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Part-time working post-pandemic: a Timewise Roundtable briefing

Insights and experiences from Timewise leaders and Power List alumni on how Covid has affected part-time employees, and what it means for businesses.

Background

Post pandemic part time work

The crisis in sectors like retail and hospitality has led to huge numbers of part-time jobs simply disappearing. There’s also been an increase in the number of people switching from part-time to full-time work, largely due to the need to compensate for cuts in family income caused by furlough and redundancy. As a result, the rate of women in part-time jobs has fallen to the lowest level since records began.

Whilst the pandemic has thrust flexible working into the spotlight, and driven a huge increase in the uptake of remote working, the same can’t be said for the nation’s favourite form of flex: part time.

So part-time is taking a post-Covid hit, and this matters. Why? Because for many people, and particularly those who have caring responsibilities, or health issues, the lack of availability of part-time jobs can be the difference between working and not.

And it also matters from a business perspective. Employee demand for part-time is strong (a third of men and a quarter of women want to reduce their hours post-pandemic) and offering it is a sure-fire way to tackle strategic issues such as diversity and inclusion, wellbeing and the gender pay gap, as well as talent attraction in a time of candidate shortage.

We invited three of our Power List alumni to join Timewise leaders on a panel at our recent roundtable: TBWA’s Sarah Tate; Lee Clements, from LSEG, and EY’s Victoria Price. All at senior leadership level, they discussed how they are making sure that part-time doesn’t get forgotten in the rush towards remote – and how their organisations are benefitting.

Partner insights

Accept and overcome the barriers to part-time

Although the business case for part-time is increasingly understood, our panel felt that various barriers, real or otherwise, were still getting in the way of change. Here are the barriers they identified, and how to overcome them:

  • The stigma that part-time = part committed. Break the stigma by talking about it, a lot. Role model your own pattern; explain why you do it, how you benefit, and what it brings to the company. Highlight case studies of other part-timers, at all levels, and ask them to mentor those coming up behind them. Normalise it; part-timers aren’t from a different planet, they’re just people working different hours.
  • The impact on teamwork and collaboration. Again, the wrong thing to do is pretend it isn’t a problem. Instead, be open about the constraints, then get the whole team involved in finding solutions. Encourage compromise; no one solution will be perfect for everyone, and being fair doesn’t mean being the same.
  • The need to protect work-life balance. Some part-time employees feel they have been given ‘the gift of flex’, which makes them feel either so guilty, or so grateful, that they overcompensate, and end up working more hours than they should. Others have the same problem because their workload hasn’t been adjusted to suit their working pattern. Proper, part-time job design avoids this happening.
  • The attitude and behaviours of line managers. Managing people you don’t see every day can be hard; but it’s even harder to manage someone who is struggling to keep their head above water. The key is to provide managers with the training and support to bring the best out of every member of their team, whatever their working pattern.

Prioritise getting the best out of people

From the increased focus on ESG strategies to the adoption of the United Nations Social Development Goal 8, looking after your people is rightfully becoming a higher priority for businesses. And offering flexible and part-time roles is a key way to do so.

Our panel agreed that there are some specific people management approaches that will help you encourage and grow your part-time employee base:

  • Approach conversations about part-time positively. If you see part-time as a problem to be solved, it’s likely to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whereas if you’re clear that it can bring value to your organisation as well as your people, it will help everyone embrace it.
  • Build expectations around outputs not inputs. Instead of focusing on how many hours someone can spend working, help them work efficiently and productively, manage their performance, and deliver to the best of their ability.
  • Be reasonable about using their time. If part-time employees attend a two-hour meeting, they’re using up a higher proportion of their working time than their full-time colleagues. So be mindful about the value of what you ask them to do, and avoid overloading.
  • Accept that their needs will change – and adapt accordingly. Flexible working shouldn’t be a one-time-only agreement – as people’s lives change, their flexible needs will too. So make sure you check in with part-timers regularly to see whether their pattern is still the right one.

Adapt your own processes and attitudes

Finally, you’ll need to make sure that the processes you have in place are as suitable for part-time candidates and employees as they are for full-time ones. Our panel highlighted the following areas to consider:

  • Don’t wait to recruit until you need someone who can work full-time. It might be that, by recruiting earlier, you can get someone in for fewer than five days a week, and make a success of it. Whereas if you wait until you have a full-time role to fill, you’re bound to seek a full-timer to fill it. And that means closing yourself off from a wealth of part-time talent.
  • Be open-minded about what you actually need. For example, if you have the budget for a mid-level full-timer, you could consider recruiting a senior part-timer instead. Their experience and grasp of the role could mean you end up with the same, if not better outputs.
  • Brief your recruiters. The commission model means it’s in most recruiters’ interests to put forward full-timers. So if you’re willing, or even determined, to employ part-timers, you need to be explicit about it.
  • Review performance expectations – and adjust accordingly. Make sure that when employees move from full-time to part-time hours, performance metrics are adjusted so that managers measure outputs proportionately. Otherwise, you run the risk of part-time employees being judged unfairly against full-time colleagues. 
  • Build different working patterns into your timing plans. In the same way that you would if you had team members on different time zones, schedule project timescales and delivery date around when people work. Similarly, if you recruit a job share, factoring in handover time is critical to its success.
  • Set client expectations – and back up your team. The days of asking part-timers not to put an OOO on their non-work days are long gone. Instead, be open with your clients about when people are available, explain why it’s good for them and the business, and be prepared to push back against any who don’t respect agreed patterns.
  • Don’t be afraid to say no – but always seek an alternative. However open you are to part-time, there are some jobs for which it just won’t work (our panel cited production roles as an example). And it’s fine to say so – as long as you are prepared to explore whether alternative kinds of flexibility will work.

It’s in everyone’s interests to increase access to part-time – follow our panel’s advice and build a culture and framework that will deliver for you and your employees. And if you need any help, please get in touch.

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