Women at Work - How to Make Part Time Work for You

Episode Date: November 18, 2019

Going from full time to part time is a complicated career move. First we talk with a woman who’s made part time work well for her about how she set expectations and boundaries. Then we get advice from an expert on work-life balance on how to manage the risks of being part time. Guests: Kristin McElderry and Linda Duxbury. Our theme music is Matt Hill’s “City In Motion,” provided by Audio Network.

Over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. Krista McElderry has Fridays off from her job as a management consultant. So that's when our producer Amanda and I met her at her home south of Boston on a beautiful late summer morning. We got there just before she pulled into the driveway after dropping her oldest at daycare. Hello. Hi.

I'm so sorry to keep you waiting. No, I just pulled up. Is it okay to park right there? Yeah, totally fine. Let me come shake your hand. Yes, yes. I'm admiring your sunflower. Oh, thank you.

I'm Kristen. I'm Amy Gallo. Nice to meet you. I'm Amanda. Hi. That's fantastic. Good to meet you all. I'll let you guys come in,

and I'll grab the kids really fast out of the car. As Kristen brought her two younger kids inside, we started setting up mics in her living room. We were there to talk about what it's been like for her working three days a week for a large professional services firm. Because working part-time as a manager, especially in consulting, where people often put in long hours and are on call for clients, is pretty unusual. And she says that while her role is complicated and not typical, her career is going pretty well. Later in the show, we'll hear how working part-time doesn't always go as well for a lot of professional women. And we'll get advice

for negotiating for the best arrangement possible and handling common issues that come up. But for now, we're sitting down with Kristen, baby Emma's playing with toys nearby, to hear her story. My first question is, how long have you been working part-time? I've worked part-time for the last five years, but within that span, I've actually taken two maternity leaves, which were almost a year each, so probably about three years. I actually just came back from my third maternity leave last last week last Friday was my first day this was kind of my first full week back um so definitely in a transition state right now right and what made you want to work part-time um after I had my son my my first child uh it just I couldn't I was really actually on the

fence about going back to work at all. A lot of my friends are actually stay-at-home moms and I had really considered it. Or a lot of them work part-time, but they work in more traditionally part-time roles, like they're nurses, something with just a couple shifts, you know, a week or every few weeks. But in my field, it's not very common to work part-time, but someone from my project team, my leadership reached out to me and said, hey, I've got this. I know you've been kind of on the fence. I think you could do it part-time. Would you consider it? And so I had a meeting, brought the baby with me. We talked about what that might look like. And I came back. And ever since then, I've been able

to continue to take on roles that were part-time. And they have continued to do this. They've said, you tell me how many days you need. And the way it works at my firm is you just take a percentage. So you do 60%, you do 80%, you do 40%, whatever you need. And so I was kind of like, I wrote the terms, they signed the terms. So there wasn't much of a negotiation. Not really. I mean, they came to me with the role, right? Like they were in demand for my skills, which was a great position for me to be in. So I was able to kind of set the terms, which is helpful. I recognize a lot of people don't have that opportunity. But I also will say I was like very intentional about working in Massachusetts. So I work for a firm that you

can work all over the country. And I have been on prior to starting to work exclusively in Massachusetts, I was on an airplane Monday through Thursday, right? So a lot of my peers work on airplanes. And I kind of was very intentional about trying to get involved with a local account team so that I would be doing local work. And that has what's been enabled me to continue doing what I do. Because if I were being asked to do full-time travel work right now, I mean, I would say no. Right. You know, and it's interesting because one thing that I will say about part time that's a little tricky is if you do want to make a transition to another firm, right, it is hard. I get reached out by headhunters fairly often and recruiters and I'll always kind of say, okay, well, I work part-time and I, oh, you have an 80% travel clause. I'm not

really willing to do that. And that pretty much abruptly halts the conversation. Interesting. You know, and I haven't, I haven't been pursuing other work, but it's just, I've been able to establish it through networking and by building goodwill with people. And you can't do that when you start somewhere fresh. Yeah. And that's, I hear that advice a lot too, is that you're going to have, you have to be willing to go into a new job full time and then ask for part time later once you've proven yourself. Absolutely. But not everybody's in a phase to do that.

