Part time isn’t the answer?
Now this is interesting: an Australian study suggests that part time employment has “failed to deliver” either at home or in the office, with “large numbers of white-collar workers suffering career burnout and family stress”.
It discusses the fact that part time professionals feel pressured to do the same work as their full time colleagues, but for less money and there’s also a serious decline in fertility among female professionals.
I can completely see this point. I would imagine that if I worked part time, I would still want to be seen as an integral part of the team. I would end up taking on more projects to prove my worth was as valuable as my full time counterparts.
Especially, if a part-time worker’s ultimate goal is to return full-time at some point, she would certainly end up doing more that expected so that she was assured that option.
This actually doesn’t surprise me in the least. It is part of the corporate culture that everybody needs to do MORE than their fair share, and part timers wind up with much higher levels of pressure to deliver in their time frame.
In reality this is not much different than the typical worker who now seems to have to work more than the typical 40 hours as a base, but with Part time, it just becomes magnified that much more.
Well aren’t you the bearer of good news!
Just kidding.
I work 32 hours and took a pay cut to do so and honestly? I still do the same amount of work but it was worth it for me to have the flex time and work from home so much. Sigh…
I had to go part time due to poor health plus had 2 kids to oversee (am lucky have a full time maid). I still do the same amount of work as a full timer (often more just to prove my worth) but it is worth it to have the flex time and pace myself per my stamina. Professionally it stunts career path (mainly due to an ill conceived perception that flexi hr workers add lesser value than full timers!) Often u have to make trade offs -eg. work at a position lower than ur past experience just to get flexi hrs. This makes the role less satisfying. In order to get a more managerial role, setting up ones own business is an option but that is likely to take many hrs per week and thus defeats the purpose of flexi and reduced work hours. So am still trying to figure out how to get a satisfying managerial role with about 20-25 hrs per week