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?

I used to do 8am-6pm, 3 days a week.
It was pretty tiring, but my job is very full on and can be emotionally draining. Maybe in a different sort of job it would be fine. I felt like I didn't see my DC on the days I worked and I was too tired on my days off to really make the most of them. I also felt a little bit 'out of the loop' in work at times doing only 3 days, which was frustrating.

Now I do 8am-4pm (with a 30 minute lunch break), 4 days a week. I much prefer it.

I do 5 in 4.5 but any more compressed than that and I wouldn’t be worth it for me. The evenings can be stressful enough as they are finishing work and doing the nursery pick up, I wouldn’t want it to be any later and 4 rubbish days wouldn’t be worth it for one “day off” for me.

I do 33hrs over 4 days (so something like 4.5 over 4). It just about works for us, although I have a 1hr commute each way. We only make it work by toddler still being in nursery, dad wfh so does drop off and I do pick up. I wfh one of the 4 days so make up any lost time then. And I mostly work through any break I would technically be meant to take. I feel like I do a full time workload but appreciate the day off. We could not have absorbed just dropping to 28-30hours so had to compress a bit. Couldn't make 5 over 4 work, due to the commute.

In my LA 7-2 wouldn't be counted as 7 hours as a lunchbreak would have to be factored if working over 6 hours. Just worth checking to make sure.

I do it but it only works because I WFH three of the four days, and it is very flexible so I can pick my son up from the bus stop in the afternoon and then return to work
On my office day I work 7 hours in the office and then do the rest when I get home.

I do 4 days as my employer would not have gone for compressed hours. The key to doing this successfully was to identify things I wouldn't have time for anymore as part of the flexible working request and agree these upfront. Some give and take is expected in the industry I'm in so I tend to do 8 until 4 or 4.30 most days and take a lunch break on at least 2 of the days to exercise. If I finished any later than this I wouldn't have much time to spend with DS before he goes to bed so I'm quite happy with how it's going. I think I'd struggle to be productive for much longer too as I'm generally more tired as a parent than I was before.

Doing 5 days in 4 has less of an impact than getting 4 days into 3. I wouldn't want to do either of those, I'd say 3.5 equivalent could be a good compromise if you really want to try and minimise loss of earnings.

I used to do 5 days (35 hrs) in 4, Mondays were my day off.
8.75 hours per day, so 8-5:30 with a 45 min lunch every day.
It worked perfectly for us, but my husband was able to do all the drop off and collections from the childminder on my working days.