At top of their profession, but working less than full-time

Katie Bickerstaffe, chief executive of Dixons Retail in the UK and Ireland, runs a business with 20,000 people, 500 stores and an annual turnover of £3.8bn, working four days a week.

"I love what I do, but I also love my family. I don't think there's any reason why you can't do both," she says. "You just have to make sure you marshal your resources and yourself."

From Monday to Thursday, she works long days in the office or visiting stores and operations, often staying in hotels. Fridays are for her young daughters, school events, friends, and time to think - although she remains contactable and usually has phone calls with her team on developing issues.

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"I put quite a lot of hours in," says Ms Bickerstaffe, who joined the board in February when she was promoted to her current role. "A lot of senior part-time employees work like that. Being committed and doing a great job doesn't mean being at a desk from 7am to 7pm five days a week.

"I never feel guilty about going to school events or going away with friends on Fridays. I have the option to do that, and that's incredibly liberating."

Ms Bickerstaffe, 45, has worked a four-day week at the specialist electrical retailer since 2009. Senior and middle managers are aware of her working pattern, she says. "I think they respect that. I think it's opened up more flexibility for them."

Strong support at home - from her husband, nanny, family and friends - is crucial, she says. In management terms, she makes it work by:

- Being very clear what she expects from her team and giving them enough autonomy and control so that "you don't have to be on their case all the time";

- Prioritising ruthlessly by focusing on areas of growth and challenge. "I don't get a lot of time for socialising or networking - that's a sacrifice";

- Having reliable sounding boards: she is also a non-executive director of SSE (formerly Scottish and Southern Energy) and finds it helpful to talk to other non-executives;

- Being "relentlessly organised" and having a personal assistant who is the same.

Jeremy Fennell, e-commerce director of Dixons Retail and one of her team, says the working arrangement does not affect decision-making. He adds: "The quality of her PA, and the way they work and manage each other, is phenomenal."Lea Paterson, recently promoted to run The Bank of England division publishing the flagship quarterly Inflation Report, has worked part-time since joining in 2004.

She is the most senior female monetary policy official and the first part-time head of division in Monetary Analysis, but she says she has male and female colleagues who are part-time heads of division in other parts of the Bank.

"There is a group of us that are changing perceptions about the type of role that can be done part-time," says Ms Paterson, 40, who has three children under seven.

"There's a lot of pressure, it's busy and it's an operational role, but that doesn't mean it can't be done."

She works a four-day week, but adapts this so that she is available when the Bank needs her most. "I work full-time for three weeks every quarter when we are preparing to publish the Inflation Report.

"The rest of the time I work 3.5 days but I spread this out over four days so that I can be back at home in good time to make the kids tea and put them to bed."

Two-way flexibility is the key to making it work, says Ms Paterson, a former economics editor of a national newspaper. For the Bank, this means allowing her to delegate responsibility, trusting her rather than continually checking up on her, and holding meetings in core working hours as far as possible.

The Bank says a working group on flexibility six years ago found that most jobs could be tailored to suit alternative patterns and that this would help retain talented people. The resulting flexible working strategy was based on five principles, including: "What counts is what you and your team deliver" and "Flexible working for all".

Ms Paterson, who also oversees the Bank's network of 12 economic intelligence-gathering agencies around the UK, says the predictability of the monetary policy timetable makes it easier to manage the demands of her role and her family life.

"I don't see myself working full-time in the foreseeable future and nobody has ever said 'that's going to hold you back'," she adds.

"I've been on the promotion track, and I've done it on my own terms."Mike Dean, a partner at Accenture, was approaching 50 when he felt ill at the office one day in 2009 and woke up in hospital. He had been working for three "pretty tough years" on challenging contracts. Doctors diagnosed an adrenal imbalance, which caused him to pass out and briefly lose the use of one side of his body.

After advice on managing stress, he decided to cut his working week to 3.5 days so that he could continue to combine his demanding job with his local church activities, running youth groups, and leading programmes to teach schoolchildren about enterprise.

It was on these terms that he was recently promoted to oversee service delivery for business process outsourcing in the UK, Ireland and the Nordic region. The business runs back-office functions, such as finance and payroll, for corporate clients, employs 900 people and has a turnover of about $480m a year.

"My health is considerably better, but I wouldn't go back to full-time," says Mr Dean, who won an Accenture global award this year for "the most inspiring person working in BPO". "It is the best of all worlds, allowing me to make the most of life and balance my passions."

On Mondays, he takes his teenage sons to school, gets some exercise and plans his week. He works from Tuesday to Thursday. On Fridays, he checks emails first and last thing, but does not necessarily respond. "If it's genuinely urgent, people in my team send me a text," he says. "They know I'm happy for them to make decisions."

He believes his working pattern has made him better at his job. "It's about delegation, time management and putting people first. I want my people to know I'm there for them. People drive performance."

He puts emails that cannot be answered immediately into one of three folders denoting priority - top, second and "sometime". He says he has also cut unnecessarily long meetings, and invests more time in understanding the people in his team and what makes them tick.

Mr Dean sees himself as a role model for part-time working both internally and externally and dismisses as "nonsense" the idea that clients might object. "Often it's a business opportunity," he says. "When you talk to the client, they say 'we see Accenture being very advanced in this area. Could you come and talk to us about what you do?'"