Jobs with reliable 9 to 5 hours and good work-life balance?

[Corporatejobs]

Does anyone have a 9-5 job and good work life balance? Ie most of the time they’re able to log off at 5 and not think about work or do any work until the next day.

If so, please tell me your job and what kind of place you work

I’m in a corporate job and exhausted from the endless long hours and having no life. I want to make a change.

I expect there are plenty of 9-5 jobs but they won’t match your salary of a more unpredictable and demanding job IMO. I may be wrong. Keen to see what people write. PS I am in your position and keen to do a similar move - although I can take a pay cut if the pay cut was huge it would make more sense to reduce days in current role.

Buyer for a well known retailer.
Corporate environment. Great culture. Good work / life balance.

Feel like location is very relevant here, I assume you’re in London?

Outside of London/SE I barely know anyone that works outside their contracted hours, especially in corporate.

Own business/ C-level obviously a little different

Teacher

University support staff (ie I’m not an academic)

What kind of salary are you talking about?

My direct reports work 8.30-5 no weekends no taking work home no need to work over their time. I do not, I travel for work weekly, log in 8am some days log out at 4, sometimes log out at 7.

My team however work in a sales based role and contact the new opportunities and get them onboard between 8.30-5

They earn 25k base and around 500-1000 p.m in bonuses depending if full time/part time/how many sales

I earn high forties for 35 hours over four days, fully remote, 8 weeks annual leave inc bank holidays. I switch my laptop off at 5:30 and don't give it another thought. HR consultancy.

🤣

AHP in outpatient community service.

I’m a secretary with flexi time. Low stress, great balance. Low wage though 26.5. Leeds.

Many tech roles. Think programmer, sysadmin and similar. They are often flexible and fully remote.

Software Developer / Head of IT for a small startup, I earn around 70k

I don't work outside of my 9 - 5 outside of an emergency. I decide what an emergency. So far I haven't worked outside of my core hours in 3 years.

I have always been firm in my work / life balance in every job I've had since I started work. I will occasionally work outside of core hours if required, but only if there's a real need for it. And no, someone else failing to plan and dumping stuff on me last minute does not constitute a real need.

Yes, I could probably earn more, and yes, I've left a couple of jobs before being pushed, but largely I've found that if you set you boundaries out early enough and stick to them, then people push against them initially before learning they're unyielding.

I've had a couple of bosses who didn't like me much, but I don't need to be liked, I do need my evenings and weekends free.

Teaching does not have a good work life balance. Planning, marking etc is normally done on evenings and weekends.

Former teacher who left teaching due to lack of work life balance. 75% of teachers who leave the profession leave due to lack of work life balance. Between 30% and 45% leave in the first 5 years.

Most public sector roles apart from social work or teaching. Lower end roles in London pay about £37k

I work in pharma. 8-4:30 rarely log on after hours. 52k

I work in publishing, plenty of flexibility, wfh a lot, reasonable benefits (25 days hol, small bonus most years) but the pay is not high.

I’ve done a number of different jobs and teaching was by FAR the least 9-5pm of all. Definitely not for someone looking to restore work-life balance!

also a buyer here! Would love to know which as I am drowning right now. Looking to move!

I'm civil service, you can work 9-5 but you can actually work any time between 7am and 7pm (I work 7-3). If you work over your hours you can take up to 26 extra days Flexi a year (some people choose to, some never do, entirely up to you but I always found it useful for school holidays).

Good pension, 6 weeks annual leave plus Christmas week and bank holidays. Only sacrifice is salary is lower than private sector.

I think this comes down to company culture more than anything.

All my jobs have been like that, except teaching. Actually my hours are more like 9-5.30pm or 9.30-6pm, but my entire career I've only very rarely taken work home with me, worried about work at the weekends or stayed late. Public admin roles then switched to private tech industry.

I think it's more to do with a) company/team culture and b) personal organisation and efficiency.

I used to work 7 - 4 in IT project management as a freelancer. I am an early morning person, so having the hour in the office before other team members arrived enabled me to do quite a bit of the routine work, plus organise other things like meetings etc. without being interrupted or distracted. I also liked having time in the early evening to go for a swim or to the gym.
Of course there were times when we had late afternoon calls scheduled with colleagues in other parts of the world, but these were regular, fixed times and could be done off site.
Rates were good in those days as well.

I do now aged 50+ but it’s the first one ever.
Someof it is learning to push back/prioritise, make people wait and not waste time emailing/ responding to emails that aren’t specifically for you.
Also block time in your calendar to get work done, only check emails/Teams a few times a day, block out after 5pm so people don’t schedule meetings then. Work for a European rather than a US company as the US tend not to care that it’s your evening (although they do often pay better.)

I think it was a joke

Internal audit 🙏 so far so good! I do still work late here and there but it's not a standard ongoing issue.