Weird pro-rated hours question

[tattyheadsmum]

I'm down to the final two for a job that I really would like. However, it seems to me that the employer isn't pro-rating the hours/pay fairly and I'd welcome other opinions (particularly from people who work in HR).

The job has been advertised as a 3 day a week role; so far so good. However, the employer has calculated 3 days as being 27 hours. By way of comparison, I currently work a 4 day week, which is 30 hours. By their calculations a 5 day week would be 48 hours.

Has anyone come across anything like this before, or are they trying to get 4 days work and pay for 3?

That's odd. You should ask what a full working week is. Is the salary 60% of full time? I do have a friend who works 29ish hours over 3 days, but she's paid 80% of her full time salary so it's as if she's doing 4 days over 3.

What hours will you be working each day and are breaks and lunch paid or unpaid?

27 hours over 3 days is a 9 hour day - so for example it could be 8.30am- 6pm with half hour unpaid lunch break.

However, the employer has calculated 3 days as being 27 hours...By their calculations a 5 day week would be 48 hours

Unless I’m reading this right, by their calculations, a 5 day week would be 45 hours (27/3= 9, 9x5=45).

Sounds like your current job has a 7.5 hour working day, and theirs is 9.

That's 3 9 hour days.... What's the salary ( not pro rata) if they are specifying 27 hours then so long as they pay you for that they're not getting you to work for free but if you don't want to do 9 hours a day you need to clarify with them how to make this work either by reducing the hours ( and therefore salary), or as you say doing an extra day. Best to clarify, it could be a typo, maybe they meant 21 hours!

Nothing wrong with having 27 hours over three days, as long as they're paying you for 27 hours. They're not necessarily saying that a 5 day week would be 45 hours, they're saying that for this particular role, they want the person to work 27 hours over three days.

You need to know what the FTE salary is for the post, and what the normal working week is for full timers (often 37.5 hours), then divide the FTE salary by 37.5 and multiply by 27 to see what it should be pro rata.

As Flowery says, it's not about 'fairly pro-rating' unless you have the FTE salary, and the FTE hours. Until then, any pro-rata term given is meaningless. So 27 hours over 3 days could be a 3/5 of a 45 hour week, or they could be basing it on a 37.5 hour week but want to compress a 3.5 day week into 3 days.... You can't tell until you have the FTE.