 hours a week would be perfect. My children don't go to childcare so they're with me full-time outside of work.