Working hours can be arranged in a number of ways to suit you and your employer. One of the most familiar arrangements is part-time working. At present, about five million women in the UK (roughly half of whom have dependent children) have taken up this option. Part-time is defined as anything less than the regular number of hours worked in a week. It might be a good solution to the problem of managing work and home, but be careful that you are not looked on as a less-than-regular employee just because you are working fewer hours. Another point to remember is that part-time work is often badly paid - female part-time employees earn 60 pence for every hour worked by full-time male employees. However, new regulations in place since July 2000 should improve the lot of part-time workers.

The idea of flexitime was developed in Germany and spread to the UK in the early 1970s. You agree to work at certain hours, known as core time (for example, 10am-12pm and 2pm-4pm). Outside of these hours, you can arrange your starting and finishing times and your lunch hour as you please. You agree to work between a minimum and maximum number of hours each month. This means, if you work up to the maximum hours, you can carry them over as time off the following month; but, if you only work the minimum number of hours, you owe your employer for the next month.

Another way to arrange working hours is to agree with your employer that you will work for a set number of hours over a year. This is known as the annual hours system. For example, a 37.5-hour week works out at 1,702.5 hours over the year (taking into account 5 weeks' paid holiday and 1.6 weeks of bank holidays). You agree to work this number of hours altogether, but it may be that, in some weeks, you will work for 60 hours and some weeks only for 20. Working annual hours can be a useful way of arranging work that has seasonal variations.

ivillage uk

Flexible working hours: what's available?