Return from Career Break

Mum_of_Boys

Hi


This is a long post but can anyone please advise me.

I work for the civil service and took a career break almost 15 months ago. The reason for my break in service was to look after our four children.

I am returning to work in October as the youngest will be starting full time school in September.

My contracted hours are 16 hours per week.

I spoke to HR today and asked if it would be possible to change my working pattern from Monday and Tuesday (8 hours per day) to Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I explained the reason for my request was because I would need to collect the children from school.

I was told by HR that if I was offered a post (government cutbacks) it would be highly likely that I would be offered a part time post (18.5 hours per week)

Can someone please tell me if I need to agree to the increase in hours to get my job back. I appreciate that I may not return to the same department and may not get the working hours I request (albeit it is advertised that they are family friendly).

I know it is only 2.5 hours per week more, but with the increase I will need to take a 20 min break each day. My husband nor I have any relatives to depend on to collect the children from school. One of our children was 6 months ago diagonsed with a serious heart condition, I worry about him enough whilst he's at school and would prefer not for him to be collected by a childminder/nursery.

Can someone please let me know if they can enforce the increase in hours.

Thanks very much.

EconomicsGirl

I had a friend who took a career break from the civil service and had real problems getting her job back - apparently in the small print it said they only had to give her the job back if there was one available and they said there wasn't. It took her about 6 months of battling to get a full-time job (she wanted part-time) in another government department incl. 2 months of the 2 depts arguing. If she had been made redundant they said she would have got no redundancy payout as she was on a career break despite she'ld worked there 25 years.

There are severe cuts across a lot of the public sector. In my organisation it was 50% with more next year and all jobs became full-time - I took voluntary redundancy. If all jobs are at risk of redundancy in your organisation as in mine (or your old job is not there officially) it appears the employer can pretty much dictate the hours (though has to prove a business case). Maybe worth contacting your union but in practice this is what is going on. All jobs in my organisation and in my friends were full-time and you then had to apply to negiotiate anything else and the process they said would take a long time and almost everyone was being told they would not agree it. Personally I would accept 18.5 hours (you can always put in to reduce to 16 at a later date). We were being advised to maximise our chances of getting a job say we'ld go full-time then day 1 apply to go part-time. It may be you could do the 18.5 hours over 4 days so you could pick your child up everyday.

Sorry to hear about the heart condition and sorry not to give better news but the reality of the public sector at the moment is pretty bleak but having said that you are still much more likely to get a part-time family friendly job there than in the private sector. Hope you can sort something out. I also know there are some lovely childminders and nurseries out there - my kids love there's.

Mum_of_Boys

EconomicsGirl thank you for your response, i very must appreciate the advice.

x

EconomicsGirl

Just thought if they are suggesting 18.5 hours presumably they are thinking of job share. A lot of people job sharing would be happy to work more than 18.5 hours - many want 3 days so you could negiotiate with them after getting offered the job.

scheming_gypsy

Mum_of_Boys wrote: »

I spoke to HR today and asked if it would be possible to change my working pattern from Monday and Tuesday (8 hours per day) to Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I explained the reason for my request was because I would need to collect the children from school.

I was told by HR that if I was offered a post (government cutbacks) it would be highly likely that I would be offered a part time post (18.5 hours per week)



I know it is only 2.5 hours per week more, but with the increase I will need to take a 20 min break each day. My husband nor I have any relatives to depend on to collect the children from school. One of our children was 6 months ago diagonsed with a serious heart condition, I worry about him enough whilst he's at school and would prefer not for him to be collected by a childminder/nursery.

Can someone please let me know if they can enforce the increase in hours.

Thanks very much.

are you sure the 18.5 hours would be over two days as you only mentioned hours rather than days... if it's over 2 days then it'll be a 9.25 hour working day plus lunch... which seems a lot for an office role. is it not possible it's just over 6 hours a day over 3 days?