I'm not in a phase where I can start over. Right. Were you nervous about working part time? Yeah, I mean, definitely. I had never done it before. I mean, I was nervous whenever you're a new mom, you're nervous about leaving your child for the first time. We were in a very lucky situation. And I'm not sure if I necessarily would have pulled the trigger right away if I hadn't been

in this situation. But my sister-in-law actually came and lived with us for a few months. So she watched our son while I came back to work. And then we ended up kind of moving into more formal childcare after that. But I definitely think that helped me being very comfortable with the child care, kind of take that leap of faith to work part time. So and were you worried about not going back full time? So were you worried that the obviously there's the child care considerations leaving your kid, but were you worried at all about your career and the implications of being part time? Well, definitely. I mean, I've actually had many conversations where I've been concerned about what that means. I had a really interesting conversation with kind of who's my boss now about a year and a half ago, maybe two years ago. I had been doing work. I'd been back on the account after leave

with my second, and I thought I was doing good work but I my confidence and being able to get kind of promoted to the next level at part-time like part of what it is in the firm I work for you do your project work but a lot of what helps you get to that next level is all that extra stuff right it's the contributing to the company contributing to the firm taking on kind of what we call these plus ones and I felt like my plus one was doing a full-time job in three days. You know, like that is my plus one. And I didn't really feel like I was going to be able to do, um, any, anything else. I was kind of at my limit and I had a pretty frank conversation with him and said, you know, what does this look like? And, and I, I actually felt really supported coming out of that conversation. He basically said, you want to make senior manager this year? I said, yeah, yeah, I do. And he said, okay, let's make it happen. He's like,

I think you're on the track. I think you're doing the things you need to do. And you know, it was fantastic. I did make senior manager this year, actually, while I was on leave. This is my second time getting promoted. While I was on maternity leave, getting a call saying, hey, here's a, you know, here's a promotion. And it was fantastic. I've definitely felt supported. I mean, with that, you know, I just came back to work. I'm working with the same team again, a lot of the same players. It's tough. I feel like moving to the next level, I don't see, again,

I don't know for sure how that's going to happen. It's a little further off. It's a much bigger jump. I'd be moving more into like a manager, managing director, kind of partner level type role. And I don't see a lot of people doing that part time. Right. So it sounds like you've had supportive managers. How have your peers felt about you working part time? I mean, I think primarily supportive. I mean, I think it's tricky sometimes from even just scheduling constraints. I can't say

that there's been anything like specific challenges, but I've never felt like specifically targeted. Part of it is because I've, and not everyone can do this, I've been able to pull my weight. I've been able to pull pretty much full-time weight in three days. And I think if I wasn't pulling my weight on the team, maybe there'd be a little bit more conflict. How do you do a full-time job in three days? Um, and I, I'm, I definitely highly efficient with my time. And I actually think it's getting, it's getting trickier, especially now that I've had three kids and it's just harder to even get off to go out in the morning. I feel like I've already lived a full day before the day started. I think I was highly efficient with my time, but I think there were, I also wasn't doing a lot of those extra things I was talking about, right?

Where they might have had bandwidth to go do those extra things. I was getting my job done and kind of calling it a day. Right, right, right. One of the pieces of advice I hear given to whitman who are considering part-time is saying oh oh oh my gosh that was amazing kristen just threw you just threw a pacifier to your baby and it landed like directly between her legs. It was like a ninja move. That was crazy.

You just like grabbed the pacifier and then she grabbed the pacifier and now she's happy. Wow. Yeah. Okay. I trust you can do a full-time job in three days with that move. That was so impressive. Yeah. You're getting that third baby in four years.

You kind of have these like ninja skills. Right. You also just pulled it. I don't know if you pulled it out of a pocket or what, but it like you made it appear out of thin air. That was real. I know. Your mom is amazing. Yeah. So a lot of the advice I hear given to women who are considering going part time is saying, don't do it. You're going to get paid half the amount or 60% of the amount and you're still going to do a full timetime job. Do you feel like that's been, been the case for you? Yeah. So it's interesting. I actually got the same advice, um, from one of my main mentors. She kind of said like, everybody I know who was

part-time doesn't, doesn't, works more. Um, and I definitely can see how that can happen. I actually, um, you know, just came back to work before when I returned from leave, I like really eased into it. This time, I kind of feel like I've been, it's been a little quicker. I've gotten dropped into some pretty challenging work pretty quickly. And I, you know, I'm probably going to up my allocation just a little bit, just because I can tell that it's going to be a little bit tricky to do what I need to do. But part of that is too, is like, because I've advanced, there's a little bit more expected. And I definitely think working part-time makes sense for certain roles and doesn't make sense for other roles. And it is trickier as you get more senior. Yeah. Tell me why. Well, I think

