Managing Through Cancer Pioneers: Part-Time Work Arrangements

An ad hoc part time work arrangement allows an employee with cancer to reduce workload and hours during all or part of treatment and recovery.

Success Factors

To make ad hoc part-time succeed, the following issues need to be considered:

Appropriate Schedules and Coverage

Workload Creep

Nature of the Job

Co-workers

Communication

Development Opportunities

Teamwork and Cross Training

Appropriate Schedules and Coverage

At different times in the employee's treatment and recovery process she may want to work fewer or more hours. You and the employee will want to talk about her needs and discuss workload and schedules. It will be up to you to assess the staffing needs and workflow of your work group. Then, together with your employee you should make sure there is adequate coverage for:

The time(s) of day when customers typically need the employee the most,

Regular scheduled meeting times,

The two of you can discuss how the work the employee has been doing will be accomplished while she is working part-time.

What work will she be doing on a part-time schedule?

How will the rest of the job be accomplished?

Delegated to other employees?

Outsourced in some way?

Decision that it be postponed or not done at all?

Job sharing?

Workload Creep

When coworkers are working long hours, there can be a tendency to ask more of someone on a part-time schedule.

Both you and the employee need to be diligent to prevent her drifting into a full-time job on a part-time schedule with part-time pay and benefits.

Nature of the Job

Certain positions will be more amenable to part-time than others. Particularly good are positions that are:

Project-oriented

Require minimal supervision

Have limited customer contact

Co-workers

Typically, if an employee reduces from full-time to part-time, some tasks and responsibilities will be assigned to others in the department or work team who might already feel overworked. If resources are available, hiring an additional part-time worker or a temporary employee could ease this situation. If resources are not available, you might have to look at another way to encourage team support and cooperation, like team-building training. This will be especially important i f the employee has not told her co-workers her situation and you are granting a reasonable accommodation as required by the ADA. Part-time can create opportunities for cross-training and employee development which may be valued by co-workers.

Communication

Your employee will need to be kept "in the loop."

If her treatment and recovery schedule make it possible, she should attend regularly scheduled meetings and training, either live or by conference call.

It might help if she can find a "point person" who can fill her in on what is happening in the office when she's not there.

Communication techniques include:

E-mail

Telephone

Pager

Written notes

Shared calendar

Posted schedule

Conference calls

Voicemail messages

You may want to pay particular attention to giving positive feedback regularly to make your employee feel more a part of the organization.

Development Opportunities

Part-timers should have access to the same training opportunities and developmental assignments that full-timers have. They should

Be assigned to committees and task forces

Do special projects

Be involved with other activities that allow them to stay visible.

Teamwork and Cross Training

An employee working on an ad hoc part-time basis can still be an integral part of a team even if she's not in the office on a daily basis. If possible, the team should have meetings when everyone is available, even if some participate by phone. If the employee has unique skills, she will do well to cross-train one or more co-workers in key areas and make sure these co-workers know where important info rmation they might need is kept.

How to create a workable plan

It will work best if you let the employee take the lead in figuring out what will work best for her in terms of the number of days she will be able to work at different stages of her cancer treatment and recovery. Here are some possible plans:

An employee going through chemotherapy and feeling fatigued might combine ad hoc part time and telecommuting, working one day a week at home and two in the office on non-chemo weeks and two days a week at home and none in the office on chemo weeks.

An employee with cancer might want to take a leave right after surgery and work part time, perhaps three days a week, during chemotherapy and radiation.

An employee who is the caregiver of someone with cancer might choose to take days off around that person's treatment schedule.

An employee whose job isn't suited to part-time might temporarily want to switch to some kind of work that would allow her to reduce her hours without there being too much of a negative effect on the work that needs to be done.

Frequently Asked Questions about Employees with Cancer Working Part-Time

Q. What expectations are there for a part-time employee to maintain communications on a scheduled day off?

A. A lot depends on the requirements of the position and the communications practices that you and your employee put in place. Best practices include:

Identify a back-up person who will handle questions for customers on days that the part-time employee is not working

Establish a process for having you contact the employee when there are critical issues that need immediate attention. NOTE: the goal is to do this only on rare occasions when there is no one else who can address the issue.

