Question about part-time work

[Anonymous]

I responded above. I only work 3 days a week (so 60 percent). I said I do 80 percent of my work - as in - my workload did NOT decline as much as my hours. Actually, I'd say it took 6 months to a year to get the workload to decline at all, but that was due to hiring problems (you need co-workers to pass work on to).

I love 3 days a week, but in some ways I think 4 would be better for balance. I do find it hard to "stay in the groove" at times. I'd consider four, but it's not an option for me. My work has weird rules about part-time. But I love, love, love the fact that my son spends more days with me than daycare. So I feel like I am raising him, versus the daycare. And strangly enough, my husband loves it also. He was only somewhat supportive at first, but now has made comments like "you can't go back to full-time!"

My work schedule is a bit weird - it is Mon, Tues and Friday. I allowed my boss to choose the days (the coincide with most meetings, and she didn't want me to have a "long weekend" for the sake of jealousy). I actually like it. Two days at work, two days at home with my kid- and by then I'm ready for another day of work. It's like having two weekends - one in the middle with just my son and me. And the middle of the week, things are less crowded. It also helps with workflow. I think people would "miss" me more if I worked Mon-Wed. And I think I'd go insane with a MWF schedule. I did it a few weeks and it just is too much off and on. As far as daycare/preschool, I've been told my schedule "won't work" but my son seems to adjust fine. Actually, my in-home daycare person said my son changed her mind about what works for part-time care.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Having the additional time around my children has been priceless to me. "

Did your spouse do the same?

This post is fairly bizarre. Are ANY families in a position to have BOTH parents work part-time?

I agree that this is strange and a bit annoying.

But I guess if both parents make 200k then two part time salaries would still be a lot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Having the additional time around my children has been priceless to me. "

Did your spouse do the same?

This post is fairly bizarre. Are ANY families in a position to have BOTH parents work part-time?

I agree that this is strange and a bit annoying.

But I guess if both parents make 200k then two part time salaries would still be a lot.

Check out this blog

http://www.theamazingtrips.com/

Parents of 4 year old triplets and a 22 month old. Both mom and dad worked part time until May 1, when mom had to go back full time. I'm a mom of multiples, so love this blog. In addition to following and relating to their chaotic lives, I also appreciate the family life balance they have created. It's not for everyone, but they have made choices about the size of their home, etc. to afford the lifestyle that works for them. Just thought I'd throw this out there as an example of both parents working part-time.

[Anonymous]

I would say me being part-time allows both me and my DH to have more quality time with my son. When we were both full-time, there was constant stress. Weekends were spent trying to accomplish and endless to-do list instead of just being a family. While there is still stress and still a to-do list, it is all much more manageable and allows us to both have more fun with my son.

I think that is the beauty of part-time. You spend time with your child but still have an income (and benfits) to help out. For me to be a SAHM, my DH would have had to take a job with longer hours to support us. So he would have had less time with his child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here again.

Sounds like a lot of people do 80% -- one day a week off. Any thoughts on working 50% or 60% of the time?

What specifically OP? I think many people (me included) do 80% to keep benefits. At my company, we have 100% benis at 80% but they are prorated if you fall below that. Plus, in the "caring about your career" category, it's much harder to get any kind of interesting/sexy work at 50%.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Having the additional time around my children has been priceless to me. "

Did your spouse do the same?

This post is fairly bizarre. Are ANY families in a position to have BOTH parents work part-time?

This is our dream. We're actively working towards it now . . . .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am considering making the case to my employer to go part-time (I have a six month old and want to have another relatively soon). This will not be as easy as working, say, retail part-time -- I currently earn over $200,000 at a consulting firm where we have a variety of clients. Actually being "off" during the work week will be a challenge considering none of the clients are "off"." So I think what I'd suggest to my employer is that I limit the number of clients I actually work on, come in a set number of hours a week, and have some flexibility to do things during my "off" time if truly needed (I have family in the area that I can call upon).

