How flexible is your employer?

[jobwoes1]

Compared with how flexible they expect you to be as an employee?

Mine isn’t, no flexibility at all, but expects us to change our work hours/days when asked - asked, not demanded, but made very obvious that they are disappointed if you don’t.

Im a flexible person, some would say a bit of a pushover, I don’t work more than my hours generally, but happy to chop and change to do my job well, but ill be honest, I find it frustrating how inflexible my employer is in comparison.

As far as I’m aware, there’s no background of people taking the pee, we’re a decent hardworking team.

What is your employer like?

Reasonably, as long as you don't take the piss. Fine to change your hours to accommodate, e.g. a one-off medical appointment. There's a formal process you can go through for any long term requests to change your working pattern. I'd say on the whole, the better side of average.

The employer is a large organisation and is fairly flexible, however my particular role is quite inflexible. I am expected to be flexible in terms of staying late if dealing with an issue/ patient, a
but we are quite well protected from having to change working days. I am public facing and in a small team which needs to cover 24/7, 365 a year. We have had problems with people getting flexible working granted that negatively impacts the rest of us- like going home early on a late shift, compressed working so they're there when the team before/ after us is on but then off on other days......

Very flexible. We don’t have flexi-time as I’ve had in some previous jobs, but if you need to change your hours a bit to accommodate a medical appt, dentist or deal with a childcare situation it’s never a problem. Same with needing to take annual leave at very short notice to
deal with something.

I do think some other staff fail to recognise how flexible an employer is being eg expecting to be able to do the schoolrun in work time or have children around whilst WFH which isn’t permitted except in emergency.

Mine is great, which is why I put up with a lot of stuff that isn't ideal about the job (regularly not having enough to do, low pay, shit holiday entitlement). But if I need to attend a medical appointment, take an afternoon off to watch my kid play sports, start or finish early, take a week's parental leave - no problem. I can also WFH whenever I want.

Totally. WFH, average 1 office day a month (more if you prefer).

Core hours - can start anytime from 7-9 and finish anytime between 3-6 and do not have to pre plan this. Can go negative and owe hours or build up flexi.

Lots of lunchtime meetings expected though and have to make up time taken for any appointments and sometimes have to travel and represent them at events but rare. Have to pay for any travel. Earn less than would elsewhere though. 100% recommend!

A certain level of flexibility, we hybrid work so in the office certain days but the hours when there aren’t flexible. WFH we have flexibility within the day so could theoretically get my hours done when I want but practically because of the working hours of the rest of my team I pretty much do consistently the same hours as them - just easier if we are all online together in case we need each other.
If I have a medical appointment or want to book leave at the last minute it’s never been an issue, they are actually really good with medical appointments - I had an op recently and they’ve been more accommodating than I know other employers are.
I’m happy there, paid well, the role is interesting, I can manage my own workload and am not micromanaged. The flexibility on my office days is a bit irksome but on balance I’m happy with my lot.

This is true in my place too actually. People are unrealistic in their expectations and it is things like wanting to do the school drop-off during the hours you're paid to work.

Ours are very flexible - wfh, flex hours and contracts.

I work for local authority, in this role there’s no flexibility it’s set hours customer facing. If I take annual leave it has to be the whole day can’t even take half a day. In my previous role (also LA) core hours 9-4 could start anytime between 7-9 and finish between 4-6. Could accrue flexi but needed permission to use it (if in core hours)

Pretty flexible but that is down to my manager. Previous manager was rigid to the minute.
My manager trusts me to make up any time not worked if i need to do a school appointment or run.
Drs appointments not a problem either.
I don’t take the mick but others do.

Yes very flexible, county council. As long as you don't take the piss there's loads of flexibility, you can block your diary out for school runs or drop out for medical appointments and come back online later etc

County Council worker. Fairly flexible. Some people in my team work 7am -4pm to accommodate school runs. I work compressed hours so have alternate Fridays off. There are however a lot of meetings over lunch breaks and i sometimes work stupid hours to get my work done. On the other hand, If I need to go to a GP appointment etc it's not an issue. I finished at 4pm last week to Thursday to get my hair cut. I keep a timesheet and am always way over my hours but the work is fast paced but enjoyable.

We only have to go into the office two or three times a month which is also good.

Civil service. Very flexible. Working hours 6am to 8/10pm. Have to attend the morning meeting at 10am but otherwise people can fit the job around child- and pet care or disabilities. Honestly it’s brilliant (but we have to meet high productivity and accuracy targets).

i think we might work for the same employer 😉

Very flexible but alot of that comes from my role/level. I report to CEO so I am not managed in terms of time more in terms of is the job done and output. If there is a school assembly or sports day- I'm there but on the flip side I may work 7am to 7pm if we have something urgent or a crisis and also I may spend half my week at offices across the country but if I want to book a hairdresser appointment at 4pm on a friday- I do.

Amazing tbh I can basically work any hours I want once I get 28 done

I can work overtime if I like too which I do do sometimes like when Its payroll or certain times of year that are more busy and I have more to do

I worked less days for an amount of time during school holidays and am now making up the time working extra hours so I didn’t need to use all my annual leave for school hols

they have no issues with me bailing out for family phonics at school or the Xmas show and coming back later

no problems having appointments to attend and never have to make up that time they just allow it

very understanding if I’ve to leave cus of a sick child for example

always send us home or tell us to finish up at 3pm ahead of bank holiday weekends to have a longer break

totally spoiled now and will struggle to ever leave

So long as I meet my targets (ish), attend and contribute to meetings relevant to my role, do my hours and respond to clients/arrange calls and meetings within a reasonable time frame, entirely flexible.

Tbh no one knows what I’m doing hour to hour and I arrange my own diary entirely. They probably wouldn’t notice if I didnt respond to clients in a timely manner but it would likely impact my targets and be picked up that way.

Very, but works both ways ,
that only goes for my immediate manager though, I dread him leaving tbh, as some of the other managers , well they’d have my notice before the week was out !

Very flexible anyway, flexi start & finish times and we can accumulate flexi time off. However, we all are expected to have our of hours standby roles, either rostered or “as & when needed”. This is down to goodwill though, so they are pretty lenient on the “day job”.

No set hours whatsoever. Just be available for meetings and get your work done. We bill out time to clients so when we work is really irrelevant.

Very flexible in the sense that unless a stakeholder raises a concern I’m largely left to get on with it - whether that’s hours, days in the office or whatever.

Not flexible in the sense that the workload is quite intense so while it’s my ‘choice’ to complete it at a time to suit me it does take over your life. I miss the days pre kids when I could pack it into a 9-6ish, now it’s 9.30-4.30ish, do a full afternoon of parenting, get the kids to bed and log back on for 2h! But that’s more kids than the job itself. And it’s a decent salary (albeit horrible to live on in the SE) so I’m happy with the trade off.

But yeah, being able to rock up to any random school event is the main reason I stay, tbh.