you manage more people. So in one of my last roles, I was managing, I think 10 or 11 folks. They were all pretty junior. They, you know, a year or two out of college and, um, they all worked five days, right? So that's 11 people working five full-time days. And I was working three days. And so giving them like kind of the mentorship that they needed and the coaching and the feedback, you know, that was tricky to do in three days in addition to client meetings and everything else. And so from just how many hours a day you have and managing a big team, that was really tricky. I also think just kind of the scope of what you do gets a little bigger. I think one of the things that will be tricky for me in the next few years

is I'm now involved in a lot more work where we're responding to requests for proposals and we're writing proposals for people and they're very time sensitive sometimes they ask us for a proposal with a week you know and it doesn't matter what days of the week I have child care lined up if the proposal is due Friday it's due Friday and you know and and um and that makes it a little trickier right you know do you find yourself working a lot on days you're not supposed to be working? You know, historically, no. I may take a phone call here and there or a text message because that's kind of the norm I had established with my team. Because I did have some experiences where I would totally like sign off, don't talk to me, and then work wouldn't continue.

And then I'd get back and I'd say, oh, well, I didn't know what to do, so I just stopped. It's like, wow, me working part time is not an excuse for you not to do your job. And so I kind of said, you're stuck, you text me. And so a little bit, not a lot. Do you also communicate pretty regularly with the team you're working with around what your hours are and what your boundaries are? Yeah, I've definitely had to do that. You know, where they'll set something up and I'll say, well, I'm not able to attend or let me send somebody

because I won't be there. Also, like I had to, I even had to tell my boss yesterday, he asked me about something and I just said, frankly, don't have time, don't have bandwidth today. And I was, you know, kind of teetering, should I send this? Should I not send this? And then I was you know kind of teetering should I send this should I not send this and that I was like no I have to how did he respond uh actually well yeah I mean I really have great management um they do really try and be accommodating yeah so you got a good response to that email in the moment and it sounds like there you get a lot of support do you have any concern that in the long term, however, that that's somehow impacting your career or your or people's impression of you? I think sometimes. I think part of it too is that deciding to be part-time is definitely making a decision about your career

in some ways, right? Like if I was trying to be, you know, the CEO or make, you know, partner next year, I wouldn't choose to be part-time, right? Like I am consciously taking, I mean, I hate to say like opting out, but I am, I am choosing to opt out in some ways just because like I'm not willing to give work my 100% of my 40 hours of my week right now, you know? Right. so do you think you'll be part-time forever I don't think forever I think for a while um I think just given my the demands in our family um I'm actually we're trying out some new child care we're getting an au pair um in a couple weeks and I'm hoping that makes something flexible. I am hoping to move up to four days. But I just think with the ages of my children and my husband has a fantastic and demanding career as well. It's just not, you know, going to be feasible for me to go full time. I actually

don't know if I want to be full time anytime really soon. I definitely think there's going to be a point where I'm going to want to kind of ramp my career advancement back up, but this just isn't that phase right now. Great. Well, thank you for talking with us today. Oh, thank you so much for coming. It was a pleasure meeting with you. And thank you, Emma. Thanks for letting us talk What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. Thank you. Women at Work. I claim my leadership power, then you should listen to TED Business, hosted by Columbia Business School professor, Madhupe Akinnola. The show features TED Talks about everything from

setting smart goals to the latest on DEI in business, followed up with a mini lesson from Madhupe on how to apply these lessons in your own life. Listen to TED Business wherever you get your podcasts. So it sounds like Kristen had a particularly good setup there. Yeah. I mean, she barely had to negotiate to get her situation. She didn't have people who tried to stand in her way or stop her from going going part time. She really doesn't seem to have been held back in her career. And, you know, she's got child care shifting needs go from full-time to part-time, people who might be more afraid to ask their boss and unsure of how to frame that question. And what about the stigma that part-time workers face, you know, not being at the office all the time and being less

visible? We're all curious about that. So we called on someone who could give us the big picture. Linda Duxbury is a professor at the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University. About 20 years ago, she and some colleagues did a study on women who work part-time. They were trying to understand the advantages and disadvantages of going part-time and whether it helps ease the conflict between the responsibilities at work and the responsibilities to their families. These are questions she's still watching. And Amy B and I got her on the phone to talk about what we heard in Kristen's story and how that matches up or doesn't match up with what Linda has seen in the research.

