Flexible working application- help please!

[MotherPanda]

Helo, I'm starting to plan my return to work after maternity leave and am filling in lots of paperwork - including my application for flexible working.

I currently work 18 hours a week over 5 afternoons, but am trying to compress this to 3 days (especially as I have a silly 90 min commute).

There's another team who work 18 hours over 5 mornings, so i would be bridging the gap between the two teams by compressing my hours over 3 days.

I'm looking for suggestions as to what problems this could face the company and how i can resolve these.

theres no extra cost to them, so don't need to worry about that and they will be getting the same amount of work out of me. The only problems I can forsee is a high demand for equipment in the mornings, which i can resolve by completing tasks that don't require equipment, and the fact that if additional work comes up, they would need to give me enough notice so that i can do overtime/ adjust my hours (so i can sort out childcare, but i havn't mentioned this).

Are there any other things i should be thinking about, I really want this to be accepted, It looks too simple for me at the moment

Thanks

Why is your job currently five afternoons a week? Is there an operational reason? If you were not to be in the office for two afternoons would that mean that there would be no-one to answer the phone, do tasks associated with your job that need immediate attention?

What would the impact be on your colleagues?

Without knowing what job it is and what type of organisation it's very hard to advise you.

its a library, my team is in charge of cataloguing really, (so don't face customers) but there's only enough equipment for one team at a time - so we split into am and pm teams.

Rather than task specific problems I was looking for more specific 'business' reasons they might not be keen to change contracts, i suppose.

In a university, so not public.

Well the task specific problems will feed through as operational problems so you do need to consider them because they could use a business reason related to the operational problem to decline your request.

For example, you mention there not being enough equipment. That is potentially a fairly significant operational problem. Would more need to be bought to enable you to do your job? And if so at what cost? If the cost is prohibitive the business reason for declining will be "burden of additional costs".

But if you just want business reasons to decline here they are:

planned structural changes
the burden of additional costs
a detrimental impact on quality
the inability to recruit additional staff
a detrimental impact on performance
the inability to reorganise work among existing staff
a detrimental effect on ability to meet customer demand
lack of work during the periods the employee proposes to work

thanks - that's really useful

Are u part of a union? I'm not very au fait on these but they might b able to help?

Final thoughts be very wary of any negativity u make regarding ur length of commute. It wouldn't be seen favourably.... Also come up with a plan b option, the compromises you might agree too. They will ask for a mtg to discuss ur proposal where they will state where they think it mightn't work. Don't say anything but u need to discuss with ur family and book a second mtg. If u already have in mind a compromise u won't b earth shatteringly disappointed if u don't get all ur requests approved.

Otherwise, other posts are great, good luck and hope u get it!