Compacted hours and flexible working (sorry long)

[emskaboo]

I just had a meeting with my manager,I'm not due to return until January next year but wanted to sort out days etc so that I can sort childcare (my dh who runs his own busisness will be doing most of it). I'm feeling a bit weird following the meeting. I wanted to do compacted working hours, i.e. work five days in four with a half day a week at home to do paperwork (my dh will have our son on this day). This would mean three and a half days in the office. My manager is unhappy with this as she says that my staff need me there more than that, I manage a team of 7. I'm in bloody meetings all the time and they never see me apaprt from supervision and team meetings anyway, can't see it will make any difference. She also said I couldn't have the Monday off as another manager in my team (whose role I don't cover and who doesn't cover me) has that day off so she can have a long weekend (she doesn't have any caring responsibilities).

She did say she'd be happy if I wanted to do three days a week as a job share, but we need at least four days a week and she said I couldn't do four days as nobody would only want to work a day a week as a job share. I did ask about other roles etc and redeployment (I work for a local authority) but she just said I could apply for stuff internally as it came up. So my questions are;

am I mad to try and do compacted hours at all?
is my manager being unreasonable or am I (perfectly prepared for you to say it is me)?
what do I do now, do I contact my union/HR?

Thank you for your patience and help!

Oh and (sorry) she kept banging on about how great the woman covering my maternity leave is, but twice I had to pint out that things she said my cover had done I had actually done before I left and handed over to my cover....feeling a bit insecure!

I'm a bit confused - she said you have to do atleast 4 days, but you have offered to do 5 days in 4 so you will be going back ft.

Given that it is a LA I think your manager is being a bit unreasonable around this, especially as one of the selling points of LA work is their approach to flexible work. I think compacted hours are a great way of balancing work and family life, but it might be that your manager can't get her head round it, but that shouldn't be your problem.

How well do you get on with your manager usually? It might be best to negotiate directly with HR.

If you want to do 5 days in 4, why does half a day of that need to be at home if DH has DS and her problem is your lack of presence in the office? Have you offered the compromise of being at work for the whole of the 4 days?

Reasonable of her to say 4 days and 1 as job share isn't realistic as you know, and pretty reasonable of her to offer a 3 day-2 day job share option which you have turned down.

Reasonable of her to take into account other managers' working arrangements regardless of the reasons for those arrangements even if you don't specifically cover each other's roles. You can see the problem if all managers want the same day off. I know that's not necessarily the case here but you see what I'm getting at. Does it have to be Monday you have off, why can't it be a different day?

Personally not a fan of compressed hours just purely because everywhere I've worked, although a working day might technically be 9-5, in reality for most people, especially managers, working day more likely to be 8 or 8.30 to 6 or 7. So if someone wants to be paid full time and effectively work a 'full time' 35 hours in 4 days while colleagues are in reality working 40 or 45 hours in 5 days you can see it might be a problem. Same with people who want to reduce their lunch hour to half an hour to fit hours in that way, when everyone else rarely actually takes an hour anyway.

But if you are lucky enough to be in a working environment where it's realistic and something that does happen, then why not go for it, absolutely.

Other roles, not sure what you think is wrong with her saying you can apply if and when something comes up - not sure what else she could say really, if there are no other roles available at the moment?

In terms of what you do now, you don't say whether this discussion was part of the formal flexible working process or an informal discussion? I'd be inclined to explore a compromise with her - if her only problem is presence in the office then address that, you can do paperwork in the office so say you will be in 4 days.

Thanks for your postings everyone

PP your advice was great, thank you, I'm going to follow it to the letter!

Just turning it around and looking at it from your manager's point of view, the other problem with doing compressed hours is that is doesn't free up any of your salary to fund cover on the days you are not going to be there as you are still full time. So from her point of view she has a problem covering the day or days you are not in the office and no funding to cover it. Whereas if you reduce your hours she has funding to cover the other hours eg: job share. You need to think through how your work can be covered in your absence eg: reorganising the rest of teams work if you want to sell it to her. HTH