Civil service job offer unsuitable for childcare.

[Asvan]

Hi

I just need some advice please. I'm looking to get back into work as my youngest starts school this September. I applied for an admin assistant role in the civil service and I got the job! I applied for this role as it was advertised as part time/flexible.

They called me on Friday to say the hours of work would be two full days and a half day. However, this isn't suitable for me as I have three kids under the age of 11. I have no help with childcare and my husband works away a lot so I need to be available for the kids.

In an ideal world I wouldn't mind working a few hours each day while the kids are at school as the job is only 18 hours a week. Is this something that I could negotiate? Also I would prefer to only work term time and maybe even be allowed to work from home some days. I feel like I'm asking for so much but I'd rather be honest from the beginning instead of wasting everyone's time.

Has anyone been in a similar position? And what's the best way to proceed. I have to let them know by Monday if I want to take the job. I dont want to come across as unflexible or unreasonable.

I work for a LA. I would say that your best option is asking for 1 full day and 2 school hour days. Don't write it off if it really has to be 2.5 days though. That's only 2 days to find childcare.

Once you get your foot in the door, you can see how the land lies. At my workplace we can buy up 2 weeks additional leave each year and we get 5 weeks as standard. I'm able to take some time (if not all) for every half term, a week at Xmas & Easter and 2 weeks in the summer. We also get flex leave (time in lieu for extra hours worked).

Why wasn’t this discussed at interview stage ? You can ask but I think only working term time unless advertised in the job description is a big ask would you not use childcare

Also agree you are very lucky to have been offered the job in the current climate

Ask for a meeting to discuss the flexible working arrangements you need. As a civil servant you can put in a formal flexible working request if it can't be agreed informally and your employer will have to justify refusing it (although there may well be reasons they have to).

Assuming it's not a job share, they might consider your request to work less hours spread over more days, but I'd think someone was really bloody cheeky if they asked to work term time only too. Apart from in a school, I can't think of many office type jobs where that would even work; what are they meant to do for the 10 or so weeks a year when you're not there?

Flexible within civil service ususally means "flexi time" i.e. that you have a certain numbers of hours per week/month to be worked within the contracted part-time contracted days.
So this can work in a number of ways depending on the nature of the job. E.g. you agree you work, say, Monday, Wednesday and part of Thursday - 18 hours per week. But it may be left up to you how to allocate the hours within these days.
Or it may be 18 hours per week and they may agree to you working every day to make up the number.

But if they have already said what the pattern is, I assume the job is not as flexible as that second option and that you have to make it fit with your other commitments. However, you may be able to negotiate somewhat as a lot of roles are now working from home only.

I would be very surprised if they agreed to term-time only work at this stage. You are effectively leaving your workload to other people for several weeks at a time.
I would be quite annoyed if i was them if a candidate only brought a bombshell like that after the job was offered to them. This should have been discussed at the interview stage, or even before because all civil service job adverts have contact emails to query things like that.

Working the 2.5 days might also give you flexibility to swap days occasionally, e.g. if you want to go to Sportsday on Tuesday you could work Friday instead that week

WFH for at least some days is very common in central govt departments in the civil service, and at the moment the vast majority people are completely WFH. And even when we go back to offices, it’s looking likely people will be expected to WFH at least part of the week, so offices aren’t too full. That seems like a perfectly reasonable request (or at least it would be in all the departments I’ve worked in or know people in).

I agree with others that you need to have a conversation about whether working short days over several days will work with the role - it might, or it might not (eg because they’ve got other admin ppl covering the other 2.5 days). But worth asking.

Term time only is uncommon, because the work is very seldom only term time and it would just put more pressure on your colleagues. Unless you were in a minister’s office, when parliamentary recess more or less coincides with school holidays.

take the job and look for childcare options.
do not yet ask for adjustments.
ime it is easier to arrange whole day childcare than a patchwork of mornings/afternoons.
some of the new colleagues will also be parents who will want some of the holidays off work.

wrt working from home, you will still need childcare.

You need to arrange childcare like other working parents. Your expectations are unrealistic and no chance with 10 weeks of holidays.

Those hours and a job in civil service would be enough fir me. Your only hope of TTO is working in a school and there is 0 flexibility on hours in schools as the jobs are so coveted. I am not sure you are ready to get a job either that or you need to look at 10-2 but everyday jobs. I personally would rather have 2.5 days off and make it work for childcare etc. There will be 20+ other people on their list to have your job with the hours they require if you decline the job. It’s an employers market at the moment and part time is the holy grail for parents. I would make it work

You might be better off working in a school. They have midday workers in many that do 10.30 to 1.45 etc. Term time only.

