Reduced hours

[Music Lover]

Why not just work the 40 hours you are actually being paid for...do 4 - 10 hour days instead of the 5 - 10 hour days you are doing now?

Then, once they get used to that, approach them with the 30 hour suggestion??

[pb4uski]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MooreBonds "Sweet"? would it be "sweet" if they took out a few bolts from a critical structural pin connection, and the building fell down at night when no one was there? They were paid to produce a product and to maintain a system. It's not like they were independent contractors who were screwed out of getting paid from creating the initial code/software in the beginning, and they deleted the source code because they were never paid to create it.

+1 essentially, they destroyed property that they were paid to create and belonged to the company.

[pb4uski]

Quote:

Originally Posted by firewhen This is what I have come up with: assume I work 50 hours per week salaried so being paid for 40 in essence (the hours may be high but I am being extra fair) agree to work 4 days at 30 hours and be paid 3/5 of my salary rate plus bonus, becoming full time hourly (nonsalaried). I would like to go into the office 3 days, work from home 1 day and the other day be off each week. Since I would be hourly I could work extra hours on my regular days when needed but would try to avoid that. 30 hours would keep me on the medical plan. How do I broach this? One option is to present this which I am sure will be turned down. The other is to go in and resign nicely (which I am fine doing if that is the end result) and if it gets to how can we keep you, present this. I am there 20+ years and am heavily relied upon and do things no one else knows how to do. If this is not satisfying, or I am working too hard at reduced pay, I could always stop working entirely. I did get them to promote me a few months back but that has not changed my daily grind, just gave me alittle more money, and I am getting too old and wealthy to put up with this anymore Thoughts anyone?

I worked reduced hours for many years and a FTE was also expected to work more than 40 hours a week. The way ours would work is that my salary would be reduced to 75%, so my standard hours be reduced from 40 to 30. In reality I would be expected to work 38 hours rather than 50.

All other benefits were 75% of a full-timer (vacation time accruals, sick time allowances, etc.). 401k match worked the same but on smaller numbers. DC plan company contributions were x% of salary so that worked too. The only thing that was different was health insurance... if you were 50% or more it was the same as a FTE, if less than 50% then nothing.

In our case the firm had an established reduced hours policy so I just needed to apply for it and make the business case. My practice leaders felt that 75% of pb4uski was better than the likelihood of 0% of pb4uski so we were able to work it out.

In our case we did daily time reporting so hours worked could be charged to projects and clients so tracking was pretty easy.... if it ended up that I worked a lot more or less then we would just adjust the % I was paid to true it up.

[Al in Ohio]

Just noticed this thread. I have done almost exactly what you wish to do successfully on and off for several years before I retired. The conversation for me always centered around the fact that I valued work life balance and that both my wife and I shared both a profession and time at home raising our kids (she has a masters degree). Another major factor in being successful at convincing your boss is building up a lot of leverage to ask for perks or advantages that the average employee won't even be aware exists is by having a high value and involved in niche work. 99% of employees at any company I have successfully negotiated this setup were not aware of my exact negotiated benefits and yet I myself was afterwards enlightened to know what others in my company held similar advantages to myself once the deal was done. Did this THREE times in my entire career. All at the last three employers. One tantamount requirement that you want is to have your current salary reverted to the same (or higher) hourly wage equivalent to what you make now. There is a lot of benefit to that. You now hold the house money where salary employees play against the house money! Working mostly at home increases this advantage even more so.

One caveat. Once you do this almost all employers will reduce your regular annual bonuses and any incentive bonus or salary increase given to annual salary employees due to a US corporate perception that those who want work life balance and don't sit at a desk over 40 hours per week shouldn't be associated with incentive retain age rewards. That's why this negotiated reduced hourly plan is best for just prior to retiring or when you know your planned timeline with the company is only 1-3 more years.

[Milton]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Al in Ohio One tantamount requirement that you want

What does this mean?

[Al in Ohio]

You don't want to negotiate a reduced set salary with a verbal agreement that can't be controlled to work say 3/4 as many hours as before. You want to be paid commensurate with every hour you work. That includes reading and replying to urgent email if need be after your normal daily quitting time. If certain projects require a bit more time one week to meet a deadline, you get paid for that extra time. It's all your call as to how much or little you want to work or earn. Not doing so will cause times where full time workers with full time expectations ask more of your time and this way if you agree to ramp up for a time, you get paid for it without resentment.

[sengsational]

As mentioned earlier, unless there is a history of your company doing something othef than full time, you're probably out of luck. Rather than quit outright, I gave them a take it or leave it concerning reduced hours. They left it. I thought they might offer to hire me as a 1099, but they didn't. I didn't push for it, but there were some 1099 contractors. It's sticky for the company to go FT to contractor, since they're used to treating you as an employee.

[Milton]

Thanks Al.

I understand that, but not sure about the word "tantamount".