Flexitime would help mums back to work
Monday 3rd October 2011, 2:29PM BST.
Milly Dudley-Owen, pictured with Genevieve, left, and Sophia, believes flexible working hours can be of help both to employee and employer and benefit the island purse. (Picture by Steve Sarre, 1110098)
FLEXIBLE working hours for professional women with children would help the island’s economy and enable youngsters to grow into more rounded individuals, one of the founding members of Guernseymums has said.
Milly Dudley-Owen, who also runs an online jobs board, said she saw many excellent candidates rejected by HR departments because of timetabling issues.
‘The job board allows all job seekers to be viewed equally by employers and judged on merit and relevant experience rather than on availability.’
Mrs Dudley-Owen said that for economic reasons it was often preferable for women to return to work after starting a family, but as a community Guernsey had to ask itself what was more beneficial in the long term.
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I’m fully supportive of mothers going back to work but working in the finance industry myself it is often hopelessly impractical to have people (men as well as women) in certain part-time roles.
I work in a small trust company, half of the workforce are trust administrators and every one of them works part time in some way. We have had to be flexible to keep the staff we have but it is not always good for business as clients expect a 9-5 five day a week presence.
Of course there are certain back office positions that this wouldn’t be an issue.
The trouble with all this is that most people who want to work flexi time only want to work mornings, oh and have school holidays off, obviously stay at home when little Jimmy has a cold, oh and go to the school plays/events. Not ideal for an employer trying to run a business.
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What about fathers who have children? Oh, yeah, they get the mothers to look after their kids.
Do you have children, Jeff?
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Nowadays it is difficult enough to find part time work even if you don’t have the responsibility of children. Part time jobs are few and far between.
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@Jeff
Good post;
One of the many problems employers have with recruiting part time staff, especially in your field is that it is down to the other employees in the office to carry their part time colleagues roles as well as their own, during the hours that the part timers are not there. In business it is important to build a relationship with clients, enabling confidence and trust, you have to be there, full time to achieve and fulfill this expectation.
Having been in a similar full time role for some many years, I know what I am talking about. The majority of our clients were locally based and, expected to be able to speak with ‘their’ contact,
during business hours.
I for one would encourage professional mothers to return to work, their skills in the market place are highly regarded, but before doing so they should have in force a water tight umbrella for child care.
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@ Roquaine – about to have our first and my wife is finishing work, ideally until the child goes to school. We had planned financially for this scenario.
As I implied in my first post of course fathers are just as able to stay at home – some male members of my family have been doing this for years.
Not everyone is in the position where one partner can stay home and I totally accept this isn’t the ‘norm’ today. My comment was more from a business point of view and how difficult it can be to accommodate so many people that want to work part time, in my experience it is almost always women and not just shortened hours but longer holidays etc.
The trouble is it is very difficult to say no to an existing staff member who wants to reduce their hours but we do so as we don’t want to lose their experience – I don’t believe we would employ a new member that wanted part time. Again my point was simply that there are roles in the financial services industry that just don’t lend themselves to part time male/female workers. Often part-timers have to come in at a much lower level than their trained ability.
I suppose it is the price we pay of living in a fast-moving affluent island with expensive houses and cost of living as well as demanding clientele.
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Jeff
You are absolutedly correct about part timers coming in at a much lower level than their trained ability.
As a part timer you are often treated as a second class citizen in the workplace.
In a previous job I worked six hours a day but because the hours weren’t the norm I was treated as if I barely turned up each day and after years of being ‘walked over’ by full time staff (many of whom weren’t particularly fantastic) I finally gave in and left feeling that I had much yet to give but was not given the chance to fulfil my potential. I feel it is often better to have staff working ‘flat out’ on reduced hours rather than full time staff who often coast during the latter part of the afternoon.
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@Burdock – I know exactly what you mean, this is why we (as a company) have bent over backwards to accomodate our existing staff as theoretically we get the same volume of work out of them in less time which is fantastic, just goes back to the point that some aren’t there after 2pm which for some clients is reason to move their business elsewhere.
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I can see both sides of this argument. I used to work part time – i.e. 30 hours a week in Compliance – which is not a time critical position. I was at my desk by 7.30 every morning and worked straight through to 1.30. My employers were brilliant, and I couldn’t ever hope to get this sort of response again.