Part-time employees can develop various communications procedures with their customers and co-workers. This includes checking voice mail once a day on regularly scheduled days off. Under this scenario, the employee could leave extended voice mail and electronic mail instructions about their schedule and explain their voice mail checking procedures.

Q. How can an employee who is going through cancer treatment or recovery and working part-time stay visible?

A. It will be easier for the employee if she can arrange her schedule to include being at as many regularly-scheduled meetings, trainings and other functions as possible. This won't always be possible. Otherwise she should stay "visible" through frequent phone and e-mail contact and by attending meetings via audio conference when she can't attend in person.

Q. How can I compare the performance and results of a part-timer to that of peers who work full-time and even more?

A. All employees should be evaluated based on the expectations of the position and the results achieved. The critical factor for part-time schedules is that the position needs to be restructured appropriately. Results for the part-timer should be proportional to those of a full-time schedule. For example, an employee in sales who was expected to sell 100 widgets a year on a full-time schedule would be expected to sell 50 on a half-time schedule. All other factors being the same, their performance could then be recognized as equal.

Q. What if the employee decides that she wants to continue working on a part-time basis for an extended period after her treatment and recovery period?

A. Naturally, the first thing for the manager to decide is whether the position can be done in the short- or longer-term on a part-time basis. If so, such a request might be approved. If that would be too challenging, there are ways of making the position whole. Adding another part-time person to complete all the responsibilities of the position can be done in several ways.

Using a temporary staff person can address the short-term need. For a longer-term solution, a part-time staff person from another department could be transferred. Also, someone who is currently working part-time could have their role expanded to full-time to take on the additional responsibilities. Another twist would be to allow an existing full-time employee to convert to the complementary part-time position and satisfy that person's longstanding request. Then a new part- or full-time person could be hired.

In cases where two distinct part-timers in a position can't adequately meet the demands of a job on a long-term basis, job sharing might be considered. Though rare, the commitment of the two occupants of such a position is to set up a communication and customer service system that provides seamless coverage.

The assumption in all of these arrangements is that they should be more or less cost-neutral. Prorating salary and benefits should allow the costs of an FTE to be applied to different part-time combinations.

Trouble-shooting Guide

No matter how well you and your employee have planned and implemented an ad hoc part-time arrangement, from time to time breakdowns can occur. Below are four common breakdowns you might experience:

BREAKDOWN: An ad hoc part-time employee who has cancer is worried that she is not getting good assignments and will be passed over for promotion. She feels this is because she is not as visible as people who work in the office full time.

INTERVENTIONS:

Take a good look at any assumptions you might be making about the employee's ability to work. Before you reassign tasks to other employees, talk to the employee to find out what she wants and feels capable of doing.

Coach the employee about career development opportunities.

Make sure the employee stays visible by participating in face-to-face meetings, attending social activities and serving on committee on days in the office.

BREAKDOWN: The ad hoc part-timer feels left out of the mainstream of the organization's functions. She feels she is not informed on happenings that full-time employees always hear about.

INTERVENTIONS:

Be sure that the employee works as part of a team with others on projects and assignments.

Take responsibility yourself or find someone on your staff to keep the employee up-to-date on what is happening in the organization

Be on the lookout for any patterns in meeting schedules or communications that might leave the employee out.

BREAKDOWN: The ad hoc part-timer feels that she isn't being taken seriously by her colleagues partly because of her cancer and partly because of her reduced schedule.

INTERVENTIONS:

Make sure that others deal with the employee directly rather than going around her.

Convey by your own words, attitudes and assignments that you regard the employee as a valuable part of the team.

BREAKDOWN: Co-workers complain that they "never know when the employee is going to be in."

INTERVENTIONS:

Ask the employee to post her schedule in a convenient location (near the sign in-sign out board if you have one) or send an email with her schedule to members of the team.