Discrimination or not?

[NMAI]

PART-TIME WORKING ... we all know just how difficult it is to find part-time jobs, let alone progressive, well paid part-time jobs with training and opportunities.
I work for a very large company of over 12k employees. They are great in many aspects, pay, bonus, training if you are full time, benefits, culture etc. BUT it's INCREDIBLY difficult to find part-time opportunities in the business.

In my 'quest' to find a part-time opportunity due to my secondment ending in December, I have come up against massive 'anti part-time' attitudes, culture and language throughout the business.

Some examples;

• Internal recruitment manager states 'Branches do not like part-time, which is difficult because there are so many great part-time job-seekers I could place in roles'
• HR Manager States; "Part-time usually means four full time days. There's very few to no roles part-time"
• Area Manager States (after being asked if they'd consider part-time in a branch assistant manager role); "A part-time manager would not set a good example"
• Being asked numerous times when I'd be thinking about increasing my hours.
• Senior Manager vetoing the option for the opportunity of a full-time role being trialled on a part-time basis despite my career history and experience being very well matched to the role and an interim manager putting me forward for the role telling me I'd fit the role perfectly. Senior manager also states that IF they'd even consider a 3/4 day role, it would be "incredibly busy and knowing how much I want work life balance and the importance of my family, it might not work"!!!
• The business working hard on their equality, diversity and inclusion policies with key focuses on certain groups (menopause, disability, women) and with a motto that outlines their values as 'purposeful & valuable to all' they completely disregard and ignore part-time groups of people. They also have a Gender & Development network and celebrate Women's International Day with events and the like.
• When I pose the question to HR Seniors - will the business start focussing on part-time and flexile working - I am completely ignored! On live HR Teams meetings, I ask the question - again getting ignored altogether whilst other questions get acknowledged

To me this is direct and indirect discrimination - not just discriminatory to me but to ALL that limited to working part-time or only want to work part time. Am I wrong to think this?

My husband says none of it is aimed at me so it's not discrimination and warns I could be playing the victim. BUT it's not just about me.

I also have a particular history with this company 16 years ago not allowing me to work part-time 3-days following the birth of my first daughter. They used VERY weak excuses that, at the time, did pursue an ACAS enquiry but due to poor mental health (post-natal depression), I was not strong mentally to challenge.

But in many cases, there will be additional costs and my point is that organisations are not necessarily discriminating if they conclude that the arrangements won't work for them.

exactly. And so thankfully the law reflects this fact.

Your business though has decided to plough on with part time positions despite all the additional a costs and training that it has concluded to be the consequence

Unlikely to be direct discrimination

Can be indirect unless employers have good objective justification for their decision.

a lot of these comments are ignorant and frankly embarrassing

How so?

We have taken the view that we wish to support employees who want to reduce their working hours to part time, for whatever reason, and we wouldn't want to exclude the majority of staff from that option simply because of their job role. The nature of their work means that they can manage their own discrete workload independently, so a job share would be a less cost effective option than having multiple standalone part time roles. (We have multiple full timers managing their own discrete workloads also.) So yes, having e.g. 10 part timers is more costly than having, say, 6 full timers, but pushing them into job share arrangements would be even more costly for the organisation with negligible operational benefit.

If I followed your logic, then we'd have to suck up loads of unnecessary extra costs to facilitate job sharing arrangements or we would just have to say no to everyone who wanted to go part time.

We choose to accept the additional costs of supporting staff to go part time because that is in line with the values of our organisation. We don't pretend that those additional costs don't exist.

Yes, because this is in line with our values as an organisation and how we want to treat our staff, and because we believe that a happy team will produce better results overall than a miserable one. That's the decision that we have chosen to make. Other organisations will make different choices, and as you have rightly pointed out, the law allows them to do this as long as they are able to provide a valid justification for those choices. And in most cases, they will be able to do so.

Yes but the OP is arguing that employers should be more supportive of PT workers and should consider them for roles, even though the employer requires a FT worker. So if they were to take on a PT employee for the FT role, they wouldn't have enough available resources and therefore are going to have to take on another worker. And depending upon the role, it might not necessarily be a job share, but it is still two individuals.

