You’re hugely ambitious. You’re great at your job. You just don’t want to do it five days a week. Here, Jessica Salter asks why there is such a stigma to admitting that?
Before having my first child, I was the deputy editor of a hugely successful women’s magazine that promoted messages about balance, having it all and generally killing it in all areas of a woman’s life. They were messages I truly believed in.
After nine months of maternity leave, I wanted to come back – I was still fiercely ambitious - but I couldn’t face leaving my (still very little) baby for the full working week, nor the near two-hour round-trip commute that would effectively be dead time.
I asked to go part-time. I pitched what I thought was a realistic deal of four days a week, one of those working from home, although I would have happily done less or suggested a job share, had I a) known about it and b) thought it was something my boss would have gone for. My request was refused. And so, reluctantly, I resigned.
"There seems to be a pernicious idea that a reduction in hours directly corresponds with a reduction in your ambition or commitment to the job."
Luckily in journalism you have freelancing to fall back on - a choice that comes with its own pitfalls but does, generally, allow the sort of flexibility that doesn’t come with a salaried job. But not everyone has that option. All around me I witnessed other women in other industries either forcing themselves, miserably, back to full time, bowing out of work entirely, or, perhaps worst of all, getting their part-time requests approved, only to crumple under the pressure of trying to fit in what was essentially a full-time job into compressed hours.
It’s a toxic medley that so many women who are fiercely ambitious and yet eager to work part time face.
Toxic is the word I’d also use to describe the stigma around part-time work. The statistics will tell you the landscape is changing - even before Covid started causing seismic shifts. Government figures show around a quarter of Britain’s workforce now work part-time, even 850,000 top earners, an increase of 10 per cent from the year before. Timewise, a flexible working consultancy agency, has people with top jobs at Allen & Overy, Diageo and PwC on its list of 2020 Power Part Timers, celebrating those who have successfully married a top job with part time work.
But they are the exception. “The very fact that there is a list of senior people who successfully work part time says quite a lot,” points out executive career and personal coach Lisa Quinn. “If it was commonplace, it would just be the norm, but unfortunately it isn’t – yet. The world isn’t moving fast enough on this and lots of companies still talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk.” Indeed, the average annual salary of a part time worker in the UK? Just over £12k. The average hourly rate works out at around £9.94. Not exactly high-flyer rates. There seems to be a pernicious idea that a reduction in hours directly corresponds with a reduction in your ambition or commitment to the job. It is a concession, a compromise. Maybe it’s a nice excuse to leave the house a few times a week? Or all that you can possibly manage now you also have motherhood to worry about too? Despite several studies including one showed that that women’s performance at work actually improved after switching from full-time to part-time work [according to a study published in the Journal of Management Development] there is still a dominant, if unfounded, view that women lose their drive once they go part time. A study by Dutch researchers found that whilst in general success at work depended on being able to express ambition in a “subtle manner”, part-time female managers had to be explicit in order to prove they hadn’t lost their drive. Then there’s also simply the lack of vision to consider how it might work. Amy*, a financial planning and analysis director for a major global retailer, confesses she wouldn’t hire a part timer for a senior role in her team, “not that I could officially admit that. The truth is that this job can’t be done part time without a big reorganisation within my team. I’m stretched enough as it is with budget and time, so I don’t see where I would get the resources to be able to do that. I’m a working mum myself, I leave the house at 5.30am. I don’t have the energy to make it work for someone else.” Another senior HR contact who didn’t want to be named said that it was a cultural change she’d tried to encourage but had met resistance further up the corporate chain. “Many senior leaders can be really traditional in their views of how people should work - it just wasn’t something they wanted to put resource into making work,” she says.
Writer Jessica Salter
"That workload is barely possible on a full-time contract; inconceivable with part-time hours. Combine that with the malicious cult of perfectionism – something many of us struggle with in our glossy, social media age – and it’s a heady, noxious mix."
Not that it’s just companies or clients to blame. The gnarly truth is that going part time is a mindset shift some of us struggle to master. It’s not easy to shift into ‘day off’ mode when we’ve spent a professional lifetime scrapping our way up the ladder and have been programmed to emulate the success of CEOs such as former Yahoo boss Marissa Mayer who once confessed that her 130-hour weeks were manageable thanks to naps at her desk and "strategic" toilet breaks.
That workload is barely possible on a full-time contract; inconceivable with part time hours. Combine that with the malicious cult of perfectionism – something many of us struggle with in our glossy, social media age – and it’s a heady, noxious mix.
If you find yourself taking naps on the bog to survive, then there’s a very good argument for stepping back, digging into your Greek philosophy and asking yourself, “what is a good life?” Because while work and a career can be fulfilling, the reasons we want to go part time are just as valid and enriching, even ambitious.
And if part time is an option for you, then it’s about setting boundaries. At work that could mean being strict about when you’re contacted on days off or office hours. At home it means not falling into the trap of taking on an extra load of chores: “Lots of women pick up the emotional labour, especially if they’re in the house more,” Quinn says. “It helps to have conversations with your partner up front to set expectations.” The hardest boundary setting is usually with yourself. “It can be hard to switch off from work, especially if it’s intellectually stimulating and rewarding. But if you need to be intentional about your non-working days,” Quinn says. Not least because if you spend that day working, you’re doing it for free.
Over working isn’t the only way to prove your worth: you might be a great connector in your team, the account manager who nails the sales pitch or the one who always comes up with the most creative branding. Be bold in expressing your strengths. Think about the kinds of metrics you bring up at your annual performance review and communicate that to both yourself and your boss.
Which will also help remind you (and your boss) that stepping into a part-time role doesn’t mean you have to park your wildly ambitious streak. The corporate landscape is slowly catching up; not only does the whole world now embrace WFH as a legitimate and workable concept but job shares are becoming a more sustainable way of shrinking a role rather than shrinking the days in which it’s performed. Back to my request – there is now at least one example of a deputy editor role on a national women’s magazine that is done by two women sharing the position, two more women who share the role heading up a BBC department and another two splitting a national newspaper’s top political job. Apparently it works fantastically well for all involved.
I’m not surprised. Your employer wins by getting two big brains for the price of one, while you keep a job you love, have spent decades becoming excellent at and can now do without succumbing to burnout or the noxious guilt of feeling like you’re failing on all fronts? I’d take that. Three days a week.
Key questions to ask yourself before going part-time, by Lisa Quinn
Can the role you want actually be done part-time? How will that suit the organisation? What’s the culture like in the organisation? What is your team like? Both in terms of number of people who report into you, but also experience. Are your customers always on and will they expect the same of you? Are they hierarchical and will they only want to deal with you? Who is your boss? Are they genuinely supportive, or do they say the right things but actually email you at midnight before your day off? If it’s your own business are you going be able to step back on your day off and switch off? And if you know that’s going to be hard for you, what can you do to make it easier?
SOURCES: Dutch female managers – explicit ambition A. Sools, M. Van Engen, C. Baerveldt Gendered career-making practices: On ‘doing ambition’ or how managers discursively position themselves in a multinational corporation Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 80 (2007), pp. 413-435
Quoted here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956522116302214#bib0155 Women’s performance increases , 2007 Dutch study S. MacDermid, M.D. Lee, M. Buck, M. WilliamsAlternative work arrangements among professionals and managers. Rethinking career development and success Journal of Management Development, 20 (4) (2001), pp. 305-317 Quoted here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956522116302214#bib0155 https://www.statista.com/statistics/280691/median-hourly-earnings-for-part-time-employees-in-the-uk-since-2006/