Flexible Hours

An increasing trend within the economy, and not just in the financial services industry, is the demand for jobs that offer flexible hours and limited hours. To a large extent, this is an issue for working mothers, but not exclusively so. People with eldercare issues, personal health issues, or attitudes towards work/life balance that do not fit neatly into the traditional 5 day, fixed hours, fixed work location week are becoming less and less shy about expressing their preferences. Meanwhile, employers desperate for talent are increasingly less resistant to offering such flexibility.

Indeed, in today's environment of cost-cutting, a clever pitch from someone seeking such a nontraditional working arrangement should be that this is a way to trim expenses. That can be a tough sell among more traditionalist employers, who are more disposed to cut total employee headcount and, instead, load more tasks on each of the remaining members of staff. Thus, having unique skills is a particularly important selling point when trying to cut a special deal for a position with limited or flexible hours.

Finding a flexible hour or limited hour position to mesh with your situation is hardly a straighforward exercise, and may require a great deal of digging and negotiation. Investing the extra effort to find such positions, or, more importantly, the firms and managers disposed to offering them, is well worth it. In my own experience within the financial services industry, employees' striking deals for flexible hours or limited hours typically played out in situations where an employee was poised to go on maternity leave. In these cases, the employee's willingness to return to work on less than a fulltime basis significantly prior to the end of the leave period represented a win-win for both her and management alike, especially in cases where the employee had special knowledge, skills or tasks. Then, once such an arrangement began, it was relatively easy for the employee to leverage it into a more extended, if not permanent, regimen of flexible or limited hours.