Exactly!

Ok @MrsBennetsPoorNerves

so that is great.

Your employer has decided that part time requests, even when substantial extra costs involved due to fact a full time role needs to be split in to two jobs, to be flexible. It’s taken the cost on the chin. It doesn’t need to by law as the additional training, resource and cost has been proven and is substantial.

An employer in exactly the same shoes could make the decision not to do this. And that is absolutely fine and legal.

If you employer allows the flexible request but doesn’t make the full time position a job share but instead expects others to pick up the difference -

that is shit

But if the position itself is part time and only necessitates part time, of which there many such jobs, no “flexibility” is needed. The employer needs a person wanting a part time position because the position only necessitates part time hours

from the op, I get that’s she’s pissed off because the business do not think that part time is conducive with their business model.

which is completely reasonable of the business

We don't expect others to pick up the slack. I have been very clear about this, which is why I am saying that having PT staff often leads to higher overall costs because you need more staff. However, it is more cost effective for us to employ 2 standalone part time staff to manage their own independent workloads than it would be to implement formal job sharing arrangements. That's just a practical business decision.

There have been occasions in the past when I personally have chosen to pick up the slack in order to let my managers reduce their hours. Tbh, I wouldn't do this any more as I just don't have the capacity. If one of my current management team asked to go PT, I would have to look at a formal job share arrangement, and as an organisation, we would need to decide if we were willing and able to cover the additional cost of that. As far as possible, I would absolutely want to facilitate, but depending on circumstances, we might decide that it wasn't feasible. It definitely gets harder to facilitate for staff in more senior positions.

Yes, I agree with this.

It is reasonable for businesses to conclude that PT arrangements won't work for them in some or all roles, either because of the cost or because of other factors. They are perfectly at liberty to reach that conclusion and it is not necessarily discriminatory.

Some organisations, like mine, will recognise that PT staff often generate additional costs for the organisation etc, but may have other reasons for choosing to absorb those costs.

I don't think we are disagreeing. My point was simply that it isn't fair to jump to the conclusion that organisations are discriminating if they don't seem to be keen on part time working arrangements because there are genuine costs to be considered that may or may not be balanced out by the advantages of offering flexible working patterns.

My argument is primarily with the posters who are quick to dismiss the idea that there can be any negative sides for the employer in employing part time staff. That just isn't realistic.

I didn't say appeal the business decision, I said appeal on the grounds that a fair and objective process can't have been followed given the business has already made it clear what their views are re flex working before even receiving the request, which must be considered on its own merit.

Hedger v British deaf association may be relevant here (breach of requirements for handling flex working requests) aswell as follows v nationwide where it was noted that the businesses views re flex working could have put off the employee applying.

Award for indirect discrimination is uncapped. Failure to follow process is up to 8 weeks pay from memory.

That’s illogical. They habe considered before. As such. They can consider again very quickly and follow a fair process. Just as they did last time.

i think it's about genuinely understanding if the role can be done part time without adding unreasonable demands to colleagues or managers.

I worked in an organisation with very friendly flexible working policies but even then you had to say no sometimes as the business need wasn't being met.

So say I manage a team which needs 10 FTE to complete the work. I'm doing 10 monthly 121s and 10 annual appraisals, overseeing the workload of 10, managing other HR issues for 10. Let's say they all are part time posts of 2.5. I now need to do 20 of everything within the same timeframe because managing part time staff is rarely half the task of managing a full time person

then let's say they all need training on a new system. I send 10'full timers on a 3 day course- so they can all still work on 2 days that week. If i send my part timers who will still need the training then i now have 20 people out of the business for over their working week of 2.5 days.

As a manager it's no easier. let's say im now working 3 days a week but my team are full time. Who approves their work/ HR issues etc on non working days? Even with a smaller pro rata team to account for 3 working days there would still be work needing approval on my job working days. So either I ask a full time colleague to essentially manage my team for 2 days a week or leave my team to flounder on non working days and slow down productivity. i could perhaps work with another colleague who is also part time but days need to match up, annual leave needs to match up - a handover every week x2 ....its all an impact

i say this as someone who has worked part time, condensed hours and agreed flexible working requests in my own team. it can be done but OP I think you probably haven't thought through the implications of some roles and team set ups being part time. it sometimes isn't feasible

Thank you. These are exactly the issues that I was trying to highlight.

