Question about part-time work

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

I get paid less and still do 80 percent of the work I used to

OK, some weeks are fine, other weeks are hard (I have to rearrange my schedule, I have to work at nights, I check my blackberry on my days off). But I find it totally worth it to spend time with my son.

What I found to be helpful was having full-time daycare. We stumbled into this because we couldn't find a part-time option. It's a financial killer, but for you it may not be (since you make so much). I only took my son three days a week, but since I paid for full-time I could just bring him any three days. That way you can easily rearrange your schedule. Right now we have part-time care and it makes it so much harder (we are reverting to full-time come the Fall) I resent my schedule changes and I have to beg my DH to take time off or get my mom to drive down. I push back more on schedule changes and this doesn't make my boss happy.

Personally, I like have set hours. I think it really helps everyone to grasp when you work. So I trade whole days for whole days (I work Wed instead of Friday). But given you work with clients, you may have to be more flexibile.

Does your work have part-time rules already in place? If not, you may want to think about what you suggest as far as benefits. Mine are mostly pro-rated.

I think the most challenging aspect is co-workers expectations and attitude. Mine tend to forget I don't get paid full-time and don't comprehend how hard it is to spend time with a child. They always make comments about "my time off" like I am just laying around the house doing nothing.

[Anonymous]

I am an attorney and work on a part time schedule (3 days a week). I have been doing this for a little over a year. It is hard, and I do end up working during my days off. But I do it on my own schedule (when DD naps, or after she goes to sleep at night). I have had to push back a lot on pressure to do more work, be at work more, etc., which does not make the boss happy. However, my DD is my priority, and if, in the absolute worst case, I lose my job, it will have been worth it.

[Anonymous]

I work 80% of hours, get paid 80% but still do 100% of the work.

It sounds like a raw deal, but it is totally worth it to me to have the extra time with my baby. I absolutely don't believe everyone at work from 9-6 five days a week does work ALL THE TIME - I just learned to be more efficient. I still take a full lunch hour on most of my 4 days in the office as well. And as you can see, still have a few minutes each morning and afternoon to take a break and go on DCUM while I drink my coffee!!!

What helped me make the case was having full time child care available (it's hard to find part time for an infant anyway) - so I usually have Fridays off, but if I'm needed on a Friday and sub in a Wednesday or Thursday off, I am not scrambling for child care. I also check blackberry on my days off and will respond to an "emergency" but so far nothing has come up - it's more a comfort thing for the head of my department.

Also, since working the reduced hours I have gotten a promotion and a nice raise, which really helped me get over the pay cut.

Since I am still considered "full time" at 32 hours, I am eligible for health care benefits should my husband get laid off or something, which is a relief (though his job is very secure, you just never know these days). Also, I get great vacation and matching 401k so it's nice to be considered full time.

I know if I stayed home full time I'd love the extra time with my baby but I'd miss work and be really nervous about depending on one paycheck, especially since even with my reduced pay salary I bring home almost half our income. So it works for our family. My boss is really good at not bothering me on my day off. Several women in my company work flex schedules or reduced hours so I had a good model to follow. I think having the extra day at home is totally worth it.

[Anonymous]

I have worked a 65% schedule (3 days a week) at a large consulting firm since returning to work after maternity leave a year ago. While I do often check my phone/email at night, and have occasional days off/weekends where I have to work at home to get stuff done, it's not very common and is usually short-term (say, push to finish a proposal or deliverable). My clients are all government, many of whom take alternate Fridays off (one of my two days off), so it's rare that an urgent demand will come in on a day off.

The difference may be that I'm considerably lower on the pay scale than you: At FT, I made just shy of $90k. My role now is more often that of a task manager than a project manager. So, while I have some client contact, my project managers are the ones that have to deal with all the daily client stuff. That's probably the biggest reason the arrangement works for me.

On the other hand, pre-baby, I had managed a few projects, and was on track to continue to do that - but going part-time was a statement (conscious or not) to my supervisors that I was slowing down the pace of my career. I'm fine with that and since my company doesn't do "up-or-out", I can stay here forever as long as I do good work. I do recognize that if/when I'm ready to move up, though, it may be a harder road.

[Anonymous]

I'm also a consultant and work an 80% schedule. I'll be honest with you, it's totally killed my career and I still end up jiggling a baby in one arm and answering my BB more Fridays than I'd like, but the trade-off has been totally worth it! I LOVE having 3 days at home with the kids and feel so much more connected to them. Have been doing this since DS #1 was born 3 years ago. If you care about making partner/advancing, I would say this option is not for you. But I like my work and need a mental break from my kids, so PT was good for me. Here's what I did:
- Came to my boss with a business plan on how PT would work and how they could still earn revenue from me. Most bosses I know don't care what the schedule is as long as the firm isn't affected adversely. If you're good, they'll want to keep you. Basically, I became an SME rather than a project lead/client director. I gave up my staff and some of my clients, which was really hard, but I now drift in and out of other people's engagements to work with them on start-up or close-out. I've also gone over to the public sector side of the firm, which has a lot better work life than the commercial side.
- My nanny only works 4 days a week and she never found another position to fiill the 5th day. So I have a lot of flexibility to have her work on Fridays when an ornerary client insists on a meeting or on travel.
- I'm always available by BB, but everyone (incl clients) know that I won't answer emails right away on Fridays unless it's an emergency. That's easeir with gov't clients than commercial clients.

