Contract and Flexible Working Request Accepted

I've made a number of posts over the years of work-life balance and here's another little update on my new contract. Working in the NHS isn't always easy and at times it can be really quite difficult. It's important to try and make shift patterns and the working schedule work around your life as much as possible. Whilst I would absolutely love to have self-rostering be apart of my Trust, it's currently only for smaller teams and not for midwifery staff members at present. That being said, there are still ways that you can utilise to get a better shift pattern for you as an individual. 

I have recently - finally - increased my contract hours at work. I have two separate contracts, one for my Labour Suite Midwife role as a Band 6 and the other as my Sessional Professional Midwifery Advocate role as a Band 7. I do 7.5 hours a month (just under 2 hours a week) as the latter, and that is the contract, however for the former, I dropped my hours from 37.5 hours a week to 29 hours a week during my Masters degree, as I found it quite difficult to manage both full time and my Masters degree, alongside my mental health at the time. I have been trying to increase this back up to 35.5 hours since July, to therefore equal 37.5 hours again. It has finally gone through the correct procedures and has been approved, however unfortunately only for 34 hours as the Trust is apparently now fully staffed which is obviously good, but also crazy! 

I also had my flexible working request approved last month. I've requested to work only nights and weekend days. This is because I don't unfortunately have a weekday day parking permit at the Trust as I am not classed as a priority employee. Obviously, this is frustrating and if you've seen some of my vlogs, you'll defintely have heard some comments when the car parks are clearly empty during the early and late hours of the day when the long shift hours would already be at work, aka me! Anyway, without the parking permit, getting public transport adds over 2 hours to my already 12.5 hours shifts so it's just not worth it. Thankfully, it's now been approved. I had originally thought it was just for those with dependents, but I've learnt anyone, at any stage of their career and life can have a flexible working request so defintely take advantage. It could be a set shift a week, or a set day off, or like me, not to work weekday days. 

Finally, as a top tip for other NHS employees is to make use of the day requests. Anyone over 29 hours gets 4 requests a month to use to either request days off or to request to work a certain day. For me, I tend to use it to request every other weekend off, because unfortunately without doing this, I would literally work every weekend in some way or another. I have also used it to request certain shifts to work, like bank holidays or before annual leave, but usually for days off. 

Unfortunately, for the last two off duties, I haven't been quite so lucky and have been given night shifts the day before my day off request. I ended up working one of them, but I'm in the process of trying to get the other swapped. Honestly, I'm going to refuse to work it because my day off had already been approved and I booked and paid for an event for the day off. Being given only 4 requests a month, these should be honoured and having to work 7.5 hours of it, is not a day off.