Flexible Working

Responsibilities and demands on your time that come from outside of your work life can make it unsuitable and undesirable to follow a rigid, conventional working model. This is often the case for parents with young children, but also applies to people in a wide range of other situations. Increasingly, flexible working is being seen as a useful alternative, allowing people to adapt their ways of working to best suit their needs, while still being committed to their careers.

So, what is it?

Flexible working can take different forms, such as working from home or job-sharing. Ideally, flexible working is about finding the arrangement which best meets the needs of both employee and employer, so that everyone benefits from the situation.

How can I work flexibly?

Depending on your particular job circumstances, you may be able to participate in one of the following College flexible working schemes:

• Teleworking: Working from home or another location outside College
• Job-sharing: This usually means splitting one full time position between two people who will each work on a half-time basis
• Shorter working year: Optional unpaid leave of between 2 and 13 weeks which can be taken all at once or split into up to 3 periods. This can be used to coincide with children’s school holidays, or any outside commitments.
• Part-time working

For further details on any of these schemes, click here to visit the Staff Office website.

Who can do it?

While at present there is no legal entitlement in Ireland to flexible working, within College anyone meeting certain criteria may apply. Whether or not you are granted permission depends on the type of work you are involved in, and the individual circumstances of your department.

How do I get it?

Most flexible working arrangements must be agreed by your Head of Discipline and the Staff Office. Further information is available on the Staff Office website. Click here to access it.

Can I get some advice first?

Yes! Understanding of what flexible working is can vary between departments, and if no one else in your department works this way it may be hard to see how to make it work. If you’re thinking about trying to change your work pattern and are wondering how to go about negotiating it, or what effect it will have on your career, you can contact the Staff Office first to talk about it.

If you’d like to speak to someone else who has gone through a similar situation we can try to arrange that for you. Email wiser@tcd.ie, or phone us at ext. 3508.