The Case for Job Shares

WM People

The case for job shares and how we can overcome objections to the concept.

Mandy Garner

Mandy Garner is a freelance journalist and editor. She was the former managing editor of WM People and is a communications officer at the University of Cambridge. She has experience working in a range of roles, including senior broadcast journalist at the BBC, former features editor of Times Higher Education and researcher for the writers organisation International PEN.

This article by Mandy Garner first appeared on WorkingWise.co.uk on 26 September 2019. WorkingWise.co.uk has been acquired by 55/Redefined.

The statistics on job shares have barely changed in the last decade. This is despite employers such as the Civil Service promoting them both internally and externally, including for senior level jobs.

One reason is that there is little awareness about how well they can work and how much more than one full-time equivalent person they can offer. Another is that finding the right job share match can be complicated.

Nevertheless, several job share specialists have set up in recent years, driven by a strong belief that job shares offer the kind of flexible hours many employees want, help address the gender pay gap by enabling women to work part-time in senior roles and give employers the benefits of two people’s expertise in one role.

Job Shares Are a No Brainer

Job shares can be a no brainer for both employer and employee. For employees, they mean they can do a senior job on reduced hours; for employers, they get full-time cover and more than full-time expertise and productivity, she says.

Most job shares take between six and nine months to bed in. Handovers are vital but some employers, particularly SMEs, are worried about paying extra for an overlapping day. In reality, it can be half a day or less and the time can be covered by letting job shares leave early on other days.

Cost Effectiveness

While economics is sometimes a barrier to job shares, that's not the whole picture. They become cost effective because employers save on recruitment (to cover a person who leaves because they can’t get reduced hours), they don’t lose out on any investment they have made in someone's training and they retain the organisational knowledge.

In addition, job shares increase diversity [as many are likely to be women], which has been shown to be good for a business’s bottom line, increase innovation (two heads being better than one) and the job sharers can coach each other, as well as transfer skills between each other. They require less management time because the pair solve problems together.

Line Managers

Another potential barrier is line managers’ resistance. Experts suggest setting up a job share pilot to get over initial reticence. It’s important to work with line managers, and offer support and training for them. It is important that pairs share core values, for instance, their attitude to risk or to punctuality.

Job shares can create a working arrangement that all benefit from. Jointly the sharers offer more than a single person – they are the uber employee.