Because (as a manager) part time staff are more of a pain to manage.
Ideally staff will be at work for 5 days a week, meaning they're there (unless on holiday) to deal with any issues.

When I've had a large amount of part-timers on my team, stuff gets left and on their days off no one has a clue what's going on.

Sorry, but wanting to be part-time isn't a protected characteristic, and I can see why upper management don't like it.

Certainly is illogical to think the reasons for rejecting a request 16 years ago would be able to be relied upon now, yes.

The process has already proved to be very likely unfair given they have already made their views known I.e. predetermined the outcome.

You're willing to work hard, but only part time, and you expect to be promoted and get raises when YOU think so, not when you earn them. The entitlement in your post is staggering to me. You are not OWED a job. You are not OWED success. Why should it disadvantage you? Why should someone who works full time be disadvantaged because you want the company to focus on "diversity" (not merit, just check the identity box and you get to pick whatever job you want, qualified or not, right?) and coddling the entitled instead of focusing on the bottom line?

Businesses aren't set up to be charities. A world where you are gifted success because "I think I deserve it, and the company should be grateful I'm even here" is not a functional world.

"I don't want to follow the rules, I want rules just for me, because I deserve the same success as someone who works hard and sacrifices."

The very fact that you think someone who works only occasionally should have the same job as someone who works full time lets me know you really don't understand how the world works. The very notion that someone can drop in a couple times a week and deliver the same quality as a full time person is just utter nonsense.

Part-time people can be very valuable, but in a limited capacity. The very idea that a part time person could be management is laughable. You can really tell who works and who doesn't. The entitlement blows my mind, maybe it's because I'm American. Merit. Hard work. Dedication. Work ethic. Those are values you want in an employee, not "diversity." This whole "I deserve the same success as someone who works exponentially harder than me" is insane to me.

Lolz at the idea that full timers work harder

No, they just work longer. 🙄 time doesnt equate to effort and outputs. I know plenty of full timers that take the absolute piss and use work time for e g. appointments whereas the part timers tend to cram in that personal stuff on their non working days. I'd have a part time working mum any day over an up themselves full time arse.

sure there's work shy skivers in both full and part time posts. Skiving off at work isn't just the domain of the full time staff

in my field, all things being equal in terms of effort an individual puts in, our full time staff are just easier to manage and are more productive. i do agree part time working but this is generally because they've been a good full time staff member with good work ethics and we are valuing loyalty (as long as we can make it work for business need). Don't kid yourselves it's because the part timers are harder workers and cheaper !

I still need to put as much effort in managing them - if not more making sure non working days are covered. They still have to do all the same things full timers do in terms of training, team meetings, CPD, supervision, reading company updates, etc every week/ month etc so their availability to do the actual work is always being eaten into so their productivity simply isn't 1/2 a full timers. Is anything they are slower as they are always catching up with what was missed on. on working days and new systems take them longer to get because of the gap in them becoming familiar

some of this thread is laughable !

I don't think we are disagreeing. My point was simply that it isn't fair to jump to the conclusion that organisations are discriminating if they don't seem to be keen on part time working arrangements because there are genuine costs to be considered that may or may not be balanced out by the advantages of offering flexible working patterns.

we are not disagreeing hence my first post on this thread

one very minor point we do seem disagree on but no point raising again!

Indeed! We can agree to disagree on that particular point!

As far as I'm concerned, I don't think part time workers are a pain to manage. I don't think part timers work less hard than full timers. I don't think part timers work harder than full timers either. There are so many other variables.

I do think that employing part time staff is generally more expensive for organisations. However, I think that it's often worth organisations sucking up those additional costs for the sake of the wider organisational benefits that come from creating a supportive culture and a happy team. That's a calculation that each organisation has to make, but they are not necessarily being discriminatory if they decide that some roles just aren't suitable for PT hours.