Do many working parents have flexi hours in general ?

[mulkwik]

I sometimes read on here that parents do condensed hours or flexi hours.

I have had to request this for a few weeks, so I can pick my kids up at 3:30, after school, rather than at 5:30. As my little one is struggling and very tired.

my employer was happy to facilitate this for me. Which I was very happy about ! We are going to review my performance to make sure it’s not being impacted.

I have put a blocker in my diary from 3-5pm every day, as I can’t accept customer calls during this time but I can do emails and speak to my manager / colleagues about stuff.

it’s only a temporary arrangement and I usually don’t take my lunch hour anyway, so I doubt it will impact my performance hugely.

does anyone who works full time have arrangements like this ? How is it working out ?

Have you got a plan for when you'll pick up those 2 hours? I do this finish once a week but work a slightly longer day on the other days to make up the difference. Other than that if I need to start late / finish early for ad hoc reasons I can but I just need to find time to make up the hours. I would find it almost impossible to make up 2 hours per day. If you aren't making up those hours it seems more like a reduction of hours rather than flexible working, but I might be misunderstanding your post.

I don’t take a lunch break and I’ll start an hour earlier

It’s illegal for your employer to not give you a lunch break if you work over 7 (I think) hours. You don’t have to taking, but you can’t count it as hours worked.
so if you do 8 hours a day, you’d need a 8.5 gap beteeen your start time and your finish time IYSWIM.

I don’t think they’ll be that pedantic. I haven’t been taking a lunch break really since I started. It’s about output at the end of the day.

It’s over 6 hours that you need to legally have a lunch. Even if that wasn’t the case if you already work through it you are presumably already delivering something in that time that has to be made up elsewhere.

either way, glad your employer is trying to facilitate OP. To answer your original Q OP, lots of working parents do this (I actually do a different form where I do longer days then have one day off a fortnight).

you said your kids are struggling, is the plan to do this in the longer term?

No it’s just for 4 weeks for now and then we will review it. I’ll see how my kids are ( actually it’s one kid that’s struggling ).

I do it twice a week which is a good balance with the kids in ASC or sports clubs at school on other nights. So I "lose" 4 hours over the week I have to make up elsewhere. We have agreed contracted hours for "making up". I also block out in my diary. I make it clear that in exceptional circumstances I am free but otherwise I am not available.

In my experience, if you are "away" from your desk, it's better to be "away" rather than doing 50% childcare, 50% work. Better to focus 100% on one or the other.

I have half an hour lunch each day and I start early twice a week, once by an hour, once by 90 minutes. The kids are in Breakfast Club and / or my husband does the school run and mornings on these days.

I also have this in my contract. So there can be no rescinding of my arrangements last minute or business need arguments arising. It would also carry over under TUPE if my employer / management changed.

It’s not true that you cannot work through a lunch break and count it as hours. It’s a legal entitlement not a requirement, so the employee does not have to take it up if they don’t want to.

I honestly find ‘hours’ a little arbitrary anyway. Some people are so efficient they can achieve something in 5hrs that might take someone else 7hrs. Getting the job done and doing it well it all that matters.

I work 9:30-4:30, with either a 30 min or no lunch break. I make sure I finish anything extra or unfinished outside of these hours whenever needed.

Yeah I’m with you on this..

I don’t take a lunch break because my brain works better without too many breaks.

I also have days where I am not that productive and others where I’ll do three times the workloads because a deadline is coming up.

I somehow manage my workload and to get things done with a lot of flexibility. I could have just not told my employer about this, because usually I don’t have any customer calls after 3 anyway. But I just wanted to be honest and have something proper in place.