Flexible working request

[BettyBleue]

Hi, I am currently on maternity leave and would like to request that I return to work part time at 3 days per week. I'm completing the request form and I'm really struggling with the following: 1. Describing how the change in working pattern will affect my employer and colleagues and 2. Describing how the effect on my employer and colleagues can be dealt with.

I work in an admin role and it is very much a full time job, in fact more than full time. The best thing I can think of to suggest is that they employ another part time person to do a job share, but I know that the company would never consider this as there is a freeze on recruiting, especially in admin roles. I just don't know how to answer these questions. I was thinking of writing something along the lines of the fact I would be fully committed and motivated during my 3 working days and would review all my current working methods and to ensure I worked as efficiently as possible; I would make everyone within the company and outside the company aware of my working pattern so they would know when to contact me and when to schedule meetings with me. Apart from that I can't really think of anything else.

There is one other Administrator in the department, but I can't suggest that she be given additional duties to cover my workload as she already has enough to do.

Does anyone have any advice/suggestions?

Many thanks

[Mumchatting]

Hi, I have recently requested flexible hours but it was declined. I'm also in admin and full time. I wanted to reduce my hours to 2 or 3 days a week but they refused any part time hours.
I hope your request will be approved. You really need to put good reasons why you think your change in hours won't have effect on the business. They can still refuse your request if they don't feel like having a part timer.

Good luck.

[Stillunexpected]

If you are working full-time and the role is definitely full-time (or more!) how on earth are you going to manage it in three days? It's fine to say that you will make people aware of your working days but that just means that they will condense five days-worth of queries/conversations/meetings etc into three days instead. It doesn't remove any of the workload. If you are going to say that you will review current working methods you need to be able to provide an example of an area where you think you could save time or improve a process, otherwise it just sounds like waffle. Do you genuinely think there are ways in which time or effort could be saved? If so, why haven't they been implemented already?

I'm not trying to be unsupportive of your application but these are the questions which management will be asking and I would be concerned that this situation sounds like a loss for everyone - your employer can't expect to get five (or five and a half) days of work covered in three and you will run yourself ragged, end up doing work at home and on your days off, getting paid for three days and eventually end up going off sick.

[BettyBleue]

Thank you all for your great advice and suggestions. I will be honest and say that there will be an impact and suggest ways to minimise the impact.

[VegasIsBest]

Surely if you say there is no impact and you can do the job in three days instead of five you're just saying that you're currently underemployed. I can't believe that's a good message to give your manager in an organisation that's obviously struggling financially given the hiring freeze.

[BikeRunSki]

Forgot to say - there may be a freeze on recruitment, but could you find someone already in the organisation to jobshare with? You could use it as a "development opportunity" or "business continuity contingency" (ie more than one person can do the job, company is not so vulnerable to loosing one of you).

[BikeRunSki]

I agree - as a manager, part timer and former job sharer - cutting your hours by 40% will obviously have an impact on business . The was to approach it is eith a jobshare either 1- two people doing the job on different days
2 - split the role into seperate tasks for each person, either on different or the same days dependent on the "presence" the role requires
3- even better, a variation on 1, but with a handover day/half day. This is what I did. We justified it by taking on an extra on-going task that neither of us would normally have done. The handover day really did make us seamless.

There is an thread that was running over the w/e about a FWR that was turned down. You may get some ideas from that.

Good luck.

PT solo and jobshare has been great for me, but I'm so looking forward to upping my hours when my youngest goes to school in Sept.

[Drquin]

Be honest.
If it's a genuinely busy full-time role now, it stands to reason there'll be some impact if you return part-time. There has to be some impact.

Is it a practical impact - in that there's literally no-one in the office, no-one doing the job whilst you're not there? Can the tasks be reorganised so that they're all still done (perhaps in a different order / time of day) across your part-time hours?

If there is a freeze on hiring, can you use this to your advantage? How can you structure it such that they're happy your PT hours gets the job done, but as & when you want to go FT again, you're the obvious choice?

[IceMaiden73]

I'm the same as gBean of course it will have an impact. You have already said it is more than a full time role anyway ! I think you need to explain how the role could be split effectively with as little disruption to the company as possible

[gBean]

As a manager, the most annoying thing about a FWR is when people put down that there'll be no impact on the company. Of course there will. It's always best to identify the impact and go on to say what you'll do to minimise it.

I laugh when I get a request for someone to work 2/5 of the week less than usual and claim it won't have any impact.

[ASAS]

Either answer, no impact anticipated as I'm returning to a post I'm highly experienced in (ie if they refuse don't make it easy for them by suggesting a recruitment need).

Or answer simply no impact anticipated, which is obv a but PA but you may have the charm to pull it off.

Good luck!