I have contacted my union about this but just wondering if anyone else has any advice.
I work 0.8 and occasionally I need to switch my day off. About half the time this is at my employer's request (e.g. internal meeting) and the other half it's mine/external (large external meeting that nobody's going to rearrange for me, seeing a client for whom it's the only day etc.).
This is probably 4-5 times per year. It's almost always maybe 2 to 6 weeks in advance so I arrange childcare, or DH takes the day off, or worst case I confirm or refuse at the last minute. For example I just confirmed I can go to a morning meeting next week on my regular day off but can't attend the afternoon due to DD's nursery only having space for her in the morning. Everyone fine with that.
I'm in a professional role with no real fixed hours but I'm not the only person across the organisation who has such a part time pattern. There are 2 in my group with the same line manager and the other one's DP doesn't work.
My DH does work so I can't guarantee that a switched day is covered by childcare. I have in the past had to refuse e.g. to deliver an internal training (which could be on any day but they chose my day off) because the date booked was so many months ahead I couldn't guarantee that I'd get childcare nor could my DH guarantee to take the day off. This has been a cause of friction even though I made this plain both at the start of my flexible working and more recently.
Long story short... if you are in a professional job with no fixed hours, but you work part time... how does your HR deal with you changing your part time pattern temporarily? They have made up some guff about how this can't be accommodated unless I request to change my contract for a week and change it back?
If I could find some examples of how this works elsewhere it might be possible to point out to my HR that they don't know what they are talking about.
I am also pretty sure they are irritated because I can't be as flexible as some in their direction (I also am not flexible in my own direction if that makes sense e.g. I've had to skip really interesting meetings due to no childcare where I'd loved to have gone but they don't see that!). I think ideally they want me to just work my day off with no time off to compensate, whenever they need me to, but probably would prefer me not to if it's e.g. something that improves my own CPD but isn't going to feed in to my work in the next month or two!
(Across my own organisation, I get the impression that most line managers do this informally but mine won't).