Linda, thank you so much for joining us. I'm really happy to be here. Can you give us a sense of how many professional women work part-time? So I think it really depends on the country. So, for example, in Canada, we have a relatively low reliance on part-time work, probably because we have many public policy things that make it possible for women to combine work and family. In Australia, where I've done some research, they've got the highest reliance on female part-time professional work, where it's close to 50% of women, just after they've had children, go to part-time status. In the United States, it again depends on what end of the labor market you're talking about and what state you're talking about.

But you'd probably have about 20%. So when you started studying women who work part-time 20 years ago, one of the professional women you talked to said that part-time is death to your career. What did she mean by that? So we've got organizational cultures that make judgments on people by their behavior. So the idea here is that we judge how engaged you are, how committed you are, how loyal you are to the workplace by your visibility and by the number of hours you put into work and by not saying no. So, and I've been studying the workforce up here for 25 years, and we're now into a 24-7, always available culture where you're expected to, even though organizations talk balance incessantly, the reality on the ground is if your organization sends you an email, you should respond.

If there's a phone call, you should respond. If there's a meeting, you should make it, even if it's your day off or your time off on a part-time job. And saying no and putting family first actually is a career-limiting move. So while the organization has these great policies quite often around part-time work, the reality on the ground is quite different. But I guess I just want to go back to why women go to part-time in the first place. You know, it's from the sense that going part-time, not being in the office 40 hours a week or whatever the full-time may be, will help them better manage their career and family responsibilities. But you're saying that that is a misconception. That doesn't actually end up being the case. My data says absolutely no.

My data says that you have fewer hours, less pay. So say you're supposed to work 20. You work 30, get paid for 20. You're supposed to be grateful. Your colleagues look at you differently. Oh, she's part-time. And your partner at home goes, well, you're working part-time. So you will do more of this. You will do more of that. And most women say, I'm only working part-time. So I should do more of this. You will do more of that. And most women say, I'm only working part-time, so I should do more of this. I should do more of that. And roll overload. So overload is having too much to do in the amount of time you've got to do it in, feeling rushed, feeling stressed, feeling overwhelmed. Overload goes up actually for part-time women, because if you actually add what they do at work and what they do at home, they're doing more than part-time women. Because if you actually add what they do at work and what they

do at home, they're doing more than full-time professional women who are working full-time, because those full-time women are working less at home. That's interesting. So you heard Amy Gallo's conversation with Kristen, who's been working part-time for years through the births of her three children. Why does it seem to work for Kristen? So why it's working for Kristen is because she has decided that, in fact, her family is coming first, and she's under no illusions, quite frankly, that this is not going to damage her ability to compete and to go up the

ladder, etc. So I thought that was quite interesting. The other thing is she's working for a very large company. And the reality is, is they probably have some buffer, and they probably have some people who are able to pick up slack for her when she's not there. But in a smaller business, that's typically not the case. They don't have the slack and they're going to be expecting people to come in. The other thing is she also said, I'm ferociously organized. So I think we have to recognize that, in fact, if you are going, and I'm not saying part-time work can't work for you, but you're panicking about having to come back to work, or maybe you're suddenly managing elder care, you know, you're wanting to go part-time, you're wanting to rethink the balance of work and life responsibilities. How should you think

through the feelings and the opinions that are coming from, you know, the research, but also the people in your life, your friends and family? So I guess, again, that's a nuanced question, because I study people who have elder care issues. I study people who have child care issues. It really depends on your life cycle stage, how old you are, where are you in terms of having children, having having children and elder care. Most of the people that I research who have elder care issues, a lot of them tend to be older. And so they go to part-time as a way to try to balance the elder care demands, which are totally unpredictable as compared to child care demands. Child care has more predictability in it, actually. You never know when your mother or father is going to fall, break their hip. And so part-time tends not to

work for those people. And many of them just decide then to quit. So you have to decide what is it? Is it a choice of not going back into the workforce? Is it a choice of taking early retirement? How important is my career to me? How important is my physical and mental health? All of those kinds of things. So what we do know is actually for many people, work provides a protective function, okay? Especially for people with elder care. So people with elder care say to me, you know, stress at work comes and goes, but elder care is different. It hurts the heart. So when I'm talking about people going part-time with elder care, it actually has a protective function, the work function, going in, talking to people, getting the social support. On the other hand,

