I thought I’d try on here to see if anyone has any advice.
I’m due back to work in August after maternity leave, I have two young children who both go into nursery 3 days a week. I put in for a flexible working request to drop down to 32 hours (I currently work 40), it’ll be a total of 4 days but I’ve asked for the 4th day to be split into 2 half days so that I can be present Monday - Friday at work. The reason I requested for it is because I don’t have childcare on Tuesday and Friday afternoons.
I explained the reasons for my request and how I think it can still benefit my job in writing. I was then invited to a virtual meeting with HR and my manager to discuss in detail which we did. Two weeks later, they invited me to another virtual meeting to tell me that what they can offer is 32 hours across 4 full days and have Thursday as my day off (so they want me to work on the 2 days that I don’t have childcare and they knew I couldn’t get childcare!!!) they also offered me to work on a completely different type of desk. After the meeting, I received no formal letter regarding what we spoke about, and they still haven’t given me any written reason as to why they couldn’t accept my original request. I got in touch with them to clarify a couple of things such as salary and holiday, and I also asked if the day off could be switched to a Tuesday as it would work better. However other than that, I’ve had no formal written decision made - I currently have no idea why they could allow 32 hours but why it couldn’t work on 2 half days but it can work on 1 full day off!
As far as I’m aware, I’m treating it as if they haven’t made any decision yet as I have not received any formal letter in writing regarding it. They’ve also been VERY slow to get back to me in email, HR keeps saying that they’re waiting to hear back from my manager.
Do you think they’re being unfair right now? I don’t really know what to do from here.