Would you go 4 days in my situation?

[FrazzledCareerWoman]

Regret not being around when DD was small. DS just turned 3, I could go 80 percent and have more time with him & save a day of childcare also.

BUT. I will be doing all my work in 4 days and getting paid 80 percent. There is no chance of agreeing compressed hours because we are on salary with no fixed hours (usually I work 50+ hours a week and 1-3 hours extra on a Sunday to catch up).

I can afford it I just worry that I will end up working the 5th day at other times (eve/weekend) but suffer a 20 percent pay cut.

Has anyone successfully done this and how did you manage it?

@Aprilx exactly and now with wfh being so normal now, is it even worth dropping a day if you have to check emails anyway?

Don’t don it. You will not have the mental freedom you crave, instead you will have a pay cut and still trying to catch up with one day off at weekends and evenings. If I were you, I’d instead try to establish clearer boundaries and stop working weekends and evenings.

I'm not in the same industry as you OP but I recognise everything you've said.

There are plenty of women people working 4 days a week but in practice many of them are expected to deliver a full-time workload. My organisation is terrible at scaling roles down to part-time and to be fair I do think it's difficult as our work isn't that quantifiable.

Having said that...I do a four day week and I wouldn't consider going up to five days yet because despite all this, I value the time with my DD more than the extra I could/should be earning. The system does make feel quite annoyed though, although as I've got older I've got much better at setting boundaries and saying no to things, which helps.

Even with my dc at school, I have no idea how people cope with being full time if you have the kind of home where things break down, spring leaks or you want new things installed. It seems almost impossible for me to schedule in the things I need doing, and I am lucky enough to be off one day a week!

I work in finance. This is very common in my organisation even for senior positions. You have to be confident and not feel (or care) that others are eyerolling or believe you are less committed, determined or passionate about your career. Only you can make it work for you.

I’m in a similar situation although from a different position.

Negotiated an 80% of a “no fixed hours” job when I had my first DC.

When a promotion to a manager type role came up, I asked whether I could keep at 80% before I applied, and then got it.

At no point has my boss (typically works 10-12 hour days, works on holiday and weekends) asked me how I’ll do it at 80%. There are a few people on reduced hours at my grade - all women with young children - and to my knowledge no one has had that conversation. Tbh, it makes me furious when someone paid at 0.6FTE routinely works on their days off. I know more junior staff look up to us as a model of work/post baby success (ha).

So it is up to me to be awkward. I will rarely work on my day off, and if I do I claim it back. I’ll point out I’m only paid for 80% of the crap, so sometimes I’ll say no to the most boringly inane meetings. I will not do everything I need to do and delegate massively.

But in reality I have a full time workload. I was always a quick worker (or at least, my spurts were very efficient) which has helped. It is incredibly frustrating to have to remind my manager “but I’m only here 80% of the time of my FT equivalents”. I do not routinely work evenings and weekends apart from when there’s a big thing on. But the reality of my job is that there is always more that we could do.

But. For a day off with my children it is worth it.

@FrazzledCareerWoman

Not academia. Finance

If you work in finance, use the opportunity to move roles to something more manageable.

I work in finance myself and moved up to director role. I did a lot of that when the kids were young. I hated it in the end. At first it was manageable, then it was intolerable but the hours never changed (and I tried working 4 days a week).

So I found a new role, then another which is much more bearable and not as hour pressured. My next step is to move to something more local.

When the kids went to school, I found the balance even harder to strike between work/parenting and that was the final push for me.

I work 4 days a week, quite senior in a creative agency. Some weeks I do more than my hours, and some weeks I take that time back. Projects have peaks and troughs. The way I position any change in working practices is by selling in the idea of innovation/evaluation. Leadership tends to like the idea of testing out new things. Have you thought about running a kind of experiment, where you agree terms in advance, keep work diaries etc but essentially try 4 days and evaluate outcomes after? Businesses often like the idea of trying new things without committing. It’s a very “now” theme, split testing/experimenting/evaluation/learning etc. It enables you to show strategic thinking (“Talent will leave if we can’t improve things for working parents”) and genuinely allow you to see if you can make it work for your own situation. Good luck!