Congratulations on your negotiation skills! I also worked for one of those "If we do this for you..." bosses/organizations, so appreciate how hard it is to get some flexibility.
Suggestion: Frontload your extra 30 minutes of work by checking email (and strategically responding to messages from your boss and other powers that be) on the train in the morning, if at all possible. Then when you are done for the day you are done for the day and you don't have to worry about fitting that extra 30 minutes in around your family life. Will also help you prioritize/hit the ground running when you arrive at the office.
Hope the new schedule proves to be great for you, your family and your organization. Why more employers don't help their employees maximize their productivity is a mystery to me, but maybe you can blaze a path here.
Thank you, and good advice! Yes, I had a lot of colleagues quietly cheering me on through this process. I hope this opens the door to more flexibility for everyone.
That would be pretty awesome. So much pressure, though, no?
When I had my first child at my last job (9+ years ago), I wanted to work part time. My boss said "sure, let's demote you". So I said "nevermind".
But when my son was 1, my boss left. My new boss said "fine". So from age 17 months till...? (I'll get to that), I was part time. Note, I was the first woman ever at the small office (30 people) of this company to ever have a baby. So, it was new to them, this whole "mom with a baby" thing (there were two mothers there with older children).
One of my coworkers had a baby about 6 weeks after me. She switched to part time also. She moved into managing government contract work.
Fast forward to when my son was a little over 2. I was getting bored and thinking of changing jobs, but enjoyed my PT gig (30 hrs a week). Then the parent company shuts my group down (5 of us). They offered me a job across the country (no thanks), then offered us all spots in the current spot, just for a different group. Great. Not even 2 hours later the "new" boss wanders by my cube to say "by the way, I don't believe in PT work, so consider me the bearer of bad news."
That started the conversation ...
Me: "But MH works part time."
New Boss: "She's not a technical employee"
Me: "She has a PhD in engineering"
NB: "Well, she's not in the critical path"
Me: "But I've been doing it for over a year and it works just fine. Ask my boss, or my coworkers"
NB: "Sorry, I still don't believe in it"
So let's move up the chain to my new VP (my old VP worked in the other state)
Me: "I don't want to go back to Full time"
VP: "It shouldn't be too bad"
Me: "it's 10 hours a week"
VP: "What if we let you work whatever hours you want?"
Me: "I already do that"
Well, within a week I called my old boss who'd left (who wouldn't let me go part time) and lined up a new job, working part time. I think the old company really didn't expect me to leave. In the end, they were fine with it because the other engineer was still there (what they didn't know is that he was also leaving).
So that's one working mother down.
Then my very good friend marries and has a baby. She asks to work PT. They agree. And EVEN agree to let her work 25 hours a week (she wanted 20). Part of the conversation went like this:
"Yeah, we didn't handle that other situation that well." (meaning mine) At least they realized they made a mistake.
Well, they started pressuring my friend to go back to full time, right around when she was losing her child care. So, she quit.
They also started pressuring the "non-technical PhD" into doing more work, to the point that her hours crept up to 40, or 50, and she was traveling a lot. After requesting a reduction in workload, and not getting it, she quit.
That's 3 working mothers down and out.
At this point, there has been one new working mother. She was an intern when I was there, and went FT when she graduated and after I left. Her baby is around 1 year old, and she works half time. And they aren't pressuring her to go FT!
There's another working mother of a school aged child, and they've allowed her to adjust her FT hours (she prefers FT) to start at 6 and end by 2 so that she can pick her son up at school.
Baby steps? But it's been 9.5 years. It's glacial.
Of course, lather, rinse, repeat at the new company. I started PT, then went to FT, then had another baby and went back to PT, then got pressured again into FT. I'm the only woman to have a baby here. There was one other (a PhD), but she left very shortly after to take a teaching position out of state.