My biggest fear of part-time is that I end up getting paid less and still doing 80% of the work I used to do, but on my blackberry and laptop at home, and it doesn't help with that pulled-in-a-million-directions feeling that working moms face.

I'd love to hear from other mothers who work or have worked part-time and how it worked for you, and any suggestions you have about how to set up a good system that ensures when I'm not working during the week, I'm truly not working.

Thanks so much.

That is the nature of the beast - with technology and instant communication it is very difficult to set boundaries and "I'm off from work right now, sorry" -type of schedule. Just keep that in mind.
I know it's easier said than done.

I had to physically remove myself from email/blackberry (and even all the journal articles I needed to read) - literally placing them in the basement so there wouldn't be any temptation.

One other thing - if my particular job I had to delegate some of the workload since I was PT - that meant pay increase/OT pay/bonuses to my co workers who were picking up my slack. Fortunately, my boss (and HR) had no problems with that (it was still cheaper for them to dish out pay increases than to keep me at my FT salary), but that might be a disadvantage for your company.

Good luck.

[Anonymous]

To answer the question about 50-60% part time - I am a PP who works 80% (so 4 days a week). It would have been impossible for me to get less. My boss is very supportive of 4 days a week but there is no way less time would have worked.

I think moms who do 50-60 percent are rare - and I don't think it can work for all jobs. I think for me, if I knew I was only working say Tues, Wed, Thurs, my thursdays would be really stressful knowing I had a big chunk off. Now it's not a big deal since Fridays are slow anyway, just to have Fridays off. Also, as I mentioned in my first post I like technically still being FT at 32 hours - one reason is pay, other is good vacation and option of health care benefits if needed.

But, if you can do three days a week, I think that would be awesome. I just think it'd be tough as our workforce is really structured around FT jobs, and it seems like the flexible options are becoming more the norm but still not the norm.

As for the poster who asked about dads working PT as well, my DH is FT but he has scaled back and rearranged his schedule since we had a baby - luckily he works for a very family friendly company. Daycare is in his building so he HAS to leave at a certain time each day - and if he needs to do more work he just does it after the baby and I have gone to bed (he's a night owl anyway).

I wish our workforce was more family friendly in general but I don't know anyone who has a two part-time household. Would be cool though!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here again.

Sounds like a lot of people do 80% -- one day a week off. Any thoughts on working 50% or 60% of the time?

I work 24hours a week (supposedly) My schedule is 4 days a week 9-3 with no lunch. I LOVE it and even love it more than I get paid 90K a year for this amazing schedule.

Since I consider myself highly compensated, I have no problem helping out on my time off. I'm never without my BB. On my day off I often login durning nap-time and take care of time sensitive issues. Everyone knows I keep this schedule to be with my toddler, so I often take con calls (internal only) after hours, and no one minds the chaos in the background. I've been doing this now for 2 years and it has worked out wonderfully.

The thing I LOVE the most is that I can shift my day off to any day, or I can work 3 8 hours days and take two days off (but this is difficult to be away for 2 days in a row). I can come in at 7 and leave at 1 or I can come in at 11 and leave at 5.

My work is also seasonal, so I will have to work FT August/September, but then I will hardly work December/January.

Interstingly I am one of 2 women in my very small company. All of my colleagues and upper management has wives that mostly SAH. My work is highly supportive and respectful of my arrangement. If I worked for a bunch of women, I'm sure I would get a lot of heat over this and probably not have this arrangement.

[Anonymous]

DH and I actually each work 80%. It used to be ideal, in that we each would go in the office 3 days a week, and work 2 1/2 days at home (when ds was napping mostly). Now, he has to go to the office 4 consecutive days, so we have less flexibility. But even so, ds only has to go to child care 2 days a week, so we're pretty happy with our arrangement.

