Part-time working is often believed to be the preserve of working mums, juggling nappies with pulling in a wage, but a recent survey by Cranet shows that it has now become an almost universally accepted way of working with 97% of organisations now offering it. In this feature Annie Hayes reports on the experiences and cautionary tales of those HR professionals that have and continue to manage part-time workers.

Can businesses benefit from part-time working?
For Helena Peacock, HR Director of the Penguin Group, the business benefits of part-time working aren’t any more obvious than the advantages to be had of fostering a loyal workforce that can be retained during those child-caring years. For thirteen years, Peacock herself worked for the publisher as a part-timer, allowing her the precious flexibility she craved to care for her daughter whilst she grew up.

“I was really grateful to Penguin for allowing me, in effect, to dictate my hours to suit my daughter’s school day. Part-time workers are usually more loyal, they don’t waste time on long personal telephone calls or lunches because they usually have to leave absolutely on time and they’re delighted to have the job and are often very aware of the impositions their absences cause for other full-time employees.”

The correlation between part-time working and its loyalty-boosting pay-off, is one that is well-recognised by Stephen Walker, Director of Motivation Matters who cites one of the key business benefits as its impact upon recruitment. John Chilman, Group Pensions Director for First Group the largest bus and train provider in the UK says that in the US the business runs predominantly with the aid of a part-time workforce, “Driving yellow school buses leads itself to a morning and afternoon shift.”

And of course there is the added benefit of getting two heads instead of one. Zara Pain and Dawn Jennings, former joint HR Directors at Christies NHS Hospital shared the workload on a part-time basis and found the advantages of having two minds for one job, a bonus for managing an in-tray that needed considerable strategic input: “When you become a senior manager it can be lonely and you can feel isolated. Doing a job share at this level is fantastic for alleviating some of those problems. We have each other as a sounding board; we share the burden of our work. At this level it’s also more about thought-processes than tasks and having two brains instead of one is a definite advantage,” comments Pain.

Flexibility can be a big advantage too says Walker. “If you have part-timers working over the week then you can readily increase capacity by 100%, with prior agreement of course. You ask people to work 30 hours instead of 15 for a while. It is not possible to ask people to work 74 hours a week.”

What jobs does it work best for?
The assumption is that part-time working operates best for those organisations that lend themselves to shift patterns and manual working such as retail, factory and manufacturing operations. Indeed Walker says that it is not really suitable for jobs with a high strategic decision making content: “You may end up with the multiple job holders disagreeing about strategy and the decision changing several times a week. This is the barrier that inhibits part-timers rising high in organisations.”

But Pain and Jennings disagree and have proved that their job-share, based on part-time working to be successful. The secret of their success, according to the duo, has been making areas of responsibility distinct from one another. “We split our areas of responsibility. Dawn used to set the objectives and do the PDP’s for the Head of HR Support while I did the same for the Head of Learning for example. We also divided the week between ourselves too,” explains Pain.

Melanie Guy, HR Manager for software services outfit, Snowdrop and Sandy Boyle HR Director for legal practice, Mills & Reeve both function with the assistance of part-timers operating at a variety of levels.

Boyle has part-timers working in a range of positions from lawyers to legal and business support staff whilst Guy employs part-timers in administration, finance, IT, software training and payroll.

Part-time working it would seem has now moved well and truly outside its traditional patch and while it may not be the majority position, many workers are enjoying high-powered jobs on a part-time basis too.

Is it just the preserve of working mums?
Current legislation favours the case of the working parent, easing their path to more flexible working – one route, which of course is part-time working. According to the regulations, parents of children under the age of six or disabled children under the age of eighteen have the right to apply to their employer to work more flexibly. The request can cover hours of work, times of work and place of work and may include requests for different patterns of work.

Penguin has latched onto the fact that with 74% of its workforce being female and many with children, part-time working is a popular request.

“Our flexible working policies are extremely popular. A lot of our maternity returners come back on a part-time basis and we also accommodate those that wish to work flexible hours, for example with early starts and finishes.”

