DEFRA/civil service part timers! Need to pick your brain!

[Atomicflea21]

Hi!

I’m a SAHM and accepted a provisional offer with DEFRA part time as my little one will be starting nursery soon. I’ve never worked part time before so what hours do you work per week? Are your hours flexible for morning nursery? My child will be in nursery from 8 - 12:30 M-F with the new extended nursery hours. My husband is wfh full time so he can manage the drop off/pick up times.

What flexibility can I expect from the civil service/DEFRA? Is it possible to work in the morning and clock out in the afternoon to look after my child?

Thank you kindly.

It depends, have you agreed the hours per week? Just in my experience the number of hours will be on the contract, and working times agreed locally. If you want to start and finish different times every day then a lot of teams have flexi, where as long as you work between the core hours and your hours balance can start and finish at different times. If you're after set times though I'd try and have that agreed by line manager before starting.

There are plenty of the docs outlining policy online.

I work in the Dept for Education so can"t speak for Defra

I worked 23 hours a week over 3.5 short days a week,then 3 normal days. I now do 30 hours over 4 days.We have people on all sorts of flexible arrangements - part time, job share, compressed hours, term time only and we are all on flex time.
You need to agree your hours with your line manager, it depends on the nature of the job and also in part what arrangements are already in place in the team.
As they have offered you a part time role I would assume they are open to discussing the specific arrangements

Have you not agreed hours? There could be a massive mismatch in expectation here if not. ‘Part time’ could be 0.8fte or a 9 day fortnight in their head. Either way I’d be amazed if your current nursery hours will work with you both working. That is a big chunk of time to be having a small child at home and it’s not feasible to work at the same time. Most places will have core hours you’re expected to be working.

I worked for HMRC, I worked 19 hours over 3 days term time only. I worked flexi time with no core time. I worked 7 hours Mon & 6 hours Tues & Wed. I started at 7.15 & finished at 2.45 on a Monday, & 1.15 Tues & Wed.

I’m a civil servant and as others have said, it’s a very flexible place to work. Having said that, if you’re planning to be home with your DC in the afternoon, that’s a very short day, and I can’t see that working.

What sort of job will you be doing?

Have a chat with them about it.

The part timers I know all either do 3 full days (0.6 fte) or 5 short days 9.30 to 3.30 ish. I've not known anyone do mornings only but that's not to say it's not possible but I would have expected you to have some idea of their expectations from the interview. How many hours was the post advertised for?

Hi everyone,

Many thanks for your insight.

I’ll try to answer everyone’s questions.

I’ll be working in the animal science department. The job was posted as full time, part time, job share etc. No I haven’t agreed on any hours yet nor do I have a start date. I only accepted the provisional offer not the formal offer pending security check, medical etc. I imagine my line manager and I would discuss hours once a formal offer has been given. My job isn’t a typical office job. There is an on call rota and possible shift work.

This job was meant to start earlier this year but brexit and covid have delayed it till later this year so there is no clear start date. It’s all been a bit vague.

I just wanted to get a rough idea of what other part timers do so I can have some realistic expectations.

Ah ok, sorry, my comments were about a typical policy environment. Maybe your hours would be possible in the environment you describe.

Shift work etc is a different ball game to most, I would see if I could speak to someone before going through all of the checks personally, if the hours aren't going to be possible that you need saves you waiting ages for the checks to then find out.

I work for an organisation in the DEFRA group.

Most of us part time workers do 0.6fte (which is usually about 22.2hrs a week). Some do a bit more taking up to 0.8fte.

So most do their hours doing 3 days a week or 4 days a week. But it does vary a little. I don't know of any who just do morning as for most it wouldn't work well with the commute.

DEFRA is great place to work part time and hours are flexible around core hours and managers are used to having part time staff. It's great.

If I was you though, I think I'd consider doing 3 days and adjust the nursery hours to 3 days to match instead.