How can I best negotiate moving from full-time to part-time at work?
November 9, 2015 4:32 PM Subscribe
What is the best way to approach asking my employer to move from a full-time schedule to part-time? What is reasonable to expect in terms of changes to pay and benefits?
I've been with my US employer about three years. I currently work a salaried, traditional 40-hour week and would like to move to three days per week or roughly 24 hours/week. I believe my employer will be agreeable to the general concept and I think I am in a fairly good negotiating position. That said, should I automatically expect to be moved to an hourly pay arrangement with no benefits, earning the hourly equivalent of what I make now? Or is there indeed room for negotiation and creativity in structuring such a move? What type of issues should I consider here and what might I want to ask for?
I've been with my US employer about three years. I currently work a salaried, traditional 40-hour week and would like to move to three days per week or roughly 24 hours/week. I believe my employer will be agreeable to the general concept and I think I am in a fairly good negotiating position. That said, should I automatically expect to be moved to an hourly pay arrangement with no benefits, earning the hourly equivalent of what I make now? Or is there indeed room for negotiation and creativity in structuring such a move? What type of issues should I consider here and what might I want to ask for?
Can you make a good case that there is either only 24 hours of work a week for your role or 64? Having the right amount of people for the work is the biggest concern to me as a theoretical employer, and if there's only 40 hours worth of work per week for the position, I'd rather let the current person move on to a different company than try to cover it with two part time employees. But one full time and one part time person might make sense, depending.
If your company provides benefits for part time workers, pay would depend on how good those benefits are. If there were no or low quality bennies, I'd expect your hourly rate to go up a little, and go own if they are significant.
posted by Candleman at 5:07 PM on November 9, 2015
If your company provides benefits for part time workers, pay would depend on how good those benefits are. If there were no or low quality bennies, I'd expect your hourly rate to go up a little, and go own if they are significant.
posted by Candleman at 5:07 PM on November 9, 2015
Obviously, the first step in the negotiation is to make sure your manager supports the concept. The big question here is "what happens to the other 40% of your job?" If you don't have a good answer to that, the rest of the conversation is not going to go well.
In terms of benefits, I think it depends on the size of the company and whether they have a current HR policy for part time employment. I did this twice - one with a large university and once with a middle size company (that then got bought by the larger one).
With the university, I worked 30 hours a week which qualified for full health benefits and everything else which was $ based or time based was pro-rated. Vacation and sick leave were effectively unchanged - I accrued 20% less each work week but I used up 20% less when I took time off. Holidays were odd but I just negotiated that with my boss. In the corporate setting, i worked 60% time like you want to do. They did not pay health benefits, but I didn't need them. I think there might have been an option where I could have paid 60% of the cost of the my health insurance which was more important than because in those days (pre-ACA) it could be tricky to get private insurance if you had preexisting conditions. Whether or not you can continue on their health insurance may be a matter of the contract with the insurance provider and not just company policy.
If it were me, I would certainly ask for proportional benefits. If they refuse, then ask for a raise to cover the 60% that they are refusing to pay for. It's not going to hurt anything to ask. Good luck!
posted by metahawk at 11:26 PM on November 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
In terms of benefits, I think it depends on the size of the company and whether they have a current HR policy for part time employment. I did this twice - one with a large university and once with a middle size company (that then got bought by the larger one).
With the university, I worked 30 hours a week which qualified for full health benefits and everything else which was $ based or time based was pro-rated. Vacation and sick leave were effectively unchanged - I accrued 20% less each work week but I used up 20% less when I took time off. Holidays were odd but I just negotiated that with my boss. In the corporate setting, i worked 60% time like you want to do. They did not pay health benefits, but I didn't need them. I think there might have been an option where I could have paid 60% of the cost of the my health insurance which was more important than because in those days (pre-ACA) it could be tricky to get private insurance if you had preexisting conditions. Whether or not you can continue on their health insurance may be a matter of the contract with the insurance provider and not just company policy.
If it were me, I would certainly ask for proportional benefits. If they refuse, then ask for a raise to cover the 60% that they are refusing to pay for. It's not going to hurt anything to ask. Good luck!
posted by metahawk at 11:26 PM on November 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
ps. I have been working part-time professional jobs for almost thirty years and I highly recommend it. There was a cost to my career but it was worth it for what I was able to do with the time that I got back for my other priorities. Frankly, I don't think it is the employer's business to judge the merits of what you do with that time (as long as you are not working for a competitor). I cheer every time someone else is successful in improving their life withe a better, more flexible work schedule.
posted by metahawk at 11:30 PM on November 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by metahawk at 11:30 PM on November 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
It's really going to depend upon your employer. Talk to your manager first, as you're almost certainly going to need help.
Come salary renegotiation time, my approach has been to be up front and say "I prefer more time off to more pay, how can we make that happen?" As a result, I am pretty reliably working five 7 hour days per week, rather than the typical 8-10 hours most of my co-workers put in.
I hope to shorten that up a little more (hitting 30 hours per week), and then I'll push to not come in on Fridays (moving up to 32 hours per week for a while). I'm aiming to keep my benefits as long as possible, so I suspect I won't be able to move under 30-32 hours per week.
My sweetie works on-call (part-time, straight hourly), but has no benefits. She's got a lot more flexibility than I do at the moment, but the lack of benefits would not work for me.
When I was self-employed, I made 75-80% of my annual income during the winter months, and most of the rest during the heat of the summer when I wanted to stay in the air conditioning anyhow. In the long term, I would love to work half-time: mid-November through mid-March, and all of July and August, but it's going to be challenging to get repeated leaves-of-absence past HR. I suspect it will be simpler to retire and go back to consulting at that point.
Which brings me to the final thing. Being able to ask "would you rather have me part time or not at all?" cuts to the heart of the matter, but if you're going to do that, make sure that you're ready for either possible answer. Put as much as you can into your retirement savings now, and you'll be better prepared for the answer of "not at all."
posted by DaveP at 3:16 AM on November 10, 2015
Come salary renegotiation time, my approach has been to be up front and say "I prefer more time off to more pay, how can we make that happen?" As a result, I am pretty reliably working five 7 hour days per week, rather than the typical 8-10 hours most of my co-workers put in.
I hope to shorten that up a little more (hitting 30 hours per week), and then I'll push to not come in on Fridays (moving up to 32 hours per week for a while). I'm aiming to keep my benefits as long as possible, so I suspect I won't be able to move under 30-32 hours per week.
My sweetie works on-call (part-time, straight hourly), but has no benefits. She's got a lot more flexibility than I do at the moment, but the lack of benefits would not work for me.
When I was self-employed, I made 75-80% of my annual income during the winter months, and most of the rest during the heat of the summer when I wanted to stay in the air conditioning anyhow. In the long term, I would love to work half-time: mid-November through mid-March, and all of July and August, but it's going to be challenging to get repeated leaves-of-absence past HR. I suspect it will be simpler to retire and go back to consulting at that point.
Which brings me to the final thing. Being able to ask "would you rather have me part time or not at all?" cuts to the heart of the matter, but if you're going to do that, make sure that you're ready for either possible answer. Put as much as you can into your retirement savings now, and you'll be better prepared for the answer of "not at all."
posted by DaveP at 3:16 AM on November 10, 2015
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posted by givesacrap at 4:47 PM on November 9, 2015 [1 favorite]