Returning to work part-time after children: how did workload change?

[graceb15]

I'd really like to hear people's experiences of returning to work after having children.

I was working full-time before having my son and taking paternal leave for two years. After that, I returned to work part-time, but I found that even though my working hours reduced, my workload and responsibilities didn't necessarily reduce with them. Work I couldn't finish on the day simply carried over, meetings took up a large proportion of my shorter working days and there was still an expectation at times that I would be available outside my contracted hours.

I'm interested in understanding whether this is a common experience or whether others have had very different experiences.

If you've returned to your job part-time after having children, I'd love to hear what it was like for you.

Did your workload genuinely reduce? Did part-time working work well for you? Did it affect your responsibilities or progression? What was the hardest part — or perhaps it worked really well?

I think it depends on the role. I returned to work in professional services role for 4 days a week after maternity leave. I don’t know that my workload decreased per se although colleagues were very good at protecting my day off. But the reality was that it was the type of role with lots of client meetings/deliverables and the expectation of long working hours. Being 4 days a week vs 5 days a week didn’t change those expectations.

Working part time worked well for me, maybe because I started a new job rather than returning to the old job (although I assume you did the same if you were off for two years? Or did they hold your job open for you?). At my workplace there is a transparent workloading system for everyone in the department, with allowances for various tasks/roles, so my hours on the system added up to a percentage of a full time worker's hours. (I'm back full time now.)

My maternity cover was a hotch potch arrangement of cover so 1 of the people covering stayed on and job shared, so yes my workload reduced. I carried a smaller caseload as she carried the rest.
But I significantly reduced my hours so it was worthwhile for my employer employing someone else. I think more issues arise when people only reduce by a few hrs, what is an employer meant to do to get cover for, say, 7 hrs? I’ve seen several people who drop to 4 days just end up doing a full time job for part time pay.

I worked in social care 2.5 days, I had exactly half the caseload of the full timers (who were already over worked) but I also had the exact same number of meetings, training , duty, supervision. It was impossible to manage and my line manager chose not to see it.
i now work in a job where all of my tasks are completed whilst the service is open and end when it shuts so working full or par time makes no difference.

I didn't return to a job but started a new one. It was very part time hours but essentially I was still expected to cover and do the same training as everyone else on full time. You get all the oh must be nice for you part timer comments whilst simultaneously why are you not completing xyz training at the same time as everyone else. Even managers would do their training on the weekend because they had access to the systems we didn't so it didn't impact their usual workload. When I suggested they give us access so we could catch up from home or weekends. It was expected we shoe horn it in around the other 10billion things we had to do and then moan at us.

So yes it seems pretty normal no matter what hours you work it's not actually less work and that's what I've heard from everyone too.

I reduced my hours but stick to it as I wasn’t getting paid to do full time. It was flexible but I refused to take pay cut then carry on as normal

I should also say I’ve noticed, in recent years, that people going part time are often dropping to 4 days a week.
My kids are teens now but when I returned from mat leave part time, it was much more common for that to mean either half time or 3 days a week.

I think this difference is probably a big influence on what’s being experienced in terms of workload

4 days is very common where I work too now

when i dropped my hours i asked what would be removed from my role (same role) and reallocated to the new other part time person/someone else and we discussed it prior to my start date. with a view to checking how it was going once a week initially then monthly

i think you need to have that chat with your line manager. you cannot be expected to do all you did before as there isn’t enough time to do it timeously. do you have deadlines to meet?

yes you can take minutes of meetings but when will they get them as you have other tasks to do and then you are off again. ours are due in 3 days.
or yes you can still do the same caseload (or whatever you do) but when will you have time to give them all their appointments (or whatever), there will be complaints if they do not get (whatever you do) on time any more.

i found that pointing out my % of hours helped ie I'm only here 60% of the time so i can only do 60% of what i used to for my 60% of the pay. whats the plan going forward.
are we going to change our deadlines, hire new staff, disseminate various tasks to various colleagues (which incidentally pisses them off, oh great julie’s part time so we all get her work, great, bloody julie). i’d like to report back how it’s going so you can consider how best to proceed.

I’ve noticed the same thing. And when someone went down to a 0.5 or 0.6 post, then someone else would be offered the 0.6 or 0.4 that is left over. So it’s still a full time role in total, which means the workload is covered, albeit both people need to complete training.

Whereas if someone on my team
wants to reduce hours to 0.8, there is no way a 0.2 post can be recruited as that’s not a realistic number of hours.

I have quite a senior role in the public sector where part time working is kind of unheard of and doing extra hours comes with the territory. My boss thankfully, was willing to give part time a try. I do 4 days in 3, mainly because it was impossible to cut my job down to 3 days and they'd decided they didn't want to try a job share. So I get 2 days off a week with my child and I will not do any meetings those days. On my working days I do long hours including logging back on once my child is asleep, and I often pick bits up on my non working days but on my terms, I.e. if my child has a nap.