with child care, your kids are growing up, they're doing new things every day, they're learning new things. And so there is a different desire to be there for them. The motivation is different. So I think you have to ask yourself some questions. How long do I want to do this for? What am I missing out on in my career? Will I regret this if I do it? Who's pressuring me to do it? Is this something I want to do? Or is this something my partner wants me to do? Or is this something my parents think I should do? So there's a lot of questions. I think you should go part-time if you've got the income and you've got the job security, you've got a really supportive set of colleagues and a really supportive boss and a supportive boss's boss. And I think the longer you go part-time for, the more you're putting your career on hold and the harder it will be to get back on track. So if your career is really important to you, have an off-ramp but have an on-ramp and a time in mind. So I want to talk a little bit about the stigma that you alluded to. If women work part-time and are viewed as not

taking their work as seriously as full-time professionals, how long does that stigma last if you work part-time for a few months? Will the stigma last only as long as you're part-time? Is it a long lasting stigma? So it's kind of interesting because I think Canada is quite different from the States. We have much more liberal social policies. So we have one year paid parental leave. So people are already used to mothers and often fathers taking time off at the birth of a child. So then when they come back, there's not seen to be as much stigma. So I've never actually studied the amount of time, but I think several months would be no big deal. But I think we have to put something else into that equation.

The more time you're working part time. So if you're working part time, you're probably not going to be given as much training, development, coaching, mentoring, because you simply don't have the time to do it. And you might be seen as less worthy of some of this training development as somebody who's working full-time, okay? So the problem is a lot of these professional jobs require that you stay up to date in terms of technology, theory, all kinds of stuff. I worry that the longer you're on part-time, the more you fall behind in terms of the critical training you need to stay current. Yeah. So what if you, do you have advice on whether you should just take a full-time role

and then try to negotiate from there to a part-time role? Is that a better option? I think if you come right into a part-time role with no experience with that organization, I personally wouldn't do it because then they don't know you as an employee and they're going to, we stereotype based on easy to observe things. The easy to observe thing here is you're working part-time. So we'll stereotype a bunch of things because we see that. And then you'll have to buy your behavior, make people change their mind. It's easier for them to know you, say, oh my God, this person's great. So suppose you are in a full-time role and you want to switch to part-time. How do you bring up the conversation with your manager? And what is it that women in particular tend to leave nice, and they do nothing to make you happy.

You know, so if your argument, and women tend to use more emotional arguments, you know, I feel because of my family, I feel because of this, I feel because of that. So I would take it from the work end, and I would say right now I'm having challenges with respect to balancing work and family. I know I can be a better employee if for the next year I can do this. So focus on the gains for the employer, not how it will help you, how it'll help your family, how it'll make you happier, how talk about how it can help you be more productive and focused at work. And the other thing is we tend to be too nice about it. So you have to set rules. This is what part-time work looks like. And, and so I would make sure that I had a complete memorandum

of understanding. This is the days I'll work. If I come in, if there's, you know, these are the consequences for me if you want me to flex that. So for example, if you put a meeting on my time off, then the problem for me is that I have to get babysitting. So you have to give me this much notice. So set the rules up, but focus it on their end. Focus it on what's in it for them if they facilitate you working part-time. So let's just talk about if you're on the other side of that conversation, you're a manager in conversation with a woman who is asking to work part-time, how should you handle

this negotiation? What questions should you be asking to make sure that what she's asking for is realistic for her and for the organization? So I guess if I'm a manager, I'd actually look at what they've delivered in the past. And I would make a judgment on, is this person somebody I really want to keep? Because if I deny part-time work, I probably might not keep them. So my question is, is this a person who I would consider to be talent? Do I think they have a good work ethic? Do I think they work well with their colleagues? Have they delivered to their client? And if I answered yes to all of these things, then I would look at the work itself that they're expected to do. And I would say, are there discrete tasks? And are there ways to hive off some of this role,

so that in fact, it can be done either five mornings a week, or three full days a week. So I would look first at the person. If the person is a great person, then I would look at the task. And so you see, if I'm a manager, I'm looking at it all from the work end, which is why I advised anybody who wants part-time to start at the work end and have thought about these kinds of things. Lead with, I'm a great performer. Lead with, you want to keep me. Lead with, this is what I've delivered. Lead with, this is why I want this. Lead with with this is how long I want it for. Then as a manager, I'm going to listen to this and I'm going to go, well, I don't actually agree with your self-assessment in terms of how you've done, how you've delivered, etc. Or I'm going to go, you're

100% right. You're a person I really want to keep. And so let's figure out a way that I can keep you, I can keep your client happy, I can keep your colleagues happy, okay? And that it's objective, transparent, and fair, seen by others to be objective, transparent, and fair as to why I gave you this, while I may not give it to other people. And it's interesting because your focus is on negotiating with work. I would also advise anybody who's going to do this to negotiate with their partner. Because you are still working. You know, you're working at home, you're looking after those kids, and you're working at work. And far too often I've seen that the part-time, by going part-time, within the family context, the woman's role is not viewed as she's still working. It's viewed as, well, you can do this because you're, you know, you can do that. My career has become more important than yours.

