Part time - advice generally and working over contracted hours

[Fairycakes86]

I've recently gone back to work after mat leave to a new job. I work 3 days a week, and in the short time I've been here consistently working over my contracted hours e.g. 50% over.

I'm fairly senior within a local authority and recently started at this level. I mentioned this to my line manager and they said at such a senior level full time you would expect to be working over your hours anyway. They then said how many extra hours they work (which was not helpful). It feels a bit unfair as I'm only been paid part time for these hours! I don't want to increase my hours for it only to probably be more than those hours anyway. It's really hard juggling this with home life. No-one else is part time here.

To anyone else working at a senior level in a LA part time, are you also expected to do this?

Has anyone got any advice with organising your work most efficiently? I feel like I'm drowning in work.

I have had very few public sector jobs where I haven’t had to work way over my contracted hours to keep on top of things, and I am not senior level. I have worked in the PS since the 90s and it has always been the same, always too few staff for the amount of work, no cover for holidays, and regular recruitment bans. They are highly unlikely to take any work off you, as you are working full time hours, I would prefer to be paid for them and go full time or look for something else with less pressure.

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If things carry on as they are now it means more and more women effectively working for free despite doing exactly the same 35 hours as their peers. Whether it's you not getting paid for 5 hours of those 35 or 10 or some other number, it's beyond not ok!

You are working part-time for a reason, and that reason is you only want to work the set hours. If they are now saying that there is far more work than can be fitted into those hours, then they need to either pay you to work more hours (if you want to of course) or they need to reduce the workload so it is do-able in the time you are being paid for. Otherwise they are just being bloody cheeky.

I think employers are taking advantage here, getting a FT person for part time salary is not ok.

^ This.

I mentioned this to my line manager and they said at such a senior level full time you would expect to be working over your hours anyway.

You're not full time though, are you? You are working at 50% more than you are contracted for, so that is what - another 12 hours a week? So very nearly full time for part time money. Maybe a full-timer at senior level might be expected to put in 12 hours a week overtime, but 50% over and above their full time hours? I very much doubt it.

They are taking the piss.

You are part time for a reason. There may be extra hours expected but not to that level.

You could just work your hours and then leave. They can't reprimand you for that. Get advice from ACAS.

https://www.acas.org.uk/

What’s the nature of your work? Is it managing people, or your own caseload or responding to immediate requests?

What are your actual part time hours and how many hours do you think you’re actually working?

are you in a union? I think you need to decide if you’re happy in this role/level, or you want to progress in this particular department, that would change how I was going to approach it. If I was happy to stay at my current level, I’d be pretty firm about clocking in/out and creating an email paper trail where you discuss your workload and what your line manager wants you to prioritise in the hours you have available.

I don’t work for free.

What does your contract say and how much over are you each day you work? And what sort of work are you doing each day?

My contract makes clear I'm there to get the job done and will be expected to flex around to make that happen, especially with managing staff and responding to things that happen. But the converse of that is that I can flex around things like school assemblies without taking leave. This seems the norm at a senior level. I'm full time now but was part time. It was normal to be over by 2-3 hrs per week when part-time.

Double check how you're using your time at work. I had an employee wanting to be paid overtime for finishing late when she'd spend ages every day chatting, working very slowly, taking tea breaks and going over every time by ten minutes - so 30 mins a day for 2 breaks plus lunch. Look at things like the productivity ninja - that got me speeding through my inbox, blocking off time to get things done and prioritising effectively, which made a massive difference. Do you have to go to all the meetings you do? Look at your day in half hour chunks and whether any of those can be used more effectively. I work more effectively dealing with emails twice a day than being constantly distracted, for instance.

That isn't always the solution, sometimes it does need a conversation about work load, but start of by working out whether there's anything you can change.

@Fairycakes86 there is no simple answer.

If you are producing widgets and in an hour one person can produce 20 widgets then it’s relatively simple to do part time.

In most cases, particularly at senior level, you actually have multiple tasks on the go and getting the work load right is difficult. This is compounded by, in my experience, a lack of imagination by Senior Managers and HR.