It's gruelling and to be honest I am considering going back to full time when my child starts school just to have the luxury of 5 days - 5 whole days - to get my job done in! Plus of course the 20% pay I'm losing. What's the point in me being off if they're at school anyway?! But I will negotiate to be able to do some drop offs (husband can pick up luckily). Funnily enough, the main people who seem to have an issue with my arrangement are slightly older women with kids who didn't have the same option or flexibility!!

I find that my capacity for the actual work is reduced inline with my working hours but the additional stuff eg training, meetings, side projects (which will give the extra stuff to hopefully aid promotion) is exactly the same as those that are FT. Makes it harder to fit the work in and there is no leeway in those 4 days.

I found when I worked 3 days it was better in some ways as you just aren't there as much but actually it does hinder progression. Not because management would view unfavourably or that a more senior job wouldn't be suitable for those hours, but because you would just have less time to build capability or do additional things.

I have got better over the years at holding the boundary. I never apologise for being part time and very very rarely make any special arrangements as an apology for it (I would happily swap a day if agreed in advance though because my kids are school age, depends what it is and why). It helps that a lot of people I work with are PT or condensed in some way and flexitime exists so I know that when I do work late I'll take that time for school appointments or whatever.

I went to 32hrs after mat leave, nearly 5years ago now, and I definitely feel like I’ve not been paid for the amount of work I do……. As a caseload manager nurse in a busy team I find that I squish everything in and catch up at home. I’m going back full time soon so at least I’ll get paid the full whack even though I’ll still be working at home to catch up - perks of NHS working 🤣

I really liked it. For the first year I returned, I worked 3 days a week. Then I went to full time after that. I don’t feel that I had a heavy expectation of being available. I’m contactable on the phone but doesn’t mean I’ll jump to answer lol.

I did find though I have moved sideways to another business area and prefer it I don’t feel like a sore thumb anymore. In my previous area I worked generally with people who had adult children or didn’t have children. My bosses were strongly childfree. I rarely worked with anyone in a similar circumstance with having a small child and working FT it really was rather isolating for me.

I like my current role in the more family-oriented area and I hope to stay there longer.

I can’t put in the extra hours I used to pre-DC but it doesn’t matter in my current role where they say family comes first.

I think it’ll be like that for a long time (core hours only) until at DC can get themselves independently to and from school.

My very astute Area Manager paired me up with someone with a slightly older baby, and similar skills to do a job share. This worked very successfully for a few years.

My experience is same as yours, you’re basically paid 80% of the pay (assuming working 4 days a week), but working 100% of the role. I work in an office corporate setting with lots of deadlines so those deadlines don’t care if you’re off on Friday or not. I obviously do not schedule any meetings on the day that I’m off, but I find that I often have to log in on my day off (even if it’s only for 30 mins or an hour) just to approve/review something quickly before it gets sent out. And people tend to get things completed at the end of the week right before it’s due out so no matter how great you plan your workload, you’re still subject to other people’s timeline and often you’re expected to be flexible if you want to appear a team player so as not to jeopardise any promotion opportunities. Obviously this depends a lot on your role and what industry you work in but I would think this is quite common in professional fast-paced corporate setting.

Similar to a lot of people here, when I went to 4 days/week, my direct caseload was reduced by 20% (the way our caseload is measured anyway though is ridiculous and we aren't given enough time to do everything well in any case, but that's another story!)

However, I still need to attend all Team Meetings, CPD, Business Meetings etc. which take up a bigger proportion of time and can have a significant impact some weeks.

The biggest problem is indivisible tasks. Teaching has loads of those. So your teaching load diminishes but everything else stays the same.

Two other issues are:

1. Management are almost always full time so have no insight into the issues of part timers (some issues could be quite easily fixed like minuting meetings and circulating the notes, and varying days of meetings and training).
2. Expecting people to come in on days they don't work, in situations where full timers would never be asked to work a Saturday or a Sunday.

I returned to work for 3 short days a week (9:45 to 3:45) a week. I found this difficult as covering all the updates, meetings, training, communications in my hours was difficult, I was constantly behind and it was stressful. And our service level agreements of course stayed the same, so deadlines were more difficult to meet. Some people booked meetings in my days off and asked for replies on my days off, even after I had explained my working pattern to them, meaning I had to log on on my days off to get replies sent on time. I am now working 4 full days (9am to 5pm) a week and it is much easier. Nothing has really changed but as my working week is longer, I simply have time to do things. I don’t work Fridays and do still get requests Thursday afternoons for replies by the end of the week, sometimes I log on Fridays and just do it, sometimes I email the person requesting a reply and ask for an extension, depending on the person / reason for the request. It really wasn’t easy and I didn’t find a perfect solution.