So I would really make sure I had a discussion with my partner too. Yeah. What do you do when you realize that you're working way more hours than you are being paid for? That's a tough one. So we have to realize that because you're part-time, you're under no different set of pressures than full-time. So we're saying part-time are working 30 and paid for 20. But I bet you many of your professionals, accountants, lawyers, doctors, etc., are getting paid for 40, 45. They have a salary, of course. And they're working 55, 60. So you're not unique.

And anybody, quite frankly, who pushes back and says, I'm not going to do extra, if you're a professional, you're putting yourself in danger in terms of career advancement, optics, how you're viewed. That being said, I would have a discussion, and I would advise this of full-time workers too. The healthy model of work is hills and valleys. There are crisis happen at work. We've got busy time at work. When that happens, we all have to step in and we have to work extra.

We're professionals, that's expected of us. And in many cases, we love our job and we want to do just that. But there has to be valleys. There has to be times when the work calms down and we can make it up. So as a part-time person or even as a full-time person, if I'm doing a lot extra, and again, track it, have objective data. Don't go in and say, I've been putting in a lot of extra hours.

Go in and say, last week I was supposed to work 20. I worked 46. The week before that, I was supposed to work 20. On these days, I did this, this, and this. On this part-time day, I was called in. So I would have my objective data. And I would say, I'm just letting you know I'm taking next Monday off in lieu of all this extra time I've worked. That's And I would say, I'm just letting you know, I'm taking next Monday off in lieu of all this extra time I've worked. That's what I would say. Yeah. So how do you

keep advancing in your career if you've gone part-time? That's a really tough question, isn't it? Because my data suggests it puts you at risk. I guess continuing to deliver, making sure that your discussion with your manager, you've got performance expectations established. You can see, by the way, I keep coming back to write it down, make it clear, make it objective. Okay. And the more objective it is, we're expecting you to do this, we're expecting you to do that, and it can be measured, and it can be measured outside

of hours, okay? Then as long as you meet your performance deliverables, I would expect that your career may not advance when you're part-time, but you haven't put it at jeopardy. So for the hiring managers and HR leaders who might be listening, what's your message to them? How can they improve part-time work so it's a better option both for women and for the organization? So I guess I would make sure that I offered training and development to part-time people. I would actually go beyond the policy and I would train managers to actually better manage part-time and teleworkers. So I think we have to start recognizing that for all workers, there has to be a boundary between work and family, and that we have to stop seeing our employees' personal time as our time. So I would have a discussion on email etiquette. I would have

to have a discussion on meeting preparation. I would have a discussion on training development. And I would stop using hours as the easy way to judge people in terms of their ability, their engagement, their suitability for promotion. And I would move directly towards a much greater focus on objective core competencies and demonstration of those core competencies. And I would do that, by the way, for the whole workforce, not just part-time people. Linda, thank you so much for joining us. Well, thank you very much. It was really kind of fun. And I'm sorry if it was a little depressing sometimes. Thank you, Linda.

But I see things are looking up. That's great. Thank you, Linda. I see things are looking up. That's great. I hope so. I hope so too. What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities.

Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work. So we've heard two wildly divergent views of part-time work. Amy G, how do you square what we've heard? Yeah, I mean, it's difficult because Kristen has such an ideal, well, in many ways, an ideal situation. She has the childcare, she has a supportive manager, she has understanding team, even an understanding client, even an understanding spouse the stars have aligned to really make it work i do think that the reality for most people is probably closer to what linda has described though yeah and one of the things that she talked about for how part-time work can disadvantage women it's in the context of their career so if you work part-time that can hold you back in terms of advancing your career trajectory.