So you totally want to change the job you applied for to suit your needs not theirs

I think you are asking too much - you've gone from wanting part time/flexible working to wanting term time only?! There will be plenty of people behind you in the queue to accept this job

It is annoying though if the job was advertised as flexible 18 hours pw without stating what the actual hours were.

18 hours pw isn't term time only though is it 🤷‍♀️

OP did you not discuss the hours at interview?

I'm an employer who has lots of part time staff, the hours should have been in the job advert and definitely discussed at interview.

If you came to me after the job offer after not mentioning your ( slightly unreasonable) requirements at interview I would think to reconsider my offer.

As a PP states there will be hundreds of people behind you ready to snap that job up with those hours.

You're definitely hoping for too much OP, sorry! Firstly term time only is pretty unrealistic unless it's been specially advertised as that.
It's certainly worth asking if the hours can be spread over the week so you can complete them within school time.
Otherwise, you need to check out the wraparound care options available for your DCs. Very few working parents have the luxury of completing all their working hours between 10-3. That's why there are breakfast and after school clubs.

When I retired from Civil Service 6 years ago, many staff worked part-time, term time only. Salary was adjusted so that each months pay was the same. Brilliant for staff, but I often wondered how they could run Jobcentres like this. And those staff still had annual leave to take.

If you are set on term time only, then education admin for local authority offices may be something to look into.

I'm not a civil servant anymore, but the 18 hour over 2.5 days strongly suggests it's job share as "part time" is more than 18 hours per week and is generally over 5 days. I worked with a few job share employees, and sure once you're established you can usually arrange with your other half to swap odd days etc. Additionally, like everyone has said part time/flexible will mean part time and Flexi time not part time but you pick when you do your part time hours.

The Civil Service is very flexible, as we've all said. Flexible to the point of changing the entire job spec for someone who hasn't even started yet? I doubt it.

As for the WFH, the dept I worked for largely worked with pen and paper still (I know) due to the freedom of information meaning anyone can see what's written on a computer about them. Couldn't be done wfh.

I was full time but always thought the part timers (25 hrs iirc) tbh had more of their day lost. You have to do something like 10-3 so you've lost both the morning and much of the afternoon unless you live next door.

In order not to leave a really bad impression right from the start, why not email or ring and clarify the exact start/finish hours and if it's a job share? You'll know from the answer if you might be able to push for the rest.
"It's a job share and we need Wed pm to Fri pm covered"
"it's 18 hours a week, to cover 2.5 days"- "which days exactly?" -etc etc.

I have been a civil servant for 26 years. In that time I have worked full time m-f where the core hours were fixed. Then another role which was full time term time only. Then switched again to full time on flexi - so could work any hours I fancied as long as I averaged 36 a week in a 6 week period.
My current hours are compressed 5 over 4 . Full time but don't work Friday. I have found cs to be a really family friendly employer..

When I returned to the civil service after adopting my son I worked 23 hours a week so a bit more than this job.
I"m a single parent so no partner to help out.
By being very careful about how I used my annual leave I managed to cover all but 3 weeks of the school holidays. As you have a partner surely he should be covering some as well.
As most of the civil service is still working at home that's probably not an unreasonable request unless you are in a customer facing role.
There is usually a lot of flexibility around hours, if one of my team said to me they have a special assembly, dentists, doctors etc for their kids I wouldn't have a problem with that as long as they did their hours.
It would be pushing it in my view to ask for term time only and I would probably refuse

As for the WFH, the dept I worked for largely worked with pen and paper still (I know) due to the freedom of information meaning anyone can see what's written on a computer about them. Couldn't be done wfh.

That's rather suspect, I know you won't say but I'm intrigued as to what department that is, apart from not really being in the spirit of the law, FOI still extends to handwritten notes, as does data protection, handwriting to avoid that just makes it harder to locate and more likely to not meet compliance.

Sorry completely off topic there but couldn't leave it!!!

The work wasn't nearly as exciting as it sounded tbh.

@ScorpioSphinxInACalicoDress someone over excited thinking they found a loophole by the sounds of it lol!

As has been said, I suspect this is a job share. If that is the case then its likely the other half of the job share has the hours they want and you'll be fitting around them. When I recruited for a shared job I would always let the existing employee set out what they wanted (within reason!) and then plug the gap.

My DM works in a job share, 2.5 days a week alternating weekly (I.e. Mon, Tues, Wed one week, Wed, Thurs, Fri the next). A lady was offered the job and then said she wanted to do Monday, Tuesday weekly and term time only AND couldn't cover holidays/sick. They had to withdraw the offer and choose someone else.e