How To Find a Sustainable Part Time Job

Long work hours can be difficult to maintain, especially for people with major responsibilities such as parents and carers. As such, many people wish they could find a part time job that also represented a sustainable career.

Finding sustainable part time jobs isn’t easy but it is possible, especially if you already have a successful career in your field. In this article we’ll be talking about what sustainable jobs are, how to maintain a sustainable career, and why a part time job may not be as hard to find as you think.

What Is A Sustainable Job?

When we talk about a sustainable job, we mean a job that can provide enough income to maintain your lifestyle without causing you serious stress along the way. For many people this just means reasonable hours and a healthy separation between their work and home lives, but that balance can also depend a lot on your circumstances.

For example, for someone with a disability, a sustainable job would be one that they could work every day without making their condition worse. For a student, a sustainable job would be one that didn’t conflict with their expected study hours.

All of this to say that what represents a sustainable career for one person might not for another. In fact a huge part of finding a job you really love is simply learning what type of job is a good fit for your personality and lifestyle.

Why Part Time Jobs are Often More Sustainable

Of course, it’s no secret that one of the biggest hurdles people face with their jobs is simply inhospitable hours. This problem is only exacerbated by the fact that those who work in management are often treated as though they’re on call. Even when they’re not in the office or officially working, the phone could go off at any time, demanding their attention.

Anyone who’s lived with this kind of stress can tell you that it isn’t fun, and can really degrade any sense of down time they might otherwise have.

By contrast, part time jobs are a haven with reasonable hours carved out as part of a contract. 

The Best Way to Find Part Time Work

As a rule, there are two types of part time jobs. Low paying minimum wage jobs can sometimes be part time. This is because they’re generally targeted at students and teenagers who have other responsibilities they cannot get out of.

The second type of part time job tends to be more common among people who are in the mid-to-late stages of their career. These workers are generally offered part time work because their employer values them a lot and would like to keep them around.

If you’re looking for part time work, then it generally helps to have been at the same company for a while and to have long since proven your worth to them. Employers are often eager to keep legacy staff around even at reduced hours because they’re a proven commodity and they know how the company works.

In many ways, part time work can represent a transitional period both for the employer and the company between full-time work and retirement. This allows companies to get new staff trained up and creates a smoother transition overall.

Not that this is the only circumstance under which companies are willing to offer part time roles. Many companies are willing to negotiate hours for their experienced employees if this would help them have a more sustainable career. In fact, for disabled employees, companies may even be obliged to depending on the circumstance.

Legally, companies in the UK have the obligation to make changes to a role if those changes would allow a disabled person to continue doing their work. If your hours are proving to be a health issue, then this option is worth looking into.

Why People Love Remote Working

Lastly, it’s also worth mentioning that remote working has opened up whole new avenues for sustainable careers. Removing the commute and allowing people to work from home has given many people an amount of freedom when it comes to how they work.

It also helps that many companies that allow remote working also tend to be more open to flexible hours, giving people the freedom to build their work life around their home life and not the other way around.

Parents no longer have to worry about hiring someone to watch their children during holiday time. Remote employees can save valuable time in the mornings and evenings by not needing to drive. For many people remote working has proved to be the answer to long-term career sustainability.