Certainly, if you're thinking about a career as a traditional, you're with one employer for a very long time. And that employer really values long hours spent working at the company. That's how they determine, you know, your loyalty and your value to the company. Then in that way, working part time, yeah, would be really difficult to advance at that company. But I think a lot of, in a lot of cases today, like career is much broader than working in one place. Like you can have a career as a freelancer. You can build a career at many different employers. And I think if you think about it that way, maybe working part-time is not such a career killer like it might have been 20 years ago. Well, and that's sort of how I built my current career. I mean,

I'm part-time at HBR and then I do work full-time because I have other things I do. And I'll admit that it takes me out of the traditional career trajectory that you're talking about. I'm not in line to be, you know, take over my boss's position, become editor-in-chief. I'm not in that traditional career ladder, but I'm okay with that. And it doesn't feel like a sacrifice. It feels like I've made this decision to be part-time so that I can do lots of other things. And that works for me. So Kristen actually had a manager come to her and propose part time because they knew they really needed her back from maternity leave. But I think more often people are going to their manager and making an ask. How, Amy, you've been on the receiving end of that conversation.

What's going through your head when that ask happens and how do you evaluate whether to grant it? So this has only happened a few times. But my inclination is to say yes and then figure out how to make it work. If someone wants to go part-time, usually

they tell you why, but I don't think that that should be a requirement um but the the the reasons people have come to me are are reasons that you know who who am i to argue with a family that needs more of their time for example um but equal equally who am i to argue with the idea that there's something else they need to do or want to do? It doesn't really matter. If they want to go part time, then my view is we have to figure out how to let, how to make that happen. Yeah. But do you have a moment of panic of like, oh gosh, this is really a full time job? it's a managerial burden. You have to figure this out. You have to lay the ground rules.

You have to make sure everyone respects the ground rules. You yourself cannot fire off an email to Amy G on Tuesday if Amy G isn't working on Tuesday. I also have noticed that sometimes people will work part-time but not really work part-time. They'll do a full job. Yeah, like Kristen. Yeah, exactly. And then there's something else to be done, which is to make sure they're paid for their full-time work.

I mean, the amount of work you do in a compressed period of time is really about the amount of work you do. It's not about the compressed period of time, right? Well, I've had people come to me asking, should I go part time? And my advice has always been no, because you're going to end up doing your full job just in a shorter amount of time and get paid less. So just find, figure out what boundaries you need around your work life and try to set those boundaries some other way. I'm not sure that's great advice, but that's been my experience. I mean, maybe the advice should, I don't know that it's not great advice,

but maybe the advice is, are you ready to take on a smaller job? Are you ready to tap the brakes on your progress if that's the way it works in your organization? I mean, there are so many implications and it really, you have to think them through. Yeah. So the career stuff is like one, you know, one lane to think through about whether or not you should go part-time because there are implications for your career. Although I think they're changing and they're different in different industries, but one that I think everyone who is part-time will have to deal with or think about are those boundaries and how you set them. Because not only are you probably going to be paid for 20 hours,

even though you're working 30 or 40, but at home, if you're part-time, then you're maybe the part-time partner. And so you're expected to do a lot of the like house care, child care, caregiving responsibilities. And that adds up to way more than, you know, an additional 20 hours. That Linda called that role overload. And I have to say, I heard that I was like, oh, I have that. I was like, yeah, that's what I have. And I have to say, I heard that I was like, oh, I have that. I was like, yeah, that's what I have. And I think too many roles, too little time. And I think that that is true. I think the times in my life when I've worked less than full time, it has not felt at all relaxing. It's felt completely crazy. So if I was working, let's say, 20 hours,

that extra 20 hours, I was trying to fit in like 50 hours of stuff. And I never felt like I was focused on anything. It was really hard for me personally to manage. And I think you do have to have such clear boundaries with your partner, with your children, with your boss, but also with yourself. Like, what am I willing to do and what am I not willing to do? Yeah. One other piece of advice about asking that this is my favorite piece of advice about anytime you're asking for something is to propose it as an experiment. So rather like I'm going to be part-time for the next 20 years. Let's give it a shot.

Yeah, let's try it out for two or three months. That takes so much anxiety out of it. Well, because then that also helps the manager. You mentioned it's a burden, right? It's a managerial burden. So like, well, let's just see how much of a burden it really is. And then agree to come back together in some set period of time.

We'll talk about this in three months and see how it's working yeah but you have to give it a chance to work out right everyone has to go in with you know with a pure intent right yep can we do a thought experiment yes okay just like really this is purely a thought experiment no you cannot you cannot work. Well, okay. Because we're very, you know, like we've talked about positives. We talked about negatives of part time. But like what's very clear is that there are really hard tradeoffs that you have to make when you're going part time, when you're asking to go part time. And if you're managing someone who is valuable, who wants to go part-time. So let's say I'm weighing this thought and I come to you, Amy, not as my manager, but as like someone to ask advice for, you know, like what my goals are.

