Like many people, I had to switch to part-time working at a moment’s notice when schools were closed back in March. In some ways, it wasn’t that big a deal, but on other levels I struggled. Now that schools are re-opening, some semblance of normality is returning to my work life. Though I’m not back at the office, I can at least get back to work full time. But my experiences, and discussions with friends who have more experience with working part-time, have left me with some useful insights which I’m sharing here. Many of us work with or manage people for whom part-time work is the norm. What have I learned about being a better colleague for those people?

 

It’s relatively easy to say that you are happy for employees to work part-time around other commitments. But to really live that ideal, you need to change your own behavior too. First up: scheduling. I might be late to the party here, but the disruptions of the last few months have finally ingrained in me the habit of consciously consulting colleagues’ working hours before scheduling meetings. Google Calendar’s “Find a time” makes this easy, and has also (in terms of entries in my own diary) made me a lot better at making sure the calendar on my screen is actually the same as the one in my head. Secondly, deadlines: a friend who is a seasoned part-timer is used to having to remind people that (for example) she may not be able to do her actions by the end of the week if today is her last working day. “People forget that others are part-time; they have expectations about how things will be progressed, and timelines get set that are unachievable.” Thirdly, chasing: my increased awareness of colleagues’ availability has helped me curb the urge to chase responses, or at least made me a bit more reasonable about how much time should elapse before I nudge. As with so many things, you get what you give; one company in our sector told staff “you’re not working from home. You’re self-isolating during a pandemic, and doing work if you can.” They were rewarded by super diligence and effort from staff, including monitoring issues at weekends and picking up tasks in evenings. Finally, waiting: I have struggled with my temporary working hours (afternoons) giving me a sense of being behind before the day has even started, with long email debates to parse or Slack discussions to catch up on. On the positive side, I have felt gratitude when I reach the point in the thread where a colleague has suggested waiting for me to log in and weigh in — in future I think I’ll be more proactively suggesting we “pause the discussion to wait until X can chip in”.

A friend who recently started working in a part-time role noted that she was struggling to retain ownership of her remit as, during her non-working hours, well-meaning colleagues would pick up tasks that properly fell within her role. It’s easily done; stepping in to what you might perceive as a “void” (someone’s non-working day) — responding to a message addressed to them, sending an update on one of their projects, providing clarifications in relation to data they’d compiled and circulated — that sort of thing. You’re intending to help, and of course on some levels, you are. But there are risks.

I’ll be thinking about these more in future, curbing that instinct to jump in, and taking a moment for a mini risk-benefit analysis: is the benefit of moving this forward worth the risk of disenfranchising a colleague and blurring our organization’s lines around accountability?

It took me a while to adjust to my new capacity, and I only started to get realistic about scheduling after doing some basic math. I had cut my hours in half, but actually, I’d cut my capacity by 75%. How do I figure that? Time does not reduce in proportion to a reduction in capacity. A one-hour meeting takes one hour whether you work a 40-hour week or a 20-hour week. So a task that takes up 13% of a full-time work day comprises 26% of a part-time one. It depends on the nature of your role, but if your typical full-time working day breaks down into 2.5 hrs of communication, admin, etc., and 5 hrs of “getting stuff done”, your part-time working day is likely to be 2.5 hrs of comms / admin and 1.25 hrs of “getting stuff done”. So your “getting stuff done” capacity has just been reduced not by 50% but by 75%. This is a grim reality for many part-timers, I’m sure. It should make us think twice: that message you’re going to send that’s going to require 10 minutes of their time to read and respond to. That’s effectively 20, even 30, minutes of their time. Is the ‘quick question’ worth it? This has also made me think about respect for each other’s judgement. If a colleague has chosen to do something a certain way, don’t waste their time by asking them to justify themselves to you (unless you’re their manager and you feel there really is a case to answer). If they have chosen not to prioritize something you are waiting for, that will likely be for a good reason. At best, you will waste your time and theirs by trying to subvert their judgement; at worst, they will feel you are judging their performance and finding them wanting.

…about what you can achieve (see my math in point 3 above). Tasks will take ‘longer’ (in proportion to your capacity). It’s a tough one to do, in reality: you think “how can I be giving a two-week turnaround for a 2-hour task?” But do the math — and don’t set yourself up to fail.

…on the basis of time. As long as you can do A, don’t duck responsibility — if you start pushing back because of your change in capacity, you may come to resent the loss of leadership opportunities. Take ownership, and just be clear about what you will deliver and when — don’t be afraid to recalibrate people’s expectations if e.g., a weekly report is OTT given the pace of progress and your capacity.

Don’t try to juggle things in a flexible schedule. You will struggle to keep track of how many hours you are doing, and start feeling guilty and questioning whether you are delivering enough. You also need to be fair to colleagues — and indeed to family — and give them consistency about when you will / won’t be available.

At the start of lockdown, we switched to having a weekly all-hands meeting (these had been monthly). I found it so valuable to connect with the whole team and hear about progress across different departments, remote working tips, and the latest lockdown stories. I think most companies did something similar; about 2 months in, I asked a friend how her job was going and she joked “I’d be doing better, if I didn’t spend so much time in meetings being asked how I’m doing.” It reminded me (generally, but especially in the context of my reduced capacity) to periodically question all the meetings in my diary, to be clear about what I need to get out of them, to be a bit bolder in balancing other people’s needs with my own, and a bit more ruthless in declining things where I can’t see that I have much to contribute or gain.

With greater amounts of time elapsing between your work sessions, and potentially with additional stresses or information being crowded into your brain, you may find yourself less able to remember things you have discussed or committed to doing. Make sure you have a good to-do list / scratch pad and that you are being super diligent about noting down your decisions or actions.

I know, this one’s more of a remote working tip, but too relevant to skip. I got very frazzled about something recently but finally got on top of it when I cleared a table, got a big piece of paper and “whiteboarded” out my thoughts. I didn’t realize how much I was missing that simple bit of office kit. (Online options such as Miro can work, too, though sometimes nothing beats paper and pens).

I once would have felt terribly unprofessional if my child had been commando crawling through the back of my conference call or webinar recording, but this is now a daily occurrence and, of course, it’s fine — and more than that, I think it’s made us more respectful of each others’ ability to be both professionals and parents / carers / people at the same time. So to close, here are two videos that sum up how the pandemic has changed the world of part-time and / or remote working for the better: TV news interviews interrupted by children in 2017 (Professor Robert Kelly tries to mandhandle child out of shot) and 2020 (anchor introduces himself to child). And oh, okay, here’s the spoof response to the 2017 one (cleverly done, but apologies for the sexism).