Best days to drop when going part time

[Jellybabie3]

I'm hoping to go back in October part time if I can afford it. A few people have suggested different days are better to drop than others. I defo need fridays as i take DS swimming. Any experience of pros and cons for other days

I don't understand this... Why would you have to use your annual leave entitlement to cover a BH if you work Mondays? If everyone else is off work anyway, why would a part-timer be penalised and have to use their precious annual leave to cover it?? Unless they get their BH entitlement as additional days leave above everyone else's? I'm confused

Full timers will get 30 days + bank holidays (8 days - which they have to take on the bank holidays, obvs!).

Most companies dealing with part timers add bank hols to leave- so I got 0.6 of annual leave, plus 0.6 of 8 bank holidays (which they rounded up 5 days). The rule is that if a bank hol fell on one of my work days, I had to use one of those 5 days.

So, as a pp said, 4 of 8 of the bank hols are always Mondays. So if I didn't work Mondays, even if all the other bank hols fell on my work days, I'd still only ever have to use 4. I always had 1 day "left over" which I could take whoever I wanted.

If you work Mondays and depending on how the other 4 bank hols fell, you could potentially need to take 8 days' holiday to cover the bank holidays (unlikely but possible) even though you only get 5 extra days to cover those bank hols - so you could end up using 3 days of your annual leave, plus the 5 days, just to cover bank hols.

It very rarely pays to work Mondays.

*whenever, not whoever!

Why is AL so confusing. I don't know whether I've picked a good day to take off or not after reading this thread

Check with your childminder if they charge for bank holidays even if they close. Some do! Or some open for bank holidays and charge double rate. If they do either then dropping Monday’s and Fridays is your best option as most BHs are on Mondays and Fridays. You don’t want to be stuck paying for childcare you can’t or won’t use.

When I worked part time 3 days I worked Tuesday to Thursday and had Mondays and Fridays off. It was nice having a block of time off and gave me a long weekend. On bank holiday weeks I got extra time as I got about 4 hours off pro rata as most Bank hols were Monday's which I had off anyway.

It sounds as though your policy is the same as it was where I used to work. Full timers, get 30 days plus 8 bank holiday days. Doing three days a week, you will get 18 days plus 4.8 days bank holidays (which will be rounded up to 5 days), so 23 days in total.
At the beginning of each annual leave year, you need to work out which bank holidays fall on your working day (Christmas Day, Boxing Day & New Year's Day are the ones to look at if you're working Tues, Weds, Thurs) and then deduct those from your 23 days and that will tell you how many days you have left over. In years when Christmas Day falls on a Friday, you would get 23 days annual leave; in years when Christmas Day falls on a Tuesday, you would "only" get 20 days.
If, on the other hand, you worked Mon, Weds, Fri and Christmas Day fell on one of those days, then 7 bank holidays would fall on your working day so you'd have to use you your 5 bank holiday days plus an additional two days of annual leave to be able to take those days off which means you would only be able to chose when to take 16 days off.

Yes good point @squidgesquodge that will be the case this year for me if i work tues-thurs with christmas falling on a tues

Yep there's always a formula in pay that includes bank holidays and even 29 February. Mondays and Fridays sound brill

I dropped Monday and Friday, thus becoming a TWaT worker.

It’s nice to have the long weekends, not working on Monday, and what they all said about public holidays.

In my old workplace, I had Friday off because taking Monday off was frowned upon. It depends on the industry, in mine the shit usually hit the fan on a Monday as it had been brewing over the weekend!

I'm a sahm but have a new p/t job starting in a few weeks, I'm trying to work out how to manage my hours. I can split it over 4 days or condense it over 3, I think to start with I'll work 4 days a week. Then after I familiarise myself with the industry, I'll reduce it to 3 days a week.

Will your workplace be hiring someone to fill the days you have off? My workplace had someone go to Tue-Thur and it's been difficult to find someone who wants to work Monday and Friday.

No i don't think they are. Good point though

TWaT worker

I chose my days off based on when my kids school generally had events. So Fridays because that's when assemblies are and Tuesdays because that's when sports days, swimming carnival and cross country are.

it doesn't sound like your DS is at school yet but if you know the school he will most likely be attending you might want to take this into account

Never thought of that

If your proposed work pattern isn't suitable for the role then a good manager should anticipate this and be prepared to say no.

I've done most different combinations. It depends what your priorities are really, doing the best job you can in the reduced hours ( definitely include Monday) ? Getting the most annual leave ? ( don't do Monday's). Easiest home life with minimal disruption (day off midweek). If I were your manager I wouldn't agree a three day working week, which had you off every Friday and Monday as you would spend most of Tuesday catching up ( I found this was the case when didn't work Monday's, even though I was there on Fridays).

I have 2 part time workers in my team. One (0.8) takes Thursday off, and the other (0.7) takes Monday full day and Tuesday am. Both wanted Mondays and Fridays as their days off but that doesn't work well for our team as Mondays and Fridays are busy days. So beware your manager may not be able to accomodate your preferred days off, there was quite a bit of negotiation to get to the point we are currently at.
And working out bank holidays is a nightmare, it basically has to be discussed at the start of the annual leave year and agreed on as everyone always gets confused! Every year!