While Peacock admits that by the nature of the company demographics, more mums are likely to request part-time work then men she does add that the business also has three part-time working males.

So there are clearly reasons outside child care that result in part-time working. Walker points to the impact of the pension’s crisis. “As we ‘boomers’ reach retirement age and discover our pensions have been taxed to oblivion then more of us will be looking for part-time work, or even many part-time jobs. There are many nominally self-employed business people who are in fact portfolio workers.”

Alan Pickering, a senior consultant at Watson Wyatt and a trustee of the Life Academy (Pre-Retirement Association) envisages a future in which older workers can mix and match work with retirement, a form of protiring that will include part-time working. B&Q, the DIY retailer pioneered a trend to employ older workers in the late 1980s. Back then it piloted a project in which an entire staff was staffed by over 50s. The feedback from customers and staff was so positive it continued its policy of hiring older workers, many of which wanted to mix retirement and leisure pursuits with earning some money on a part-time basis.

So whilst part-time working clearly lends itself to those with childcare responsibilities it has permeated into other facets of society – to those that wish to ease their way into retirement and those that want to combine a number of different ‘portfolio’ pursuits with several jobs.

As Walker says: “Our neighbour’s son-in-law to be is an artist. He has had a write up in The Telegraph and is getting good exposure. To make ends meet he also works in a shop and runs his own gardening business.”

A recent survey by the Training and Development Agency for Schools also throws light on a reason why many workers might turn their hand to portfolio working – boredom! According to their study many workers (61%) are bored because they lack challenge in their current job, while not using their skills or knowledge makes life tedious for 60% and 50% say they were bored because they were doing the same things every day.

Nik Kellingley, a training consultant believes that in the next few years many more people will want to look at having multiple part-time roles rather than one main job. “The recent survey showing the level of boredom in jobs suggests that people may try to overcome this by working in many different roles part-time instead.”

Managing the pitfalls
Boyle says that part-time working has to work for the business but having a justified business reason for turning down a request must be filed.

It is clear that employers must be very clear as to their reasons for rejecting part-time working requests. But once the legislation had been adhered to how can employers ensure that a part-time working arrangement is successful?

Peacock says that it should be based on trust: “When I worked part-time, I never minded fielding telephone calls at home so that matters could progress while I was out of the office. And employees shouldn’t assume that someone who runs out of the door at 5.30 and isn’t around for a day or two a week is necessarily a shirker – they’re usually well-organised mums who have far more to do than the rest of us!”

Pain and Jennings put part of their job-share success down to managing others expectations of it: “We basically told our boss who’d had no experience of a senior job-share before how to manage it.” Portraying themselves as one force also helped, “When we first started we expected that it would be the staff that might play us off against each other but we were surprised that it was actually other managers. We managed to nip that in the bud fairly quickly and from then on decided that the key was positioning ourselves as one. Having one desk and one shared calendar helped,” explains Pain.

Walker says that it is also vital to ensure that job requirements are clearly defined and the job-split is workable. “Just filling a full-time post with two or more part-timers will not work. There are additional management tasks needed to cope with part-timers, but it can be very worthwhile.”

And Guy warns employers away from the temptations of squeezing the same amount of work into a shorter working week: “Workloads should be manageable and realistic. If your remaining employees are left shouldering a greater workload as a result then it isn’t going to work effectively for everyone involved. And don’t forget your part-time workers. When you are organising an event or a training session, you should ensure that it caters for both full and part-time employees. If you value your employees then you need to include them all.”

It is clear that part-time working can be a great boon for employers and employees alike. The key is managing it in an equitable fashion, setting clear and definable goals and ensuring that all expectations are managed. Part-time working is not only the preserve of working mums in low, paid jobs but is steadily seeping into all sectors and at all grades and other categories of workers are also enjoying its benefits including portfolio workers and protirers. Businesses that embrace the part-time working revolution may just find that the business benefits are worth it.