Advice on flexible working - dropping a day to x4 days

[Sneazymumzy]

Yesterday I had a call with my managers and HR to discuss dropping to a 4-day week after my return from mat leave. The impression I got was they were being very guarded because of workload. They said it had gone up by 100%. My concern here is that this is largely irrelevant to my request for flexible working. Surely a 100% increase in workload merits an additional employee to do the job if I was already working at full capacity? I did not question this on the call because I am a slow thinking person and only reasoned this after the call. I am considering writing to HR about these concerns. Or should I just wait for the outcome?

Personally I would send a polite follow up email querying this if only so I had it in writing.

If it’s gone up by 100% then logically the would need another employee as you said this is irrelevant
if you reduced your hours they would have a shortfall that’s the issue
prepare yourself for a no
they can absolutely refuse your request but it has to be backed up by a justifiable reason
wait for the outcome and take it from there you only spoke to them yesterday

@rwalker and would this be a justifiable reason if it’s clearly irrelevant? Surely most jobs are busy?

As a manager, my issue about reducing hours is that I can’t backfill for 1 day a week, and after probably about a year, I lose the budget for the extra day. I then permanently have a 4 day week role which if the person leaves, I don’t have the budget to backfill at full time and the rest of the team have to take on the additional workload.

This for us it's much easier if someone wants half time because you can advertise the other half.
Also when I went back colleagues who had successfully requested 0.8 told me not to add you end up with the Dane work for less money, so I do 5 in 4 is that an option for you? It might also work better for your company, you could either do 4 longer days or one day 12 hour day and 3 slightly longer than average days

Exactly this. Most employers wouldn’t agree to you only dropping one day, unless your role isn’t really needed full time at all.

I had inquired about compressed hours and they said it’s a universal no across the business. I assume that is not very legal is it? Considering every role is different

I forgot to add we have third party agency support workers who can backfill my role.

OP are you able to compress your hours instead? I honestly think 4 days is the worst of all worlds, they can’t back fill, you’ll unofficially be doing the same workload for less money. If you compress, you have the same time to get the job done and same money, but still get your day off.

Apologies just seen compression was discussed!

I’d be really interested in their justification for this…

Compressed hours is the worst of all for many organisations.

As most jobs are not shift based or paid by the hour, people often work more than their contracted hours to get work done. Yet some get to have a day off while others don’t, with no regard to whether they’re working efficiently during those hours.

It’s the least fair option that exists for their
co-workers.

Obviously for shift work etc. you can work 3x12 hour days if you want and it works fine.

@Savoury where are you getting your evidence for that? The main issue I can see with compressed hours is if a lot of people are having different days off throughout the week and not available for meetings. We manage this in our team by only doing Fridays as this then means we know Friday isn’t really meeting day and for those in the office (either because they don’t compress or they compress every other) it’s a quieter day for getting work done as opposed to meetings.

Dont really see where efficiency comes into it. If anything I am more productive in my 4 day weeks as I know I can’t procrastinate things to Friday!

The point about efficiency is that some
people - regardless of working pattern- will be working steadily all day and effectively getting through work. Others may get through the same work but in a more staggered way that takes longer - attending non mandatory work talks, lunch breaks with colleagues, checking the news sites. Comparing hours “worked” in many jobs is not straightforward.

In terms of “evidence” I’ve managed thousands of people over my career so have seen a lot and have worked in two major companies who banned compressed hours because they were challenged on discrimination by workers who didn’t have access to the same arrangement or weren’t automatically given the time off.

@Savoury that’s not evidence. As someone who has also managed a lot of teams I think outright banning it is pretty draconian and short sighted. Compressed hours has worked really successfully in my industry, particularly amongst female and senior colleagues who end up working very long days, it’s a way of ensuring some time back is given/taken. What is great is I am seeing more and more male colleagues doing it which I have no doubt is having a hugely positive impact on their home lives and thus women more indirectly.

But I work in a sector that isn’t solely focussed on output and recognises the benefit to healthy employees, both ethically and in terms of productivity.

It’s not irrelevant though is it. If the workload has increased by 100% that means it now warrants 2 FTE. Even if they recruit another person, you reducing to 4 days would mean they’d have 1.8 FTE and therefore would still be under resourced. I’d be prepared for them to say no.

If compressed hours is an outright no though, I would like to know where I stand here legally. It feels like they are rejecting all efforts for me to work flexibly without much consideration to my individual role which would be very amenable to a compressed hours schedule as I work with global teams.

Unless anyone has 100% of the information no one can advise
my old company it was a flat no for compressed hours and some of the business reasons give. Were support services finished at 5 so if you worked to 6 you have no support services. Customer queries come in in business hours so again working past 5 is no use and it leaves a resourcing gap as they have to cover a day off
it’s 100% legal to say no as long as they can back it up why

I think it really depends on your industry. When I started work in my industry 40 hours was spread across at least 5 days a week. This was very poor for mental health and lead to some terrible outcomes. Now 4 x 10 hour days is more common and is much better for work life balance.
But someone reducing there hours by 25% is very hard for us to fill unless it is split across several days. 50% is much easier to fill.
I have just taken a new role where a whole of crazy working patterns were previously agreed to leaving me with low staff numbers on the busiest days of the week. This will take me years to resolve with natural wastage and then here’s that better suit the needs of the business.

Make sure you get everything in writing. Make sure your statutory flexible working request is actually labelled with the word statutory.