To ask about compressed hours

[moise]

Getting ready to send in my flexible working request but keep stalling as I cannot decide whether I compress some hours or not.

I have seen a video saying that compressing hours is the ‘hack’ to having a day or two off yet not doing the same work for less money.
The thought of working more hours in less days sounds practical, but is this not really the most stressful thing ever in practice? I imagine a workday factoring in commute times, nursery drop offs and pick ups, potentially broken sleep etc to be hard enough as it is without adding on hours to be worked. Surely there is also extra pressure as if you need to take time out your day for whatever reason, there is less opportunity then to put the time back in ?!

Am I missing something? I don’t want to work more than 3 days ideally so my options are just do 3 days, or 3.5/4 in 3 to boost earnings.

Does anyone have experience of trying to compress working hours with a young family and is it/was it ok for you, or something you would avoid?

Depends what you do. I work in care and do 12 1/2 hour shifts, 3 days.

I do 4.5 in 5 which is just about workable (0800-1700 and 0800-1300) but it can be difficult when there's a long commute tacked on. When I was doing it with a 90min commute each way, it really wrecked my health

Was that just driving or including public transport?

Totally random to the question you are asking, but check you can go back to normal if it doesn't work out.

My DH was considering compressed hours, then discovered that in his work place (local authority) he couldn't revert if it didn't work out

I guess that if you made a fuss you probably could in the end, but it he decided not to because of that

I used to do 5 days in 4 (4 days of 08:00-18:00). After my second mat leave, I dropped to 3 days of the same hours which was .75FTE.

I’ve just requested to drop to 9-5 (the ‘regular’ hours in my job) and take the pay cut, because 8-6 is driving me mad. Now I have 2 school runs to factor in, plus evening meal sorting for the kids, it’s too much. 9-5 gives me that little bit more wiggle room and less stress. For me, it’s worth the slight financial loss as I feel like this past couple years has been exhausting on the working days!

Ooh thank you I am also LA so will look into it. So difficult to know, when I’ve no experience of working anything other than full time

Thank you, that makes sense! I hope that works better for you and that your new hours feel more manageable

I do 90% over 4 days which works out ok in theory as I can start at 8 am most days. It does mean I have little capacity to take on extra work if things are busy though. But i don't think I actually do my hours in reality.

Some people at work do 100% over 4 days and it's very stressful. They have to log on after the kids bedtime and on weekends, which works for some but others told me they found it exhausting. I know I couldn't, I'm too tired for that!

Thank you!

I’m also LA, I’m pregnant and have asked to come back on 32 rather than 36hrs. I’m planning an 8hr work day. I wfh so planning on doing 7-2 and doing an extra hour in the evening. DH will do the drop off to the child minder and I’ll do the pick up. My council doesn’t allow a fully compressed week. I’ve worked out the sums and I’m better off working 4 days than working 5 and having to pay for the extra childcare.

Its all such a bloody nightmare though!!

I used to do 4.5-5 days (I have some flexibility over this) with 3 days childcare and then extra in evenings and weekends where necessary. It was manageable, but there was very little opportunity to react to life events like sickness without getting very behind.

I would aim to work from 7-5ish, with a short break for lunch and then log in after bedtime for the rest.

Fortunately I have control over my timetable, working patterns etc and WFH, so no commute.

I stopped because of serious illness hitting the family, and it's no longer possible. But whilst everyone was fit and healthy, it was manageable, just had an impact on my free time.

I looked into doing compressed hours but with school runs and a nursery pick up I feel like I'd not see my kids at all. Might be worth thinking about what you'd do when little one is at school (it comes around quickly!) our after school club is only until 5pm.

I think it depends on how much you are monitored for the hours you are present. I have a 100% contract but tend to finish early (3pm) on a Thursday and Friday. I don't officially make up for it on the other days but often work at random times and my output is equivalent of an FTE.

Not very much I guess but I’d always worry about ever being asked to account for every hour- do you not have that thought? Not that it’s ever happened so far but it would be typical

I managed it for 3 months and was begging to go back to 5 days. I was working 7:30am-5:30pm with 1x 45 minute break for 4 days a week, and had one day off work with DS.

It meant I couldn’t do both drop off and pick up, I could only do pick up. And like you mentioned if I needed to make hours up because I’d had to take a longer break for whatever reason, there wasn’t the time to as I had less than 30 mins to get to nursery for DS once I finished.

