full time to part time work
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Anonymous
| I have three elementary school aged kids and I'm considering a switch from full time to part time work. Has anyone else made that transition? Any advice or things you wish you had realized before hand? |
Anonymous
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I have 2 preschoolers and work part-time and LOVE it. I do 3 full days per week. Meaning I get two other days to be there for the kids and run errands and we have more time as a family on weekends and evenings. If you can afford it, I think it's one of the best way to achieve 'balance'. I could never SAH full-time (kudos to the women that do - it's just tough for me) and working full-time is just too much.
Good luck! |
Anonymous
| I would love to work part time, but how do you find a decent job that is part time? |
Anonymous
| I'm part time (about 25 hours a week now) and I love it. I am a web editor. It's a sacrifice, esp. when it comes to retirement benefits (no 401k), but I love it. |
Anonymous
how do you find something like that? how much do you make? Does it pay like $15 an hour? |
Anonymous
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I work part time and love it also - 24 hours a week, or 60% of full time. For me, that ensures full benefits as well. So, although my salary does not contribute much to our household income, my benefits do both now (health insurance) and more importantly in the long run (I am fortunate to have a pension).
How to find such a position is more difficult. It helped that I worked full time for 16 years prior to going part time. If you are currently working FT, explore the option with your current employer. A few suggestions if you go PT - be sure to set the parameters so you are not trying to do a FT position in PT hours. Accept that you are not as likely to get promotions and advance, but you are also not losing skills being home. Although I love my situation and feel I have a pretty good balance, sometimes there is a feeling on being on the outskirts of everything... not part of the SAHM crowd, too often not available, not part of the social activities or even up on the latest gossip at work - I have too much to do when I'm there and frequently miss out on lunches and the like. Even given that, wouldn't change it for the world. Family wise things are great. Good luck, OP |
Anonymous
I am similar to this poster. I went PT (30-hours a week) after being FT for 8-9 years. I had "proven" myself with my employer. I have full-benefits and since I'm the policy holder on health and dental, the benefits are far more critical than my salary. (Yes, I'm still a salaried employee, just not as much as I had been.) As the PP said, be sure to set parameters that you will be doing X% of work as before, not a FT "amount" in reduced hours and pay. Also as PP said, your promotions may suffer, but I suspect you may be okay with that. I also feel like sometimes I'm on the outskirts since I'm not at the office "all the time". Sometimes it is a source of annoyance, but honestly, at this point, I don't care. I get one day a week to run errands and do chores around the house, which makes for much better weekends with the family. I wouldn't trade it for anything. |
Anonymous
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Like the PP said................In order to have a fulfilling and lucrative PT position, you need to go from FT to PT ................prove yourself.
This kind of deal doesn't just "happen." |
Anonymous
| I went from FT to PT when my son was about 1 year. PT was 75% so I kept benefits. I worked 5 for reduced hours, which made sense to me since a full day alone with DS was tiring, but more time every day together was energizing for us both. Key was being in a job I loved and was good at to begin with, and negotiated the reduced hours. |
Anonymous
| PP here - that should have been "worked 5 days a week for reduced hours" |
Anonymous
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You could always talk to your boss about trying it for a while. I did a reduced schedule (4 days a week) for a few years when kids were young, but toward the end of the 3 years it became stressful to do everything I needed to do and not feel I was being paid less for FT work or that I was tied to the blackberry on my day off. Luckily, I had the opportunity for a promotion and took it and returned to FT (pretty good balance of rarely working past 5:30 and never working weekends, very little travel, etc.).
FT and PT both have their benefits and drawbacks. I like not being totally "mommy-tracked" (not that this is a bad gig for those who want it) and I like the full time pay and benefits. But I could see with three kids how PT would be nice (we stopped at two). |
Anonymous
Isn't there a mommy share listserv with dcum? That's where I found my PT WAH job. Pays $20/hr and I work on my laptop anytime I'm free. |
Anonymous
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11:06 here.
My boss has been totally supportive of me being part-time. I think he very much feared I would quit my job. I set up my PT arrangement and hours when I was still pregnant, so even though I worked FT up until the baby was born, the expectation was I would come back PT. Even today in my reviews (5+ years after going PT), he always asks about my work-life balance. I have been very blessed that my Friday is MY Friday and that my short day of the week is, indeed, short. |
Anonymous
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OP, could you convince your current work place to let you convert your position to a job-share one so that you another employee who also wants to work part-time could share it with you?
That is exactly what I did when my daughter was born and it was a perfect solution. |