Please talk to me about your flexible working - looking to reduce hours

[Arlanymor]

Hi all - thanks in advance for your help.

So I am looking to reduce my hours, partly because perimenopause is making my life hell at the moment and partly because I want to claw back some time to do the things that I really love, because frankly life is too short.

In an ideal world I would look to go down to four days a week, but not sure that I could realistically take the financial hit - I could pay my bills, but not much left over for anything remotely social or fun. And condensing five days into four wouldn't work as I want to reduce my hours, not work longer days - I'm tired.

So can you tell me how you have reduced your hours to get a bit of your life back? I need to do some serious maths, but I am thinking that maybe a 9-day fortnight might be the way, so that I never work two 5x work days in a row?

Ta muchly! I really need to make this change. X

Menopausal and knackered here too. I work in a pretty flexible office which really helps. I could work from home more if I wanted .... but I usually do one day a week at home which helps.

I also go to the gym 3 (ish) mornings a week - and end up at work a bit later on those days which seems to be fine.

I've done the maths and our mortgage ends March 2026 and I'm going to drop a day then. I'm fairly sure I'll be OK that I won't have to do the same amount of work in shorter hours if you think!

I've a friend who does condensed hours and takes her extra days in summer as that is when she wants her time off.

The drawback of a 9 day fortnight is that other people will struggle to remember when you are working or not. Depends on your job really, and how much that creates an issue. I dropped a whole day, which is a lovely luxury, but would probably drop a Friday afternoon if I couldn’t afford a 20% drop.
have one colleague who compresses mon-Thurs by a little and then has Friday afternoons off, so takes the whole of Friday but only technically a 0.9FTE.

I’m in a similar situation, I work a 9 day fortnight as I can’t afford to drop hours. I like it & it works well for my role.

I have moved from full time teaching into an office role outside of teaching.

My day is 7.5 hours each day, including paid lunch. We have "core hours" and flexitime. The agreement of core hours is that we are in the office and available between 9am and 3pm.

I like to start early and finish early, it suits me well. I'm often in by 6.45am, I work until 3pm then save up my flexitime and have a 4 day week every so often.

I find that my evenings feel longer and it seems to be working well.

Also work 10 days in 9 which works for me. Opposite to a pp I find that even though I work alternate Fridays people assume I have every Friday off so my diary is usually pretty free!

I’ve just started to do a 9-day fortnight and have every other Friday as a non-working day. It works well for me. I try to keep the alternate Fridays as a meeting free day.

Before making the Flexible Working application, I asked Payroll for a calculation of what my take-home pay would be under this arrangement. I also put the application in just after our annual pay rise, to try to minimise the hit to my pay.

I was fortunately able to afford to move to a four day week. Perhaps where I differ from most is my non-working day is a Monday. I find that is much more respected than were it a Friday, though I think most people know me well enough to know I am not going to change 'just once' and open the floodgates.

I know you’ve said no but I do full time condensed to 4 days and it genuinely feels like I work 4 days instead of 5. It’s only a couple of hours extra a day for a full extra day off to make a 3 day weekend. Plus, because I have Mondays off, I get extra hours annual leave in lieu of the bank holidays I miss out on.

One option if your work allows it is to work longer hours than a full time day. For example if a full time day is 7.5 hours working 8 hours, 8.25 or 8.5 hours means you don’t drop 20% of your hours and pay.

I would also advise you to use a gross to net calculator to work out the actual drop in net pay. https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/tax-calculator/

I work a 4 day week, I have every Wednesday off. I never work more than 2 consecutive days. A day off midweek is bliss. Weekends aren’t spent catching up on chores as I’m never too far behind!

Can you do compressed?

I'm full time but off every Wednesday. I work from 8am - 5.45pm on my 4 days. I've done it for years now and I'd never go back to working a 5 day week.

I've started doing a 9 day fortnight recently. It was partly to be able to visit elderly parents more often so it hasn't really given me more time for myself. I'd like to move to a four day week in a year or so but need to wait for the nest to be empty!

Tbh I probably do enough extra hours most days to have done it as compressed hours rather than take a salary cut - it would be an extra 45 minutes a day if I was compressing, which is not too bad really. But like the OP I wanted to reduce my hours overall.

I do 32/hrs week. Not full time (37) but not that far off. I'd work out what % salary/pension contributions you could potentially afford to lose (I top my pension up to FT equivalent from my take-home) then work out what that means in terms of your potential future working arrangements.
I work 5 hours on a Friday and a Monday so if I want a long weekend I'm just using 5 hours of my annual leave allowance (rather than 8 hours).

I dropped to 34 hours a week over 9 days a fortnight- so I do a 30 hour week with a Monday off, then a 38 hour week. It makes very little difference to my pay and it works well for my annual leave as if I take a week it only costs me 30 hours.

Thanks all, sorry I hadn't run away, just a very busy couple of days in work! Really, really helpful to have all of these perspectives, thank you so much. So my plan was to look at a nine day fortnight, but unexpectedly had a chat with my dad about it this morning and it appears that he is willing to give me some of my inheritance early, which was not something I had anticipated! I'm meeting him at the weekend as he said it 'comes with some non-onerous stipulations' - whatever that means? I guess it's probably something to do with being equal with my sister, which of course is fine, and also not using my 'spare' day to bum about but actually to pursue my creative writing and my volunteer work.

Anyway, I will know more after Saturday. Then our finance manager is back from leave on Monday and can give me the exact calculations (I used that online calculator before to work out that I probably would be £550 a month worse off). I think I will approach my boss after and suggest a six-month trial basis of a four-day week. I'm reeling a bit actually as I was fully prepared to reduce my take home because this is so important for my mental health and having a more well-rounded life. I feel very fortunate. And if it doesn't work out then I have this thread to fall back on and find an alternative approach. Thanks so much for sharing your working arrangements, I appreciate it a lot. Also in a weird way it gives me a bit of confidence to ask for this amendment because flexible working really shouldn't be seen as weird or wrong in this day and age should it?! Thanks all!

Great news that you've found a solution @Arlanymor, hoping it all works out just as you want!
I'm perimenopausal and WFH for a charity, condensed hours, 5 days in 4. It means longer days but I now have one full non-working day every week, so I never work more than two days in a row, have the space to manage house and life admin, help family out, and just have time to myself - love it!

Oh that's so sweet, thanks so much for the solidarity. Amazing the difference it makes, right? So happy you have a brilliant balance now that works for you - hopefully it will be the same for me from next month onwards. Thanks for your lovely comment, I appreciate it so much. x

I do 4 x 8 hour days. The three days off keeps me ticking over. Just a day to do whatever I want (within reason) keeps me ticking over x

Two years ago I worked full time in a very stressful job. I hit peri and burnout out so reduced to 3 x 8 hour days. I much prefer it as work no longer feels it rules my life and my stress has reduced significantly. If money allows, it’s something I’d recommend.