I also found that it actually formalised my hours and took away my flexible working to an extent, because I had to state on the application what hours I would work each day to ensure I still made up my contracted hours p/w - and at least in the trial period this was being monitored to make sure I wasn’t going to take the mick. We have timesheets that are usually submitted each quarter to track our flexi time but during this trial I was submitting weekly. So say DH needed me to take DS to nursery one day and he pick up instead, I couldn’t in theory change my hours to 8:30am-6:30pm etc as that wasn’t what had been agreed in my flexible working request. Whereas I’d previously had flexi working over 5 days so essentially was in control of my hours. I know people who do compressed hours and they’re online after kids are in bed trying to squeeze their hours in - I feel like that just isn’t sustainable and must be all consuming. At the time I was trialling it that wasn’t an option for me as DS had quite a later bedtime at 8:30, so once he was asleep I was getting sorted and pretty much off to bed myself by 9:30!

I actually found doing longer days with less breaks left me mentally and physically exhausted with no down time between work and being in mum-mode. I was less productive at work because come 3pm my brain just went “nope! No more today!” And I really struggled to keep focussed on tasks. My mental health took a dive because I was so burnt out and I started to dread my day off with DS because I was knackered and had no head space for a hyperactive toddler. I didn’t even make it past the 3 month trial before I went back to full time 5 days a week, and I find I’m so much better and happier and refreshed and so can be a better mum.

I do compressed hours 5 days over 4 and the 4 days I do work are really full on but the bonus is the extra day off. I would recommend if you don’t mind working really hard the days you are in.

@moise Not at all, partly because that's not the culture where I work but also because if someone were to ask me, I could point to a long list of things I've done extremely well.

Oh also what I would say is my children are older so it’s more manageable. I also did it when they were little and it was so much harder although I did have the Friday off with them.

I used to do an 8 - 6 which was absolutely fine, but to be honest it was a particularly long hours culture place where 8 - 5.30 would be considered completely 'normal' and so compressing really just formalised what I was doing anyway AND gave me a day off. Total bonus. My commute wasn't bad, it was better at those times because I missed a lot of the traffic tbh.

Critically though I didn't have drop-offs and pick-ups at the time, it just wouldn't have worked if I did. You really can't be in two places at once! But I liked the working pattern.

I have opted not to do compressed hours after this mat leave. I have to do two days in the office each week (and DH does the opposite two days to me). Because we both have quite long commutes (1hr and 90mins respectively), we basically couldn't make the hours fit between nursery opening times, office commutes etc without commiting to logging back on after 8/9pm. I don't want to do that every night - with two young DC, it's hard enough for DH and I to find time together as it is! I'm thinking maybe I'll reassess when the DC are older and a bit more self sufficient. I'm going to just take the paycut and go back 3 days per week, which I've had agreed for 6months as a trial (on both sides!) We'll then see how it's going at the end of the 6months.

I've worked compressed full time for years, 4 days of 8am - 5.45pm. Must be about 10 years now and my dc are aged 7-17 so I've done the whole age range from baby to teen.

For me, working an extra 1hr 45 minutes a day is totally worth it for the extra day off. As babies/toddlers it dramatically reduced our childcare bill and I find school holidays a lot less stressful because there's one less day to juggle and cover.

When I'm working, I'm working - I don't even really notice the extra bit on my day anymore.

It's totally dependent on your set up though. Breakfast club opens 7.40am and I'm 15 minutes from work - so mornings are certainly carefully timed but I always make it on my two office days 🤷‍♀️ And dh finishes work at 4.30pm ish so has always been easily able to do school pick up after ASC and then any activities on my 4 days.

Would you need to take a break in those hours?

I guess it depends on your role/company. I know people who work four days a week and are therefore paid less, but aren't actually doing any less work. A colleague of mine has recently gone from 4 to 5 days, so a 25% pay rise, and doesn't have any extra work because she was already doing the workload. Compressed hours would have been much better for her than part time.

I have a colleague who does a 9 day Fortnite. She works longer hours each day with a shorter break. Her working pattern does not impact the needs of the business. I appreciate you want a slightly shorter week so could this model be accommodated

I do a 9 day fortnight and so does DH so nursery is 4 days for DD and for DS we get to drop off/pick up without wraparound one day.

Contracted hours are only 35 hrs though so not gruelling. Also in a role/team where my hours aren't monitored. Yes I had to put them in on the form but in reality I have the flexibility to divide pick up/drop off with DH around our diaries and work earlier/later as needed.

I wouldn't advise anyone to drop to 4 days part time as everyone I know who did that just felt like they were doing a full time job for 80% of the pay. Our company also don't allow 5 days in 4 anymore but all flexible working requests come with a three month trial period