[Anonymous]

I work 50% as a government lawyer. It's 2 1/2 days a week, with just one day in the office. We have a nanny three full days a week, and 3 very little kids. My benefits are prorated. I've been doing it for 2 years now. It's a good schedule, and I value incredibly the time with our kids - I feel like I am definitely their primary caregiver, while also having some mental exercise and feeling like I haven't completely killed my career. It is hard, though, to see friends and colleagues advancing while I'm in a career plateau. I try to remember that life is a long time, and I have many years of career ahead of me, but the time while the kids are little is brief and precious. It helps that my work has, for the most part, been very supportive; I still feel valued there, and not TOO pressured to pick up more hours. I do have to take calls on my days "off," and that means sometimes juggling crying babies, dinner on the stove, and a call with someone who deserves my full attention, as well. It's not ideal, but I think it's as close as I can get for now. Best of luck to you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work 50% as a government lawyer. It's 2 1/2 days a week, with just one day in the office. We have a nanny three full days a week, and 3 very little kids. My benefits are prorated. I've been doing it for 2 years now. It's a good schedule, and I value incredibly the time with our kids - I feel like I am definitely their primary caregiver, while also having some mental exercise and feeling like I haven't completely killed my career. It is hard, though, to see friends and colleagues advancing while I'm in a career plateau. I try to remember that life is a long time, and I have many years of career ahead of me, but the time while the kids are little is brief and precious. It helps that my work has, for the most part, been very supportive; I still feel valued there, and not TOO pressured to pick up more hours. I do have to take calls on my days "off," and that means sometimes juggling crying babies, dinner on the stove, and a call with someone who deserves my full attention, as well. It's not ideal, but I think it's as close as I can get for now. Best of luck to you.

Where do you work?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I work 50% as a government lawyer. It's 2 1/2 days a week, with just one day in the office. We have a nanny three full days a week, and 3 very little kids. My benefits are prorated. I've been doing it for 2 years now. It's a good schedule, and I value incredibly the time with our kids - I feel like I am definitely their primary caregiver, while also having some mental exercise and feeling like I haven't completely killed my career. It is hard, though, to see friends and colleagues advancing while I'm in a career plateau. I try to remember that life is a long time, and I have many years of career ahead of me, but the time while the kids are little is brief and precious. It helps that my work has, for the most part, been very supportive; I still feel valued there, and not TOO pressured to pick up more hours. I do have to take calls on my days "off," and that means sometimes juggling crying babies, dinner on the stove, and a call with someone who deserves my full attention, as well. It's not ideal, but I think it's as close as I can get for now. Best of luck to you.

Where do you work?

DOJ

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I definitely think it can work but you need to have a few things in place. Here are my thoughts based on a successful part-time schedule at a law firm (75% pay for 1500 billable hours).

First, you need a manager/boss who is 100% supportive. This means someone who will actively help you make the arrangement work rather than take a hands off approach and expect you to fend for yourself (or worse, put you in difficult situations.) Sometimes this means your boss will need to cover for you with clients or will have to assign things elsewhere to "protect" your part-time arrangement. To state the obvious, not every boss will do this. And if you're already your own boss (i.e. partner level) this comes down to your clients -- How demanding are they? How emergency-driven is their work? Do they expect immediate turnaround on every email/document/project? If so, this is going to be tough to pull off.

