Today I found out that I am no longer at risk of redundancy as a member of my team has handed in her notice, my office are looking to arrange cover for the rest of my maternity leave and want an idea of when I'm going to return and what hours I want. They were suggesting they will accept a part time hours request.

does anyone work nearly full time hours but over less days? I'm wondering if I can work 10 hour days 3 days a week rather than work 4 days of 8.5 hours but not sure if this would be asking too much, I can't afford to drop to 3 days on normal hours so just trying to see what's going be best

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

Glad you are off "the list"

Thanks R, I think due to the amount of people who have left, they need me more now so I'm hoping they will do be very flexible for that reason

I think the sort of request you are asking for will depend on if they need a physical presence on more than 3 days or if they will simply be happy as long as the work is done.

While I haven't done a flexible working request amoung my circle some people have been able to negociate compressed weeks 't simply because it was felt they needed to others haven't. For those that haven't ot was essentially because for the work to run smoothly they needed to be there on more days interactions with collagues customers etc...

You can only ask and hope they go for it.

The only other thing I would say to consider is childcare. If you're actually in the office 10 hours a day how will that work with nursery or childminder drop off and pick up?

Thanks drifter, that makes sense, I think in some sense they do need me to be there a fair amount as I deal with suppliers and accounts on a a daily business but I'm normally a supervisor so there are others who will be able to deal with queries, so I might just go for it and ask, they can only say no I guess

We hoping to do part cm, and part H's parents, his work will be flexible with his hours so the days I would work long hours he would drop Ben off on his way to work, and leave early those days, so hopefully b would spend as much time with us as possible

I do a 90% contract over 4 days. So 8am to 5:30pm rather than 8:30am to 5pm.

Work were fine with it, perhaps because I had sneakily approved a similar request for one of my team the year before! The only issue that was raised at the time was that in effect, I am getting paid overtime (by working outside core hours) whereas we don't have overtime at my level x

Thanks Ap, that's similar to what I would like to do, going to put my request in next week and just see what they are willing to do, wording it all won't be easy!