Scenario 1- competing staff interests

A large construction firm has been piloting a 5-day work week, as opposed to the 6-day week common in the construction industry, in response to some concerns by employees about the little time they could spend with families on the weekend. There were two groups of employees in the firm, including white collar salaried workers, such as the site managers and engineers, and blue collar workers like trades people and labourers, who were on wages and thus paid on an hourly rate. Employees were working longer hours each day over a five day week, thus eliminating the need for work on Saturdays.

Problem

Unfortunately the site was operating throughout winter, which meant daylight hours were fewer and employees were unable to compensate adequately during the week for hours lost on Saturday. As a consequence, many wage employees were dissatisfied with the five-day working week purely for financial reasons. When another construction site opened in the area, the firm lost about one third of their wages staff.

Solution

The firm reassessed the compressed working week initiative and decided to adjust the initiative to better meet business needs, while still accommodating employees’ work-life balance. The firm reverted back to a 6-day working week, to the delight of most waged workers, but allowed salaried staff to work 5 days, with only one 6-day week every 3 weeks. The 6-day week was not compulsory for wages staff, but with the penalty rates most employees choose to work on Saturdays.

Scenario 2 – meeting unexpected, urgent deadlines

Maria is a mother of two young children, who are both in primary school. She works three days a week as a senior consultant at a recruitment firm, starting at 8pm and leaving at 4pm to pick up her children from school. This arrangement works well for Maria and her employer.

Problem

Occasionally, however, a job request will come through at 4pm which needs to be completed the next morning by 10am. Maria is unable to stay at the office to deal with such issues, as her children need to be picked up by 4.30pm.

Solution

Maria’s employer first evaluates whether other staff members can do the job and stay back late. Generally, other staff can cover for Maria and as these emergencies are rare they are happy to do so. On a couple of occasions though, there was no-one available and the employer had to tell the client that the job could not be done before the required deadline. Maria suggested that she get remote access so she could pick up the kids, go home and log on to the firm’s network at night to do the work. Her employer agreed, which meant clients' needs could be met more efficiently. Another positive outcome for the employer is that Maria now works four days a week. While Maria could only work three days before, because she had to pick up her children earlier on the other two days making coming into the office impossible, she now works 4 days a week as she can work one day from home using her remote access.

Scenario 3- multiple requests for part-time work

Andrea, Brigit, Carmen and Deidre are all legal secretaries in the Finance division of a large law firm. They are part of a team with two partners and 12 lawyers. Andrea and Brigit have only been with the Finance division for a year, but they are performing rather well. The firm has been paying for them to undertake some training after their induction. Carmen and Deidre have been working at the firm for over five years, including four years at the Finance division. All four women would like to work part-time, each for a different reason. Andrea is pregnant and would like to work less as she is having some complications. Brigit has just enrolled into a business course and can’t combine study with full-time work, while Carmen and Deidre are young mothers who are finding it difficult working full-time and would like to decrease their working days to three days each.

Problem

Carmen and Deidre, who each support one partner and three lawyers, are highly valued members of the team as they have a lot of experience. Neither of their partners wants to loose them and would like to accommodate their work-life balance needs, but they also feel that the work they perform can not be done in three days. Andrea and Brigit are rather new to the division, but the firm has already made some significant investments in them through training and would like to hold on to them. Their job is less demanding compared to Carmen and Deidre’s jobs, as they look after three lawyers only. However, the considerable size of the team and workload requires them to be full-time.

Solution

The four legal secretaries sat down together and came up with a plan to job share. Job sharing, which is a form of part-time work, can be offered when a job can not be worked part-time but doesn’t necessarily need to be done by one person. They suggested that Andrea would be job sharing with Carmen, looking after the partner Carmen had been working for during the last four years and four other lawyers. Brigit and Deidre would job share in the same fashion. This meant that each full-time position, now shared by two people, actually catered for a larger group (i.e. four lawyers and a partner, instead of three lawyers and a partner). This could be achieved as all women wanted to work three days, totalling six days for each job share position, compared to five days when they worked on an individual basis.

As the secretaries don’t work on Saturday they work longer hours each day during the week. The women discussed the need for another full-time experienced legal secretary to cater for the remaining four lawyers in their team, and concluded that a replacement was required anyway for Andrea when she would go on maternity leave. Getting someone to start now would be a good opportunity to get them up to speed before Andrea would leave. They presented their proposal to the team who were happy to give it a go for three months after which time the arrangement would be reviewed.

In the three month trial period, the four women set up the necessary communication measures to ensure that everything would run smoothly. Andrea and Brigit are extremely happy with the arrangements as it allows them to learn new skills from the more experienced Carmen and Deidre, while meeting their work-life balance needs. Carmen and Deidre enjoy their shorter hours and their mentoring role is a new challenge that adds to their work experience. Each of the teams of partners and lawyers are very content with the new arrangement, and actually found that the different skills of the two women provided a more rounded full-time job compared to when they worked individually. The new person is working well alongside the four existing secretaries and will be ready to take over Andrea’s job when she goes on maternity leave.

Scenario 4 –managers’ needs for work-life balance

John is a manager at a supermarket with 11 staff. John is responsible for staff rostering, budgeting, merchandising, managing inventory and stock control, as well as dealing with customers. When his mother had a stroke and John needed to care for his mother, he asked his manager to work three days a week for some time until he had more permanent carer’s arrangements in place.

Problem

Whilst John’s manager was sympathetic towards John’s situation, he told him they needed John to work at least four days to get all the work done required in a week. The manager had always been very happy with John and was willing to search for a solution as he didn’t want to lose him.

Solution

The manager and John discussed all the tasks John undertook in a week, and identified those that could be done without having to be present at the supermarket, such as staff rostering or budgeting. The manager decided to provide John with remote access to the supermarket’s network so he could perform certain tasks at home. This allowed John to work three days at the supermarket and one day at home. As the tasks performed could be done at any time of the day John could go about his duties to care for his mother and perform his job around these requirements. To ensure that on the day of John’s absence everything ran smoothly, John started to train one of his staff members eager to climb up the ladder in some of the tasks John had difficulties with managing in just four days. This was a great motivation for this staff member, who is now assistant manager. John still works four days, including one from home, and with the new assistant manager looking after business when John has his day off all parties are benefiting from this arrangement.