Flexible working application

[FamilyAdventure]

DH would like to spend less time at work.

He's approaching 50, works a long day and has a long commute and is starting to find it all a bit much.

He works for a Japanese company where the culture is very much work til you drop and no-one leave before the boss, among the Japanese staff. Although the staff are very multi-cultural - over 30 different nationalities, Japanese are the majority.

Anyway, he is currently in the office c. 10 hours per day, when his "official" hours are 9-5. He's thinking he could do his hours over 4 days. TBH even one day a week from home would be a massive help, but this kind of arrangement is frowned upon.

So, he needs to prove it can work for the business, which it can. He's managing a team based all over the world, everything is done be teleconference and whilst he sits in an office with other people who work for the company, his own actual colleagues are rarely in the same country IYSWIM. On a practical level, there is no reason one or a mixture of these arrangements shouldn't work. But, the company really don't like to think anyone is giving anything less than blood and view p-t or work from home arrangements with suspicion.

Would you even bother making the application? If so, any tips?

Well, in this culture I think it's probably unlikely to be successful and if he wants to stay there, he should consider how applying might affect perceptions of him at work. It's not right, but be realistic.

Having said that, if he's a valued employee you never know. He currently works 50ish hours a week and would presumably be proposing to work at least 20% less, so from a practical point of view he needs to be able to demonstrate how his workload would be covered, without a detrimental impact on colleagues. He should also consider ways this would benefit his employer.

Yes, I think you're right about the perception Flowery, thank you.

He's not worried about the workload because a lot of it is about being seen in the office for long hours more than actually working IYSWIM. He admits he could do what he does in his 35 hours without too much extra effort, but it's not the done thing to walk out at 5pm.

Yes I understand that, but framing that in a way that doesn't come across badly isn't going to be easy. "I'll easily be able to do all my work in much less time because I and all my colleagues don't actually work very hard when we're here, we just hang about to look as if we work long hours."

See what I mean?