The second thing to consider is your own personality, including your expectations and image of yourself and your career. If you go part-time, there will be sacrifices and missed opportunities, for sure. You may have to pass on exciting and rewarding work or you may have some of that taken away from you. For example, I remember being momentarily disappointed/pissed about not being consulted when some great work came through my office and was assigned to someone else. But it truly was not compatible with my part-time schedule and putting me on the matter was not in the best interest of the client (or myself, if I wanted to stay at 1500 hours.) I knew that rationally, but it still stung for a bit. The reality is in the math -- you just can not achieve the same things in 75% of the time. I've seen a lot of lawyers flame out with part-time because of this. On some level, they refuse to accept the downside and they believe they can/should "have it all." So they work more than their part-time deal in order to "keep up" (either in terms of achivement or in terms of image/reputation) and they end up undermining themselves. (And then they wonder why their colleagues and clients "push their boundaries" by giving them more work. People take their cues from you -- if you can't keep it within the limits, they won't either.) And FWIW, on the other side, I have also seen high achieving part-timers get somewhat bitter over time about what they're giving up and how they're now perceived by their colleagues -- especially as they see their peers getting better projects/clients or being promoted ahead of them. Bottom line is I think you really need to know yourself. How much will that type of thing get to you? How much do you care about what other people think? How comfortable are you with the trade offs? For me, it was ABSOLUTELY worth it, but I don't know that everyone feels this way.

Finally, you'll want to think hard about boundary setting. You'll need to be (or learn to be) the type of person who can choose to let things go and who can "slot" tasks for specific times and not think about them until then. When you're working, you're working; when you're not, you're not. Before going part time I was a workaholic with a very big firm that prided itself on immediate responsiveness. I was accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. When I went part-time, I looked at it as a new job. I moved to clients/matters that proceeded on more planned schedules/timelines and were (generally) not emergency driven. So I did not really feel "on call" the way I used to. And because I gave the firm back $50k in order to gain 500 hours of time, I very much did not want to be that SUCKER who continued to work just as much for less money. So I put a post-it with "$50k" on my computer screen to remind me of my renegotiated deal so I didn't "betray" myself by overworking.

Good luck! Part-time is not for everyone, but when it works it can be great!!

I can so relate to these sentiments! I totally agree that you have to know yourself and your limits before trying to make it work part-time. I also agree that it is completely a function of where and who you work with and whether they will be supportive of your schedule.

I'm PT at a law firm and generally work 3 days in the office. I consistently have to do some work on my "days off," and log back on after the kids go to bed most nights. It's exhausting and frustrating in many respects. I don't ever feel like I'm doing a great job on either end and frequently feel caught between the WOHM and SAHM worlds. Because my schedule can be so unpredictable, it's really hard to make set plans for my days off. Like this poster and others, I also struggle a lot with watching others at work get better opportunities and experiences. It's especially hard to watch junior associates doing things I'd like to be doing, and I often feel like I'm not developing. Of course, I also have to remind myself that these are choices I have made and boundaries I have set. I'm just not willing to travel all the time and work around the clock in the office, and particularly in this economy, that's what you need to be doing to move ahead. I get that and I'm often irritated when I hear people (usually women) complain about sexism and lack of advancement opportunities for professional women when it is mostly because they have chosen to scale back or opt out.

On the other hand, like many other posters, I feel so fortunate to have the flexibility to spend time with my kids and attend school events without having to give up my career. I also love that my kids spend more time with me than my nanny and I know for a fact that I personally am a better mom having this mental outlet for myself. And now that I have been doing this PT for 4+ years, I have learned lots of tricks for juggling. Participating on conference calls on mute (while food shopping or playing with my kids) is key. I also agree that you really need to have childcare or at least family in the area to cover more than just the specific hours you work. It's annoying to pay for time you don't need, but it's great insurance for when you need it.

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

I'm a government attorney working 60% -- I work 3 days a week. I rarely work more than that. Like some of the other PPs, we have full-time daycare. We initially did that only because we couldn't find part-time care, but having full-time care has been a lifesaver! Being able to switch working days in order to attend meetings or because the kids are sick is essential IMO.

I get paid 60% of my former salary, but I have an arrangement with my employer that for every hour over 24 that I work each week, I earn credit hours. So I'm always compensated for any work I put in. I do miss out on great cases and opportunities because of my schedule, but I love having more time with my kids. I also feel less connected to my office -- I miss out on trainings and other events, and I'm not as socially connected to my colleagues because I'm not there. But again, its worth it.