If your employer agrees to you returning to work 4 days a week, SHOULD they reduce your job description by 4/5 and can they ask you to work 5 days when necessary?

[artichokes]

I wrote to my employer asking for to return 4 days a week and to work 'normal' hours on those days (10-6pm). Before my maternity leave I was fulltime and although my conditioned hours were 10-6pm I regularly worked longer than that to do the job (I was not payed overttime but this is normal at my work where we have long holidays to compensate for long hours).

Today I got a reply that says yes I can work 4 days but they will not reduce my job description at all and I may occasionally have to be flexible and work 5 days a week. The letter also says that my conditioned hours will be 10-6pm but in certain circumstances I may have to stay later.

So basically they are saying I can do 100% of my old job for 80% pay and I cannot rely on being home for the kids' bedtime or being off on a Friday. This is obviously a nightmare for childcare.

Am I wrong to feel this is unfair? I am reasonable senior in a public sector organisation and the letter implies that at my level of seniority some flexibility is required (i.e. they would not expect senior staff to complain about hours and days etc). I am not really sure how to respond.

Is it normal to go back to a full job description when you are working reduced hours? What does employment law say about this?

They can't expect you to do the same amount of work in the full time hours, but TBH most of the part timers in my work (me included) just went back to their old job which hadn't been reduced in any way. I think that tends to be the case with most part time roles unless you job share.

I think the thing with being flexible re the Friday isn't really on though, you need to have that properly clarified e.g how often, how much notice etc.

I think it is very unfair to expect you to do 100% of teh job for 80% pay. When someone goes part time here their contract and job spec (and all the practicalities of changing that are addressed) get rewritten to accomodate them and to ensure there are no areas for confusion going forward, no matter how senior they are.

Can you not write back and say that you appreciate all the tasks on your job description still need doing but you thought it fair to make them aware that you would only be going into 80% depth with them. Obvioulsy if you need to work a bit extra to do that 80% on occassioanl you will as you are senior.

So for example if you manage a team of 5, and had half hour 121s with them each week, you would only have 22 minute 121s. If you had to write 1000 word reports you would only write 800 word reports.

Would this work?

Employment law doesn't get involved in the content of job descriptions, that's between the employee and the employer.

If you were the one who proposed working reduced hours you obviously felt that your job could be done like this. How were you proposing it would work? Just bearing in mind your comment that you regularly worked longer than your contractual hours to get the job done, how were you proposing to do it in less time? Were you proposing some tasks that don't need doing at all, or that could be adjusted, or similar?

I ask because although it's not necessarily fair to ask you to work the same number of hours for reduced pay, whether or not your job description remains the same is something up for negotiation. If you only want to reduce your hours by one day, then a job share obviously isn't a possibility, so if you want this to work, you are going to need to propose how it will work. You can't just expect your employer to take some of your job away. What would happen to it?

You need a constructive proposal as to how it will work with you doing your job in less hours.

Oh, and again the flexibility is something to be negotiated between you, that would be something to discuss further and compromise about.

Might they be a bit more amenable to reducing flexibility if you took a different day off? I only say because everyone wants Fridays off, so if you are prepared to compromise on that, they may be prepared to compromise on how flexible you need to be.