In my experience in the public sector at senior level most jobs are difficult to do part time, in fact they are difficult to do full time because of a number of factors - demand to be available more than 7.5 hours a day, “efficiencies” requiring more from a role e.g. Assistant posts being lost to make savings and the work absorbed by existing posts and because of technology theoretically making tasks easier but in reality generating a lot more work - trust me email/WhatsApp etc. generate far more work than pen, paper and phone calls.

Working over your hours has become standard and that is why we have far more stress/mental health/burnout.

In your case I would suggest making a business case for a job share arrangement.

Three options to consider:
1: prioritise & delegate. review workload, work out what you could reasonably do within your contracted hours, prioritise the work to be done, and take a proposal to your manager for what you will do/drop/delegate so that your own work fits your contracted hours . It’s reasonable to expect at senior level for you to manage your own workload and make prioritisation and delegation calls, rather than your manger doing that for you

2: suggest compressed hours so you at least get paid for the extra time eg 3.5 days over 3. I do 4.5 over 4 because I know 4 days always ends up bleeding over a bit.

3: find a job share. Esp if you anticipate wanting to continue on 3 days a week for a few years. That way there is someone else picking up the extra work on your non-working days

I'm afraid it's local authority life I think. Bloody awful. Are they wanting you to go FT, do they value you at all? I would expect a manager to work maybe 2 hrs extra a day I have to say. But not 50% that's a huge sign somethings not right. Your LM's response was not helpful either. Bad department?

Hope you can find a way round it, delegating, finding ways to streamline etc, or else it might be new job time.

@Fairycakes86 if you're still having to deal with this here are the arguments that helped me fight back and get what I was owed:

Template arguments - Part-time Worker Regs, Equal Pay and Indirect sex discrimination

Would love to hear how you get on if you use them too.

That's not acceptable.

They can't expect to pay you a part-time wage but to work more hours for free....

I would make it clear you can only work your contracted hours from now on as the very reason to go part-time was that you now had caring responsibilities the rest of the time.

The solution might be a jobshare if realistically your job cannot be done over 3 days a week.

I am a senior manager, work part-time and I absolutely refuse to work any unpaid hours.

Public sector here.
My manager doesn't work overtime and doesn't expect anyone to.
We sometimes work out of office hours or do extra hours if required, but work Flexi time and then balance out the extra hours.
It sounds like there's a culture in your work place where this has become normalised - the cuts to services have not necessarily reduced the actual work required, just the resource to do it.
Check what the policy is for your employer in the first instance.
Have you passed a probation period? Do you have an appraisal due?
I would pursue an evaluation of your workload via that process and get it reduced.
It may be accepted by others to work longer hours but presumably you chose part time because you only want to or can, be available for those hours..
It may not make you popular but at least with the public sector your contract and working terms will be clearly laid out.
I would also join your union.

In the private sector I fight fiercely for my part-time staff to NOT get dragged into excessive overtime. In exchange they are super efficient during the hours at work, not slacking.

If your manager doesn’t have your back your situation is harder. Only you can enforce the boundaries.

Set yourself a limit - say 1.5 or 2 hours of overtime per day - perhaps that means short lunch and an hour in the evening. Log off in between times and be crystal clear with your manager what can’t get done and what you chose to prioritise so later there can be no criticism.

Also review your workload - what can be delegated; what isn’t essential; what could be done quicker by a small investment of time/expenditure in process improvement/ training. Make the recommendations to your manager.

Being seen to be “Moaning” about overtime - however justifiably - simply won’t get you anywhere I suspect if your manager is the kind of person who just doesn’t want to be fair. And there are still a lot of managers of the “you should be grateful to have part time work” variety.

@Fairycakes86 if you're still having to deal with this here are the arguments that helped me fight back and get what I was owed:

Template arguments - Part-time Worker Regs, Equal Pay and Indirect sex discrimination

Would love to hear how you get on if you use them too.
OP