As I said previously, I don't get the creme de la creme clients anymore nor do I manage people (which I used to love), but I really like that my kids spend almost half the week with me and that I know their rhythms and habits so well. At the same time, I get to use my mind in a completely different way at work. Sure there are some weeks that are crazy, but I've been in consulting for 12 years now and I'm good at push-back and giving people different options on how to solve problems without me When the kids start school, I'm going to re-think this schedule (and maybe my career path since making partner isn't so important to me anymore) but I totally love the balance I have now. Go for it, OP! Good luck to you.

[Anonymous]

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!!

[Anonymous]

I have had similar experiences as some of the PPs. I am a professional in a client-driven field who has worked PT for a number of years, with one, two and then a third child. I usually come to the office only two days a week.

Some considerations (most have already been mentioned and of course, might or might not end up applying in your particular situation):

My career has completely "plateaued." Colleagues younger than me get promoted and get the supervisory, challenging and "sexy" work.

You probably can't expect to be consistently "off the clock" on your days off. This can be stressful.

Flexible/back-up childcare is important so you can be available for important meetings, deadlines, etc.

In my particular case, it doesn't always seem to make sense from a purely financial perspective.

As to the positives, I have "kept my toe" in a profession that would be very difficult to impossible to re-enter after years off and I have had the personal satisfaction of challenging myself and being around intellectual, stimulating people. More to the point, if I could choose to go back and work full-time, or even a more robust part-time schedule in exchange for significantly more money, more prestige, more of a foothold in my profession, etc., I would not consider doing it for even a second -- Having the additional time around my children has been priceless to me.

[Anonymous]

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

Did your spouse do the same?

[Anonymous]

I work 80% (4 days a week in the office). Monday's I'm at home but do about a 1/2 day's worth of work I'd say between work on the weekend and conf. calls/emails on Monday during naps or after bed. I offered to take a 20% pay cut to do this and would have still been OK w/ it even given that i'd be working 90%, but was lucky in that my boss agreed to keep me at full salary on the rationale that i'd likely be working almost as much (true) just not all from the office.

I do have FT child care and that's essential as i sometimes have mtgs I can't avoid or travel on my day off.

At first it was very hectic and I spent every minute DD was sleeping on Mondays doing email and calls. Now I scan emails (on my handheld) throughout the day every few hours to keep an eye out for something urgent and attend only to the most time-sensitive things during nap time. It's wokring out pretty well in my view.

When I proposed it, I did convey that I wasn't happy with the current work/life balance of 5 days a week and really needed a bit more time at home. It's temporary - for just a year right now although possible that it could be extended. I also worked for about 2/3 of the year after I came back from maternity leave at a regular schedule (well, flexing my hours 1 hour off; but same number of hours and 5 days in the office) before I proposed this. I think that helped my case as well since I'd had a good track record of being able to juggle well by that point.

[Anonymous]

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

Did your spouse do the same?

At each stage of parenting, we have talked it over, discussing and considering the possibility of both of us working full-time, my husband staying home full-time while I pursue my career, me staying home full-time, me cutting back at work or my spouse cutting back. My husband has a job that allows him to be home for dinner every night and take liberal time off for school plays, taking the kids to doctor's appointments, picking them up from sports practices, etc. The "work-family balance" is something we constantly re-evaluate, but we have pursued what we think works best for us.

[Anonymous]

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

Did your spouse do the same?

OP here. My husband has a relatively flexible job, especially during certain times of the year, but like many people (men and women alike) has no desire to be a full-time stay at home parent. I (think) I would, but it's not financially feasible right now, so I'm looking for part-time options.

Aren't folks tired of the need to have everything be 100% equal between parents? Personally, I'm trying to pursue a path that makes me happy, and I think that means scaling back my work to be more of a full-time mom. My husband has turned down career opportunities so that he can have a flexible job and be home most nights for dinner. That's good enough for me. I don't need him to cut his salary in half to be a part-timer as well.

[Anonymous]

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?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work 80% of hours, get paid 80% but still do 100% of the work.

II absolutely don't believe everyone at work from 9-6 five days a week does work ALL THE TIME - I just learned to be more efficient. I still take a full lunch hour on most of my 4 days in the office as well. And as you can see, still have a few minutes each morning and afternoon to take a break and go on DCUM while I drink my coffee!!!

I second the "you learn to be more efficient" thing. I have actually won "bonus awards" each year for being able to do so much work in part-time hours. I put in some extra time, but you learn to use that blackberry like a finely tuned sword. Respond when needed, ignore when not.

[Anonymous]

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?