Could working fewer hours work for you? Read on...

V-time stands for ‘voluntary reduced work time’. You and your employer agree that you will work fewer hours for a certain period of time – a year, maybe. You will keep all your rights as a full-time employee and, when the V-time agreement is up, you will continue in your job as before. What’s the catch? There isn’t one, but there is a trade-off: your drop in hours will be reflected in a drop in pay.

You can arrange your time off in a range of ways. Say you decide you want to reduce your 37.5-hour week by 20 per cent, then you could, for example, work:

• A four-day week
• Five days a week, but only six-hours a day
• Three days of ten hours each
• Or take off a big chunk of time, or a number of smaller chunks up to 52 working days (for example, you could arrange to have two blocks of 26 days each, four blocks of 13 days, or one block of 52 days)

In doing this, you might reduce your income by 20 per cent, but you would still have your usual benefits (some pro rata).

You don’t have to reduce your work and pay by 20 per cent for a whole year. You could opt for as little as five per cent or for as much as 50 per cent over six months up to a year.

V-time’s main advantage is that it brings a new level of flexibility to the security of a full-time job. This suits people with a wide range of needs – from those who want to spend more time with their children, to others who want to develop their skills in new directions, to others who feel that they will benefit from a change of pace.

When you set up a V-time arrangement with your employer, both of you should make sure that it is workable, not just for you, but for your colleagues as well.

Also, be careful to work through the period of adjusting to the new working pattern with your employer until you are both confident you have got it right. You don’t want to find yourself trying to fit the same amount of work you have always done into fewer hours. A month should give all sides enough time to fine-tune the arrangement.

Further information

• New Ways to Work, 22 Northumberland Avenue, London WC2N 5AP (020 7930 3355) offers information on a range of flexible working patterns to individuals, unions and employers.