As your sponsor? As my sponsor. But you know what my, like what my goals are, kind of where I want to go. Career is very important to me. Like, how would you advise me? So I'd want to know, you know, I'd want to know what you were willing to give up. I'd want to know if you were willing to give up the rate of progress you were making. I'd want to see if you had thought about how to parcel out or how to handle the assignments so that they were still manageable on some level you know would you continue to do some of the stuff you're assigned to do are there people you would hand it off to you know had you thought through the implications of

for for the work i'd also want to make sure that you had thought through the kind of the social anxiety of not being around all the time. You know me. She's reading your mind. It's true. Yeah. I mean, what do you mean, like FOMO? Oh, maybe it's FOMO. But you know, when you're not here, you're not here. Right. And so, so much of what happens in an office happens in the halls and at the coffee. And, you know, it's when, you know, you run into each other at a corner, you, a lot of stuff gets transacted. Plus there's just that, that thing about feeling tied in, you know, sort of woven into the fabric of the organization that when you're around and you see each other and you greet each other and you have a kind of everyday,

you know, just when you see each other every day, there's a comfort that you get. Yeah. Yeah. You're not a visitor. Well, and there's one other thing I would, can I play your thought experiment? I would also ask you for advice. Good. Okay, good.

Her team. I would also tell you to think through the finances because you're going to take a hit in income. And possibly a lot of places also reduce your benefits if you go part-time or eliminate them. And can you handle that? And I think that's a big question for a lot of people when considering less than full-time work. But then if it's something you really wanted, I mean, I think with all those considerations, then it's about constructing the ask.

Yeah. And the other thing is that there are certain opportunities you get because you're available. Yeah. And people want to push you out there. Totally. They give you that. And you have to be more intentional when you're part-time about being visible. Totally.

You also have to own that it becomes harder to schedule around you. And that's not a small thing. Well, and I think you have to be confident in saying, I don't work on Thursdays. Because you're going to have to say it 50 million times. I don't work on Thursdays. And not be apologetic. Just hold that boundary and keep to it. Yeah.

But just to close out the thought experiment. Yes. Thank you both for your advice. I will take that into consideration keep to it. Yeah. But just to close out the thought experiment, thank you both for your advice. I will take that into consideration. Very helpful. So would you consider going part time? I mean, not in this job, but in the future in your career? Oh, gosh. Yeah, in my mind, I would not go part time unless it was really out of necessity because I like working like full-time. I can't

predict what will happen in five years, but I like the idea of taking time off and going to travel or having like a side gig that takes up just as much time. Or I don't know, people go back to school and that's another reason why people will either leave their job or cut back their hours. So all those things could be in play. I think more and more of that's going to happen. And so it'll change the way organizations at large think about them. I hope so. I mean, I think you'll see more of it in pockets.

And then it'll kind of spread as it can from there. I mean, in some places, it's just not going to make sense. I'd also like to see the degendering of, is that a word, degendering of part-time work. That seeing more men saying, I'm going to go to grad school, I'm going to take time off as a parent, I'm going to travel, I'm going to write a book, all of those things, and therefore I'm going to work part-time.

I totally agree with you. It should not only be associated with women taking time off to take care of others. And therefore opting out of their careers. Right. Yeah. That's, we need to get rid of that. And it should not be seen only as an end of career option. Right. Right.

Yeah. Like something you do that's ending your career. Right. Or something that you do as you taper off your career. I mean, it should be something. Wouldn't it be wonderful if it was like a faucet we could turn on? Yes. That's a good metaphor. No more career ladders. We have career faucets that we control.

Yeah. I'm at full flush right now. This is getting silly. Yeah. I think this is so far flowing. I'm at full flush right now. I guess this is getting silly. Yeah. That's our show. I'm Amy Gallo. I'm Nicole Torres. And I'm Amy Bernstein.

Our editorial and production team is Amanda Kersey, Maureen Hoke, Adam Buchholz, Rob Eckhart, Mary Du, and Corey Brosnahan. And a special thank you to everyone who came out to our live episode taping in Boston last week. It was so great to meet so many of you. Yeah, it was a whole lot of fun, and the promised snacks were delivered, and I'm

told they were delicious. They were delicious. Wait, did you not have snacks? No. No, I did not have snacks. They were really good. The snacks were delicious. They were delicious. Wait, did you not have snacks? No. No, I did not have snacks. They were really good. The snacks were great. High quality. High quality snacks. There was pate.

For those of you who could not make it to the event, you will still get to hear our conversation about navigating conflict at work. It's next week's episode, so until then.