Rota unfair to part-timers, what do I do?

[EvilRotation]

We have a work rota for late finishes at work, due to the workload having a late finish also means you spend all day doing the most unpleasant job (I hope this makes some sense I don't want to go into too much specific detail). The rota is compiled by members of the team in a rotational basis, it is not set at management level.

I am part-time along with another colleague (who we'll call A), between us we do the same hours as full time workers.

The rota has always worked out slightly unfair to me and A because where leave and sickness are harder to cover it tends to be pushed on to one of us. Most people have one bad day per week (so every 5 days) but ours tend to average out slightly more frequent than this. The issue has been discussed many times and I've basically been told I have to live with it as it's too difficult to make it entirely fair and it should even out over time. Generally we have this discussion every month because it fails to even out, it always works out ever so slightly worse for me and A. I think only 1 of these discussions has been minuted formally during a team meeting and I'm not sure how much of the discussion was recorded (will check next time I'm in).

This month things have got much, much worse. There are issues with short staffing, instead of everyone picking up some of the slack it's all been given to me and A. Between the 2 of us we are doing double what everyone else is, so averaging a bad day every 2 or 3 days instead of every 5. Normally the rota is signed off by everyone before it's made formal, I was on leave so I've not signed it off, A must have agreed to it.

When it was sent to me I replied by email that I wasn't willing to sign it off (I'm still currently on leave but had asked a colleague to send it through so I knew what my hours were). I was sent back a snippy email saying I should do it if I thought I could do a better job (this would mean working from home, unpaid, whilst on leave).

What now? I'm not sure I want to turn this into a formal complaint with all the hassle that would bring but I really can't rearrange my life to do double my fair share of the work. I am only asking for fairness, not any special treatment for being PT. I just don't know how to make other team members see this without creating a hideous atmosphere and loads of hassle for everyone.

Apologies for the essay, I can answer any questions if any of it isn't clear.

keep the email and keep a log of what is happening - but do this by email and refrain from verbal as you will struggle to use this as evidence.

You will eventually have to make this a complaint

but I would suggest you find a fairer way of doing the rota to show that it can be shared equally

Did the snippy email come from your manager? I'm not sure you need to worry hugely about having to convince the rest of the team, surely the person who decides what system is used for creating the rota is the manager, and that's who you need to speak to? Compiling the rota being done by the team themselves is asking for trouble, resentment and squabbling anyway if you ask me.

I do agree that calmly raising this with your manager while proposing an alternative system will be your best bet.

Can you get the figures for the last 6 months or year to show your manager? That should help counter claims of things evening out over time.

All the rotas are stored electronically so it should be easy enough to put together figures, various people have left/started/covered other jobs temporarily so it probably hard to compare all members of the team but I could compare me/A to a couple of people who've been FT throughout.

The snippy email was from a colleague at my level, the manager expects us to sort it all out amongst ourselves. One of the reasons I'm wary of involving the manager is that we could lose our flexitime system altogether and just be made to work fixed hours, if we can't make a rota work. If everyone ends up on fixed hours I will, almost certainly, be blamed for complaining instead of everyone blaming themselves for doing unfair rotas.

The rota system can be made to work properly, A did the rota a few months ago and managed to make all the ratios fair to the number of days each person works (there are also a couple of people who work 4 days a week who normally come off badly but they are on temp contracts so tend not to rock the boat).

This 'team' approach to rota setting is only going to work if there are very clear rules to be followed.

Presumably, everyone should do the rubbish shift 20% of the time? So, you make a rule that the year-to-date percentages are calculated and maintained for every person in the team. Then the second part of this rule is that if anyone's % level goes above 30% at any point, they are not assigned to the rubbish shift until the % falls back down to 20%.

Hope that makes sense. Once set up should be very easy to maintain the data on, say, a monthly basis.

Can you use A's fair rota as a template for drawing up a fair proposal? I understand what you're saying about doing it at home in your own time, but you're also worrying about it here in your own time, and using A's effort as a starting point would hopefully be quicker.

I did go and discuss this with my manager in the end, despite my worries beforehand he was actually very supportive. The actual thrashing out of how the rota was going to be changed had to be done with the rest of the team though and that was not a pleasant meeting. I was told 'you're so wrapped up in what you're doing you don't notice how hard everyone else is working', 'everyone has to be willing to give and take' and accused of whining because I don't want to do my share.

My response to this is to create a spreadsheet which proves exactly who has done what, I'm going to email it in. If anyone has a minute please could you offer any advice/suggestions for the email. I've put it in OTBT here so it's non-searchable and will vanish before long.

Is the tone right? I've tried to stick to facts and not make it a rant about how totally bloody wrong they are.

It's long, but I can understand you wanting to come across as scrupulous in your approach. I would change it slightly to show the figures for you and the other part time colleague (am assuming she's also been shafted). That way it isn't all about 'you', it's about being fair on the team.

Am BTW a bit that your boss isn't sending this out himself. If it were me I'd suggest he sends an email with the s/s attached and a much more simple email stating:- "X has done some calcs using the data we had to hand - attached s/s converts the part-timers hours into FTE. Quite clear that X & Y have been doing far more than their fair share of shite rota, so please use this spreadsheet going forward to both record and check rotas to ensure they are treated more fairly in future - we need to reduce their shite rotas until it gets down to the same average as the rest of you".

That says it all in a far simpler way, and would be much better coming from boss than from you.

A has also been shafted, I'm not sure whether to bring it up or not though, so far A's approach seems to be that it's easier to do the work than rock the boat. I don't really want to drag A into it too much, when A just seems to want a quiet life.

Boss is very 'hands off', some of the time this is a good thing but it does mean problems tend to get passed back to the people bringing them up. If I sent the spreadsheet just to him, he'd probably agree it was a good thing and then tell me to sell it to the rest of the team. Same as with changing the rota, he would have said something if changes weren't made, but let me take the verbal battering in the meeting to make the changes happen.

I agree with Squiffy.

Your boss isn't paid to be hands off.

Has the e-mail been sent? What was the reaction?