Working full time job, getting paid for four days

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Hello

I am currently contracted for and paid for 4 days a week however I have quite a senior job, with six staff and am essentially doing a full time job. I have stopped reading my blackberry on my day off which is progress but I wish to approach my boss to recompensed for doing a full time job.

Boss has acknowledged I am doing a good/exceptional role (signed on my end of year appraisal) and my job desc scope was increased during the year.

I feel I have enough evidence but would welcome any advice. Has someone done this before? Are there any tribunals I can quote to back up my case? Please help!

Thanks.

You may be right but I think i said up near the top of the thread that I am not overly fond of my job and being there five days a week would put a dent in my sanity! New job, full time I think is the answer.

Lurkingsnurker - you obviously work for a good company. Do they have any jobs going? ;-)

right back at you lurking.

Yes perhaps you would be mightily hacked off. But people considering requests have to take a wider view than whether one person will be hacked off.

Take a team of 5 people, working hard, putting in the effort, good morale, working well together. Contracted hours technically say 9-5 with an hour for lunch, but like most senior/management positions, those hours aren't really realistic, and most people come in around 8.30 and leave about 6, either grabbing a sandwich at their desk or popping out for half an hour. Nothing excessive in my view. So instead of the basic 35 hours a week they are probably all doing about 45.

All working happily but then suddenly one of the team decides they are going to work to rule, only do their 35 hours a week, reducing their hours by 20-25%, and deciding they are going to 'compress' those hours. They are planning to work more or less the same hours as previously Monday -Thursday, so the same as everyone else, but on Friday they want a day off every week. And they want to get paid the same as before and the same as everyone else.

If you put in that request you may be mightily hacked off when it's refused, but the rest of the team would be even more hacked off that you were getting a free paid day off a week. Resentment, lowered morale, reduced productivity, loss of team spirit, it goes on. Perhaps they all decide because they are hacked off they will also only work 35 hours a week, and start showing up at 8.59, then not answering their phone if it rings at 5.01.

Call me old fashioned if you like, but I personally think a reduction in hours should usually be accompanied by an appropriate reduction in pay. If the person making the request acknowledges that if they want to work the same hours 4 days a week and have the 5th day off, that means a pay reduction, then everyone's happy.

One could also argue that if a job can be perfectly easily done in 4 days a week then it isn't a 'full time' job anyway. But that's a different argument.

Good work life balance is really important. I am a CEO and we have a much happier staff as we have a flexi time system and a TOIL system - no -one should be regularly working that much extra - I make a point of keeping an eye on it - if someone is regularly working more than their contractd hours and building up TOIL then I have a word - it means they are a poor time manager.

There should always be a mechanism for having that time back.

Xenia - I have to disagree - I think the more people male or female who can make a sucess of flexiable working - including promotion chances etc the better

It's just such a disappointing attitude to see that so many people think that flexible working = less commitment. I have worked compressed hours for 5 years now, and been promoted twice. It needn't stall your career - I still work long hours though, and do what it takes to get the job done. And I still do a bloody good job too. I just fit it around my children more easily than a traditional FT role.

Agree 100% with hairylights and crw. I manage my team in the same way - we don't clockwatch, we do what's required to get the job done. Some weeks that's full on 70 hours a week if we've got a big launch coming up. The next week I actively encourage my team to finish early / take long lunches to make up for it. My team are committed and high performing. Frankly, it is insulting to think that people assume otherwise just because of the hours in the office.

Waffle - you need a serious chat with your manager. I think you need to tell her what you can't do any more, as you are only being paid for four days, and therefore you can't manage do do x, y and z. They are taking advantage - pure and simple.

I don't think flexible working = less commitment at at lurking. But I do think that you end up working fewer hours than someone who works full time if you work in the sort of job where long hours are the norm. But then I also think if you get paid £60k+ with bonuses on top then that's why you get paid that kind of money.

I don't see much if any evidence of people thinking flexible working = less commitment lurking. I certainly don't see any evidence that anyone would think your team, who do what's required to get the job done rather than clockwatch and disappear the moment their contracted hours are up, are not high performing and committed. Sounds as though they definitely are.

I think whether working part time/compressed hours stalls your career would depend on the kind of organisation/role you work in. Although in the kind of organisation that can and is willing to support compressed hours in a senior role, the chances are less that it would affect your career anyway.

Waffle I would say the same to you as to the OP - if you are being paid for 4 days, work 4 days, don't work on your 5th day. Ideally in your case as you want to work full time, you want to demonstrate that your job can't be done in 4 days. Has anything changed recently that you can pin that on? So you can say 'up to recently I've managed, now I can't manage without working on my day off, therefore it's now full time'

I get so at concept that flexible working = less commitment. If you read the research you actually find the reverse is true. Turnover falls and productivity goes up. Saying that, productivity is often improved in practice because (a) the part time person goes on a guilt trip about their PT status and stops 'gossip' time and all the other stuff that sometimes leeches into the working day, and (b) the number of days drop but the work doesn't so they are forced to work harder.

It's annoying but there isn't an easy way out. The way I managed it when I did a 4 day week was by having a meeting with my boss where I explained that because I was doing in 4 days what most of my peers couldn't manage in 5 it felt tough on me to receive a lower salary but that I understood that it would be equally unfair on the others for me to get the same salary for fewer days, so could we do a compromise whereby my base salary stayed at 80% but that if each year-end he was satisfied that I had exceeded the expectations of a full time employee, he would then pay me a bonus that brought my salary back up to the full time level. It worked for me, so might be worth a try?

Thanks Lurking and flowery I think my manager is taking advantage but I have let them for a while so I can see why they wouldn't want to change. I will have to think about how to demonstrate my job can't be done in 4 days, flowery. There has been a change in that the role above mine was removed, leaving me with all my previous work plus nearly half of the work done by this person. I have tried to accommodate this for several months but it's not really working.

I actually have a counterpart in another part of the organisation ( same level of responsibility etc) who can't really manage in 5 days ( not her fault, just a lot of work ) let alone 4. However I don't think I could cite that as justification. I'll need to get on my thinking cap!

I would never willingly take on a part time job because I know I would end up doing it fulltime (ie in my own time).

Well that sounds like a possibility waffle - if you were dumped with a load more work a few months ago, you can say 'look I've really done my best to squeeze my original job plus all this extra into 4 days but it's just not possible'.

You can't really cite your colleague not coping in 5 days, no, but if she's doing the same job with same/similar workload and is at capacity without any thumb-twiddling, then that you can cite.

I think I will, flowery, thanks. I've been too tired to tackle lately but I will summon up the energy. My colleague does more hair-pulling than thumb-twiddling, unfortunately! I've just applied for a full time post elsewhere but would prefer to stay where I am for numerous reasons.

Crystalglasses, sadly this seems often to be true.

UPDATE: Well everyone, I sat down with my boss and said seen as I was doing the role of a full time person albeit within four days that my remuneration should reflect that. I gave plenty of evidence etc. I got a flat "no". I was told everyone in the company works lots of hours to get the job done and why should I be different? If i want a full time salary I have to be visible and available full time.

ANd then my boss smiles at me, asks if I am busy and gives me a load more work. I feel like I am in a Dilbert cartoon.