5 clever tips for working less than 40 hours a week

The five-day week is over — from the overseas COO to the midweek hiatus, Londoners are making clever calculations about clocking in. Rosamund Urwin on the new work/life blending hacks
Flex your job
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Rosamund Urwin11 July 2016

Time isn’t just money any more,” says Karen Mattison, founder of Timewise. “It can be even more important than that.” Mattison is explaining why Londoners are increasingly requesting flexible working, and why the best employers are trying to adapt to their needs.

The words “flexible working” tend to concur up thoughts of a colleague who has cut down to four days, or perhaps the boss who sneaks out at 4:30pm on the dot to pick up the children. But there’s a much broader range of ways that organisations can offer flexibility to their staff, including compressed hours, percentage contracts and “ultra-flexed” hours. And it isn’t only for employees with children or caring responsibilities: some staff work flexibly so they can study or volunteer too.

Timewise was set up to encourage flexible working. Mattison herself is in a job-split with fellow CEO Emma Stewart (Mattison covers private-sector employers, Stewart the public sector). Their analysis showed that while just over half of Londoners have some kind of flexible arrangement, the capital has the lowest percentage of jobs anywhere in the country — 7.2 per cent — that are advertised as flexible and have (full-time equivalent) salaries of more than £20,000. The national average is 8.7 per cent of posts.

One of the difficulties applicants face is knowing when to ask about flexibility: do they mention it as they apply and risk seeming half-hearted in their desire for the post, or once they’ve been offered it, and risk frustrating their new boss and HR? “Candidates often compared it to a game of poker — they don’t know when to show their hand,” says Mattison.

Timewise’s Hire Me My Way campaign is calling on organisations to change. “In the hiring process everything defaults to nine-to-five: jobs get readvertised to the norm, even if the person being replaced was working a four-day week. Companies should say when they advertise a job that for the right candidate they would add flexibility.”

Stewart adds: “The message to businesses is: ‘You’re already doing this, so why wouldn’t you consider it for candidates?’ London has a war on talent — so why not make a big sell of flexibility at the point of hire?”

And what is Stewart’s advice if you’re already in a job and want to switch to flexible working? “Take the solution as well as the problem to your bosses: you have to make your personal business case.”

So here are the new ways you can flex-it.

Jump the hump

A growing trend among senior staff who want to work flexibly is to take Wednesday off, cutting the week into two sections rather than truncating it. Lynn Rattigan is chief operating officer at accountancy firm EY for the UK and Ireland and has worked flexibly since her twins were born in 2009. She stays at home on Wednesdays.

“Professionally and personally I felt that being out in the middle of the week was easier to cope with,” she says. “Lots of things happen on a Friday, and this way it is easier to plan. I check emails on Wednesdays and can catch up on everything when I’m back the next day. It also means I never take too long a break from my children.”

When she first came back following maternity leave she was looking after a smaller section of the business. Eighteen months ago, however, Rattigan was promoted into her current role. “My boss said he’d never had a COO who worked four days before but he set out what he needed me to do, and I thought it was possible,” she says. “We keep the discussion going now, about whether we are both happy with the set-up and are getting what we need. It’s important both sides are regularly having that conversation.”

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Ultra-flexed

This means working hours can shift day-to-day and week-to-week, with no fixed pattern. It’s particularly helpful for those caring for an elderly parent or young or sick children, or those who have a disability themselves.

Mark Webb, 47, joined the media team of what was then Dixons Retail just over a decade ago and is now head of group social media at Dixons Carphone Warehouse. He is a father of two sons, aged 10 and five, and also has multiple sclerosis. Officially he works four days a week (with Fridays off) but he can also take breaks for treatment and when he’s suffering from fatigue.

“When I was first diagnosed with MS it was unpleasant but wasn’t particularly job-threatening,” he recalls. “But it has a habit of progressing, and it did for me. I carried on in a bit of denial, probably not doing as good a job as I had been before.”

Webb’s bosses at Dixons came to him, suggesting he cut back to four days a week, and that they create a role that suited them both. “I used to spend my time with journalists, having drinks out and at shop openings… but I can’t dance on the tables doing tequila slammers any more,” he says. “This job has helped me keep the interactions my illness will allow, and a social role though social media.”

It means he can work from home, although he comes in to the office about once a week in a wheelchair “as I miss seeing people. But when I need a nap or when it’s better to do a pyjama day tweeting from home, that works.”

On his worst days, Webb can’t use his hands so Dixons has given him voice-recognition technology.

Webb sees this arrangement as mutually beneficial: “Dixons has kept my knowledge and has a totally committed employee who knows senior management are committed to him.”

Ace your pace

You have to complete an agreed share of the usual working hours across the year. The benefit is that it enables you to toil at full-pelt for set periods and then perhaps take extended holidays. It fits well with companies where work is seasonal or where staff fluctuate between busy and fallow periods, like IT and some sections of law.

Avril Martindale, a partner at Magic Circle firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, has been working at 60 per cent since 2012. She joined Freshfields 19 years ago, specialises in intellectual property and data protection, and had always worked full-time previously. She decided to go part-time so that she could spend more time with her two children, now 14 and 12.

“My flexible arrangement is flexible: ‘no one’s saying you’re in Monday to Wednesday’,” she explains. “It’s up to me to perform.” There is a catch-up system, where she can reclaim extra hours worked, but mostly she tries to stick to the 60 per cent cut-off each week.

“I’m in the fortunate position that I’ve had years of people trusting me,” she adds. “It is important that companies have an adult approach to this, trusting the people they’re working with.”

Hack your workspace
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Remote control

This is exactly what it sounds like — you have the same job but do it in a different country. That can mean you’re based elsewhere, or just that you spend one of the week there to enjoy an extended weekend abroad. Technology is your friend, either way.

Grace (whose company, unfortunately, felt this was too extreme an example of flexible working to want it publicised) has been based in Greece since last September. She moved there with her husband, whose job had taken him there.

“My line manager said, ‘I have people working in Manchester, what’s the difference?’” She holds most of her meetings over Skype, and returns to London for a few days every couple of weeks for events and face-to-face catch-ups.

Shrink wrapped

Squishing what everyone else does (almost) in a full week into a truncated period. It means you don’t have to cut your salary accordingly but forces you to axe the faff time. Not an option for slackers, this.

Ruth Cooper, the service and complaints manager for the Health and Care Professions Council, is simultaneously studying theology at Wycliffe, a permanent private hall at Oxford. She works for HCPC Tuesday to Friday in London and travels up on Sunday night to Oxford for a full day of lectures and study on Monday.

Rather than the regular 35-hour week she works 34 hours, takes a shorter lunch break, and adds an extra hour to the end of her colleagues’ working day.

“People always say you have a bank holiday weekend every week — that’s not true,” she says. “I’m really focused while I’m in Oxford and I go up quite often when it’s not term-time to use the library. As much as I love flexible working I think there needs to be a purpose for it — mine is to study.”

Cooper adds that it is “give and take” — in busy periods she’s had to work Mondays — and says she feels both she and her employer have benefited: “I don’t think I’ve had a sick day since I changed my contract 18 months ago.”

Follow Rosamund Urwin on Twitter: @RosamundUrwin

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