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Australia's part-time workforce has boomed over the past decade.

But how do such workers meet their personal aspirations and the needs of their employers?

For the past eight years, Nicole Sheffield has worked in senior management for Pacific Magazines – from managing its online division to her most recent role as publisher of many of its mass-market titles.

She started with the company on a fulltime basis, but moved to part-time after the birth of her first child in 2002.

During her time there she has had four children and launched three magazines all while working on a part-time basis.

But Sheffield concedes that working “parttime" is not as easy as it sounds, especially when you’re at the top of your field.

“When you’ve got Blackberries and emails at home and functions after hours, it is very hard to say that you are actually working part-time," she says.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 27 per cent of employed Australians were working part-time in 2005 – well above the OECD average of 16 per cent.

Attempting a greater work-life balance is an obvious reason why so many people opt to work part-time, allowing employees to combine work with family responsibilities, study, or other outside interests.

In 2003, 36.6 per cent of couples with dependants under 15 lived with one parent working full-time, the other part-time. In 89 per cent of the time, the mother worked part-time.

But the federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick, says squeezing a six-day-a-week job into three days won’t deliver benefits for either partner, and ultimately won’t help the business.

“The focus must be on outcomes rather than inputs, on innovative use of technology – so individuals can work from anywhere at any time in a way that corresponds to their caring responsibilities," she says.

A recent study by Beaton Consulting has shown that part-time employment has failed to deliver either at home or in the office.

The study, Work-life Balance In Australia In The New Millennium: Rhetoric Versus Reality, of 12,000 white-collar workers indicates that while part-time employment reduces interference between work and home for female professions it comes at a cost. There is a higher level of absenteeism due to physical, mental and emotional fatigue. Many women have rethought their plans to have more children because of work demands.

But Sheffield says working part-time at a senior level has been a rewarding experience.

“For me this role has been fantastic; being able to manage a family life and a work life has just been wonderful,’’ she says.

“You learn to prioritise what is important, you don’t have much time to socialise, you’ve pretty much always got to focus on the job at hand, but it is possible to work in a senior role on a part-time basis."

Cutting your hours when you’re in a senior position is one thing, but advancing your career while working part-time is a challenge.