Very interesting points. But some of them are surely specific to the size, workforce make-up and activities of your organisation. I’d like to put an alternative view on point 14, at least as it applies to an organisation with longer timelines and a more autonomous working regime (so less opportunity for blocking). My experience is that part-time workers can be more productive hour for hour than full-time workers, in the right work domain. A fully committed part-time worker has a ready-made excuse to avoid those meetings that don’t make them productive. They will use their slack time to be thinking of their work, coming up with ideas at leisure, and creating an effective plan for their next work period. They can be flexible in their work hours so as to attend the important meetings and one-to-ones and to avoid blocking anyone (Especially if they also WFH some of the time- so can dip into work for an hour in a day they normally don’t work). They can use (E.g computational) resources more effectively so that they are rarely waiting for lengthy production runs (or calculations, say) to finish. Lastly, they are often less stressed through not being overworked (and hence more effective).
Clearly this will not be true for all work domains. Nevertheless it has been recently reported in the UK press that an international experiment to test a 4 day (32 hr) work week at 100% salary has resulted in no loss of productivity for many of the companies involved, and many of them are continuing with the scheme.
So the domain I’m most familiar with is early stage drug discovery In industry. This requires multidisciplinary teams of chemists, computational chemists, biochemists, biologists, crystallographers etc. Chemists tend to be associated with one project at a time and I don’t perceive part-time working to be beneficial there. However the other disciplines are often associated with multiple projects. So there’s a natural way to halve (say) the workload without reducing efficiency. The part-time scientist should be highly experienced, committed to what they are doing, and have few management responsibilities. If that holds then my experience is they are at least as productive than a full time worker, hour for hour.
Very interesting points. But some of them are surely specific to the size, workforce make-up and activities of your organisation. I’d like to put an alternative view on point 14, at least as it applies to an organisation with longer timelines and a more autonomous working regime (so less opportunity for blocking). My experience is that part-time workers can be more productive hour for hour than full-time workers, in the right work domain. A fully committed part-time worker has a ready-made excuse to avoid those meetings that don’t make them productive. They will use their slack time to be thinking of their work, coming up with ideas at leisure, and creating an effective plan for their next work period. They can be flexible in their work hours so as to attend the important meetings and one-to-ones and to avoid blocking anyone (Especially if they also WFH some of the time- so can dip into work for an hour in a day they normally don’t work). They can use (E.g computational) resources more effectively so that they are rarely waiting for lengthy production runs (or calculations, say) to finish. Lastly, they are often less stressed through not being overworked (and hence more effective).
Clearly this will not be true for all work domains. Nevertheless it has been recently reported in the UK press that an international experiment to test a 4 day (32 hr) work week at 100% salary has resulted in no loss of productivity for many of the companies involved, and many of them are continuing with the scheme.
What actual domains have you had this experience of part time workers in?
So the domain I’m most familiar with is early stage drug discovery In industry. This requires multidisciplinary teams of chemists, computational chemists, biochemists, biologists, crystallographers etc. Chemists tend to be associated with one project at a time and I don’t perceive part-time working to be beneficial there. However the other disciplines are often associated with multiple projects. So there’s a natural way to halve (say) the workload without reducing efficiency. The part-time scientist should be highly experienced, committed to what they are doing, and have few management responsibilities. If that holds then my experience is they are at least as productive than a full time worker, hour for hour.