Return to work on reduced hours appeal

[Pippinsqueak]

Hello was just wondering if anybody had any experience of troubles returning to work on reduced hours after coming back from maternity leave.

My employer has declined my request for reducing my hours down from five days a week to 4 days a week. Therefore I have gone through an appeal process.

My reasons for requesting reduced hours include

1. Not being able to afford full-time childcare, this would leave me in financial difficulties each month.

1. The childminder my daughter has currently been in for six months doesn't not work on Friday which is the day I have requested to reduce. My employer told me that I'd have to find another childminder or put my daughter in for a nursery for one day a week or another childminder on one day a week which will have a detrimental effect on my daughter.

1. Within the team six other women have had babies in the last three years and they are in more senior positions and they have all come back on three days a week so I feel slightly discriminated against.

1. Working full time would have a detrimental effect on my home work life balance and my mental health as I have been off with exhaustion and stress as my baby has not slept properly since birth.

They cite that they cannot recruit my position ( I'm a support worker) for any hours, and that me reducing my hours would have a negative affect on the service.

Is there any legal points I can fight this with at all or has anyone done anything similar and won?

Thank you

1. They have known since July 2018 when I told them I was pregnant that I never intended on returning full time.

Think if there is anything in particular you bring to your role that other staff don’t? A special skill or level of expertise that they would miss if you weren’t there? IT whizz, fluency in Farsi? Etc. Sometimes managers might not be aware of useful behind-the-scenes attributes that staff have.

Thank you for all your replies today I am going to look at them properly tomorrow as I have had two panic attacks now over this, one last night and another tonight. I think it's best if I look at these during the day

Thank you once again I really do appreciate the help

I think once they have said no it is very difficult to change their mind
I think sometimes we forget their is no right to reduce hours,only to ask
I was the first in my company to go part time and there was a huge fuss about it
A bit off topic but I wouldn't go 4 days,in most jobs you end up doing a full time job for part time pay

'There'

Well I was told to go for the four days as it would leave another three days to be recruited for, hence why I did the four.

If I ask for three days it still leaves four days to be covered with another support worker

If I ask for two it means they need to look for five days.

If I continue to work full time at five days they still need two days covered for the other support workers two shifts she's dropped.

The way I see it in order for the service to run as they want they need a third person which ever way they look at it

Hence why I'm confused they rejected it. I thought offering four days a week with someone who has been in the job for 5 years which maximum qualifications in that post would be more beneficial to the team than me going down to two days and having to advertise and potentially train up another support worker

Can you offer to work full time hours over 4 days a week- you'd obviously have extended hours during the four days your in though.

Does the job/service it provides have core hours that need to be covered? Are the days that you are proposing to work the opposite ones to your colleague or do you both want the same days off? If you are both absent on the same days that could be an issue especially if they will struggle to recruit. If it has core hours then an extended working day is probably not an attractive proposition for your employer if it leaves them short on another day.

It is really tricky OP, and I can see why you are finding it stressful.

I would offer to do 3 days as they are much more likely to be able to recruit someone to work 2 days a week instead of just one or you and the 2 day a week person could job share then they recruit someone to do full time.

You also need to point out that people in the same role as you have been granted flexible working but I think this may be because they dropped from 5 days to 3 days and 4 days to 2 days so there wasn't just one day to cover like in your case. It's very hard to get someone on board to work just one day a week

Who "told" you? Were they involved in the decision to refuse? If OH advised 50% maybe that would be a more appropriate starting point. However still confused that you have been off sick , now using accrued leave, presumably maternity before that. Just how long have they been managing without you?

Just read the thread! So there's two of you and you did 9 shifts between you? Your counterpart doing 4 and you doing 5? She has dropped to 2 shifts and you want 4 shifts so this leaves 3 shifts to be be filled? Even if they keep you on 5 shifts, they still need to cover 2 shifts so what difference does it makes if they advertise for someone to do 3 shifts instead of 2? They can't grant your counterpart flexible working going from 4 shifts to 2 shifts and not grant you going from 5 to 4. They need to be seen as being balanced and offering every employee the same opportunities

@YappityYapYap yes you have it exactly right! I'm so glad I've explained it and someone gets it, so what ever I ask for if they want the service to run as it did before, with 9 days being covered, they will have to get another person regardless of me doing five days or not. It's just working out what to offer them as an alternative, but even if I ask for three days they will still need someone else to do the other four so why can't I do the four, if I do two days a week (means I have to find another job for the other two days) they would have to find someone full time.

They've already said it's hard to recruit a full time person, my job is suitable for loads of people who want part time work.

@LIZS HR told me to go for four days as I could always ask to reduce but not increase

I can offer to work an hour extra per day but still leaves four hours to be filled

Just out of curiosity has anyone gone through this appeal process? As I'm doing it on my own (left it to late to join a union as I had faith in my work place 🤦‍♀️)

How does the format go? I know there's two people and my manager there.

I was thinking of writing an opening statement being positive etc then I'm sure they ll want to know my reasons for wanting to reduce my hours so I was going to list business reasons. They ll be asking me about the more personal ones so I was going to briefly go into those but tie them into work some how, then speak about my occupational health report, then conclude with alternatives on how I maybe able to reduce my
Hours.

Sorry if this seems obvious to anyone else what to do but I've never done one before and on my own

How long after starting a new job to wait to get pregnant?

I’ve just started a new job well in Nov’19 & my husband and I are considering trying for a baby. I am really excited for it but I’m holding off because I’m worried my new job will judge me :/

Has anyone else been through a similar experience?