My daughter’s baby is just 10 months old. She works in the evenings from 5 to 9 and was looking into returning to full time work. By the time her income tax, insurance and childcare is taken into consideration – she would be worse off by £300 per month! It just is not worth her while to pursue it. How mad is that?. Some of her contemporaries are quite happy to get everything given to them from the States without a second thought. My daughter won’t go down that route and wants a career – but at the moment, this seems a far off dream.
I work full time. I believe that most part timers, far from being “carried” by full time staff, actually pull their weight more than others. Part timers generally roll their sleeves up and get on with the job from the moment they walk in the office. Most full timers tend to make a bit of coffee, have a chat, go on the internet – go for a fag. You get the idea….
Flexitime works for some jobs, but obviously not all. I just wish there was a better solution for all concerned. At least now, at an interview you are not asked how you intend to look after your child, as was the norm “back in my day”.
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Interesting topic, unfortunately there are quite a few people out there who do seem to think that ‘flexi-time’ means hours to suit just them. The hours need to also suit the business in which they’re employed. Therefore ‘availability’ is an important factor when considering candidates.
Part time and flexi time are not synonymous with each other but real benefits can be had by both within a business.
The lack of uptake on flexi-time is, in part, due to incomprehension by employers on how it would work and how it would benefit a business.
Unfortunately unless there is a real need for this, such as say an inability to recruit a skill base, it will continue to be overlooked. It’s too time consuming to adapt when you can (relatively) easily get a license.
This could be an initiative (which I believe I’ve spoken about before) that is taken up by The States as part of an overall strategy for population control.
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I completely appreciate that jobs need to be covered 9-5, and there are certain jobs that dropping to part time hours just isn’t feasible.
However, WELL SAID Sarnia expat…most part-timers aren’t carried by the full-timers, yes they may pick up the phone and explain that a part-timer will call them the following morning (occasionally dealing with urgent matters), but the part-timers do that for full-timers on a lunch break do we not? Or perhaps during a meetings? The list goes on. As you pointed out part-timers turn up and get on with it and most work twice as hard as a full-timer will. And yes I am talking from experience, 2 years ago when I left my 25 hr/wk job my boss told me that he would be sorry to see me go as when he compared the quantity (and quality for the record) of my work to my 2 colleagues in equal positions doing a 40hr/wk I generally completed equal to a quarter more work than them. He continued to comment how its very common to see part-timers managing as much as a full-timer. Its not the first time I have had comments about how much work I get through compared to f/timers either.
Flexitime can’t work across the board, and I don’t think us mums should expect it too either, but where it can be accomodated I think it should be given more thought.
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Guernsey mum of 3 – my experience of working with part time colleagues is the complete opposite to you. I have worked in an office where there was a high proportion of part timers and they spent so much time with their full time colleagues catching up on what had been happening in the office – sometime relevant, sometimes not, what little johnny did last night, what they watched on telly, what the dog did that they had little time left for work. If their child was sick, they just wouldn’t turn up that day and other people would have to cover their work which could not be left for their return.
I’m not against part time workers, but it has to suit the nature of the business and be managed effectively. The scenario I described above was not managed effectively and in fact, the manager was also part time and would have to spend time catching up with what her staff were doing everytime she came into work.
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I used to employ full and flexi time workers. The idea of the flexi timers was to cover sickness, holidays, days owing etc. however, like Lynnie states the flexi timers seemed to assume that they could do what hours suited them and i got sick to the back teeth of when ever a music festival or event was on, the flexi timers “couldn’t work” this meant that quite often full timers who were owed time missed out on spending time with their families on there days. Even when i said that i was going to rota days such as giving everyone a saturday off once in a while the flexi timers would phone in “sick” ( so sick that they could just about manage to crawl into town to watch the hill climb etc). This meant that the full timers often had to change days off or cancel days owing to cover the flexi timers and on some occasions leave the store under staffed. Trouble is at one time with staff like that u could tell them that if they couldn’t work hours as agreed then they need not bother coming back and u would take on someone else. So next time u are waiting ages to be served in a shop just bear in mind it may be because the flexi timers decided they had a christening or a wedding or a trip to Jersey that they “forgot” to tell the manager about until the previous day or so ago!!!
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