Job-sharing - how does it work?

[IsItMeOr]

Or indeed, does it work?

I thought I had my near-perfect part-time hours agreed for returning to work, but had a shock when the person I was supposed to be working for told me it was a full-time job and that I needed to either up my hours or go for a job-share.

The first isn't realistic in the short/medium-term, so I was wondering whether anybody could give me some tips on job-sharing please?

My only perception is that it could be a bit of a nightmare, as you are risking being held accountable for somebody else's work as well as your own iyswim. Is that fair?

And are there other things I should be looking out for?

As I understand it, the process would be for HR to trawl around the organisation for somebody who could match up with me, and then we find a post after that. So it will be a bit like a dating service...

TIA :)

I have job shared since returning to work almost 11 years ago. Worked great with my first jobshare partner, but she left and I had to find a new job and jobshare. This one does not work so well. We both work from home at opposite ends of the country so very rarely meet.

My first job share was more local and we worked 3 days one week and 2 days the next, so could easily meet up by swapping a Wednesday. Also, she was the same age as me, and our DDs were the same age. If you are going to be co-located then I cannot see it being a problem. The thing with jobshare is that you both want it to work, so will jump through whatever hoops are necessary to make it work. Cos it beats working full time!

HTH

That's encouraging to know you've had a positive experience.

How did things like annual leave work? Did you take it at the same time, or just whenever?

Howdy. Not sure where/what you work at, but I'm job share in a factory. We both work day shift but take 2 weeks to work 1 week each. For eg, next week I'll be in Mon, Tue, Wed then N will be in Thur & Fri - I will finish off my 'week' the following Thur & Fri (N will do the Mon, Tue, Wed bit). We don't have to cover each others hols (we each have a leave entitlement albeit reduced to 50% of ft as we work 50% of ft hours); if one of us has a childcare issue (sick child, childcare crisis) we simply swap days. Our line manager doesn't give a flying one so long as one of us is in work - we're both trained in same dept. We're also only responsible for our own work ie what we do on the days we're in (medical devices so very regulated, all actions atributable at all times etc). Money works out slightly more than 50% - paid less, so a leeeetle bit less tax to pay.

And it's FAB! The 7 day weekend is a no-brainer! HTH.

Ah, I hadn't realised that the 3 days/2 days split was wide-spread (although, I guess that's just two of you here). I was anticipating working the same days every week for childcare reasons (but then I didn't set any of this up with a job-share in mind ).

Mine is office-based "thinking" work, but perhaps that makes no difference to the principles. I guess I'm used to working in teams on projects where it felt pretty hard to distinguish one person's contribution from another's, and I was concerned that might go double in a job-share.

Certainly food for thought here.

I've never job shared, but seen people do it and it never worked well sadly. Its depressing as think I have to make it work to be able to work at the next level up. It was office based.

But the one thing that did work, was they split the job between them. So did did task A,B and C and the other D,E and F. Both covered for anything urgent, but like you would for any collegue.

Both were offically part time, and did 3 days each and overlaped once a week. Was more expensive though.

Argh, you've reinforced my worries there, turkeyboots.

I suspect a huge amount depends on getting a partner who you match well with, which is probably reasonably unlikely...

Thanks for everybody's experience so far, and for your candour.