Full time working mummies I need your advice!

[sausages]

Hi girls, i am hoping you can help me decide! I work two full days in an office at the moment and my youngest is 4 and he goes to nursery for those two days. My oldest is 5 and she goes to school.

My bosses have offered me a high level, decent paying job at the company, but they want me to do full time hours - or as close to full time as i can. My job is a 40 minute car drive away. I used to be a Manager for the same boss before I had children many moons ago.

He's told me to go away and think about my ideal hours and what they would be. He said that they would be flexible on giving me time to do school stuff - assemblies etc. and they would let me start late so that i can drop the kids off at school and maybe leave early one of the days so that i don't completely miss out on school pick ups. They would just need me to be at the office every day at least for a few hours to keep things ticking.

My husband works shifts as a contractor, so his job is not stable. He could be laid off at a moments notice. We are comfortable with his earnings, so i technically don't need to work, however his job is not stable as i said. His shifts at the minute (if they stay the same) mean that he could do two school pick ups a week. The other two would be done by grandparents.

All in all I think I would do a 32-38 hour week, with 32 hours at the office and the rest at home if i had overspill sometimes.

They're even saying that I don't have to do these hours fully until September because that's when my youngest starts school. They just want to put a plan in place and possibly step it up gradually.

It just seems like too good an opportunity to turn down! I wasn't planning on working full time until the kids were much older, but would there be an opportunity like this then? Possibly not.

What would you do? What things would you ask my boss for that might make it easier for me? Anything i might not have thought of which would make me hate this? Or love this?

Thank you!

 

[Ziggy2]

Have you thought about what you would do in school holidays, 13 weeks to cover, maybe you could ask for a term time only contract or compressed days in the holidays so you work 3 or 4 longer days instead on 5?

 

[sausages]

Have you thought about what you would do in school holidays, 13 weeks to cover, maybe you could ask for a term time only contract or compressed days in the holidays so you work 3 or 4 longer days instead on 5?

Yeah that's a good point, i need a plan for that. The kids would find a holiday club quite fun for a day or two a week, but they get expensive and i'd rather spend time with them during the holidays.

 

[RachA]

You defiantly need to think about the holidays.
You also need to think about what is going to happen if the children are ill and need you at home. While it sounds like your boss is trying to be flexible they aren't going to like it if you keep having time off and struggle to make up the work.
You are going to have to fit in doing homework with the children too so that will impact on when you can do the work at home. Also there are times when things going on at school happen really frequently. I don't work and OH works full time. We both of us try to go to things at the school but sometimes things happen in a weekly basis and OH just can't take the time off.

 

[hattiehippo]

How much support is your DH when it comes to school drop offs/pick ups etc? Will he be able to do some of the days if you're working more? And school holidays are a big issue to think about.

My DH works full time and I work 3 days over 4 so I can drop off and pick up my DS from school most days. DH picks him up 1 afternoon while I work late to make up the hours. I work term time only so the holidays aren't a problem but it would be costly for childcare to cover 4 days a week otherwise.

It does sound like a really good opportunity but I'd want to work out all the practicalities of managing the school day more first.

 

[sausages]

You defiantly need to think about the holidays.
You also need to think about what is going to happen if the children are ill and need you at home. While it sounds like your boss is trying to be flexible they aren't going to like it if you keep having time off and struggle to make up the work.
You are going to have to fit in doing homework with the children too so that will impact on when you can do the work at home. Also there are times when things going on at school happen really frequently. I don't work and OH works full time. We both of us try to go to things at the school but sometimes things happen in a weekly basis and OH just can't take the time off.

How much support is your DH when it comes to school drop offs/pick ups etc? Will he be able to do some of the days if you're working more? And school holidays are a big issue to think about.

My DH works full time and I work 3 days over 4 so I can drop off and pick up my DS from school most days. DH picks him up 1 afternoon while I work late to make up the hours. I work term time only so the holidays aren't a problem but it would be costly for childcare to cover 4 days a week otherwise.

It does sound like a really good opportunity but I'd want to work out all the practicalities of managing the school day more first.

Thank you both so much for your replies.

Yes, that's a really good idea about needing a plan for when the kids are ill and need to be at home. I know there are some days when they're actually not THAT ill, like the 48 hours after a sick bug, but those are days they're not able to go to school. I should have a plan of action for that. Thankfully, I can log in from my home computer to do a lot of my work, but that's just the actual admin stuff. The management side is obviously harder to do remotely. Plus, it's not realistic to expect the kids to entertain themselves while I work all day from home. It's not nice for them either.

And homework, yes! DD is only in year 1 and she gets so much already! With two of them it'll be a lot to fit in.

Thankfully if DH still has the same contract he's working now he will have two full days a week at home. So some of the time sick days will fall on his days off to kind of mitigate that. Also, since either he or I will be picking up for 3 out of the 5 days that means that homework should be done on those days and weekends.

We also are very, very fortunate in that DH's parents and my Mum are retired and both want to help out. So my mum will do one pick up per week and DH's parents will also do one. That's the five days covered. They can also be on standby for those lesser illnesses where the kids aren't tooooo sick and would be happy for Nana cuddles instead of mummy ones.

I'm HOPING that during the holidays they will let me drop to 3 days a week if I can be contacted by phone the other two days. The agreement I am hashing out with them at the moment is for me to work one additional day from now until September (when i will go full time), but they want me to have the extra responsibility and be able to answer calls from staff on my two days off so that I can make decisions about things without staff calling them instead. So my thinking is that if that works out okay then they might be willing to let me revert to this during holidays.

Thanks again for your help and ideas. It's alright me thinking about how this all might work, but i need to know if i'm being totally unrealistic about stuff!

 

[hattiehippo]

Yes def think about sick days. My DS started school this Sept and had to have 2 days off a month ago after being really sick. I worked from home 1 days and DH did the 2nd so it was fine but obviously we're both lucky to have very flexible managers and jobs that can be done from home now and again.

It sounds like you've got most things covered though