Thursday, March 24, 2011

On being flexible

So this week I am pioneering flexible working hours. The other week at an International Women's Day event, a union representative said that hardly any women in the Commonwealth Public Service are accessing flexible working hours. Quite a few are working part-time, and people use their flextime (oh blessed flextime) on an adhoc basis, but very few to none are using formal flexible working hours.

This told me two things. One, people who are working formal flexible arrangements do not fill in union surveys*. Two, I like a challenge, me.

From this week I will be working four slightly longer days, and one short day on Friday so I can drop the kid off at school and then pick him up again. It took a bit to screw my courage to the sticking place, but no one has blinked an eyelid about it. We'll wait and see what happens when there is an urgent deadline I suppose, but I've always thought that urgent deadlines on a Friday afternoon is a sign of poor management, actually.

This afternoon we went to the bakery for the traditional Friday afternoon bakery treat, and then we played Pandemic. Today was the first time we beat the epidemics, which are very thrilled with. See, shorter working hours save the world!



*Because I know there are a few people with flexible arrangments at work.

3 comments:

kazari said...

i think you may find that the flexible working arrangements are not all that flexible..
so, for instance, if you want to go home early on a thursday to let in a plumber, it's not so easy.
that's been the experience of some of my friends, anyway.

kazari said...

oh, but yay for being a pioneer! maybe you can iron out the bumps for others.

Roger said...

There's a technical difference between 'flexible working hours' and 'flexitime' I'm not getting yet. Do tell.
Sounds good though.
I kind of do hours when I want 'cos they pay me by the hour and trust my reporting (which I am careful to get right). I often end up working lots extra, probably too often.