Talk to me about job sharing

[beela]

I am due to return to work sometime in September after my first baby.

I don't want to go back full time, but my manager has already commented (when I was still pg) that she didn't think my role would work as a part time role - there is a lot of management involved, but also she used to do the role and is a bit of a workaholic.

I am going into work next week to discuss plans informally so would like to go with some solutions / ideas on how it could work if I went back on a 2-3 day per week basis.

Does anyone have any experience of job sharing - how does it work? Do you just do 2.5 days each or is there some handover time? Do you assign part of the role to one person and part to another or do you just do whatever needs doing on that particular day? Are there any benefits to the organisation, such as leave cover?

Thanks

anyone?

Hi - I used to work for some job sharers - I think they split the hours but made sure there was some handover time - ie there was a bit of time when neither was working - it really depends on the role AND your job share partner how well it works - I think it didn't work that well for them - there were lots of things they both wanted an imput in - and although they split the line managment - sometime you had to talk to both of them - and they got a bit over loaded
what worked better was when one of them left and they got someone - a bit junior - to do some of the line managment
I guess leave cover is a benifit -

Hmm. Thanks for the reply.

I suppose it depends on your job, your jobshare partner, and the rest of the organisation.

In theory all of the jobs in my organisation are open to job sharers but in practice I can't think of any - perhaps there is a good reason for this?!

Well if the organisation is in theory open to it, and you can think of ways to make it work in your role- I would take it further - there would be plenty of time to advertise for someone
But as I said another option might be to creat a slightly different/junior part time job that could do some cover for you - that could be a development oppertunity for someone in your team maybe? and that could have a cost saving -
I do think your boss is right through if you are only work 2-3 days a week you do need cover -and it wouldn't be possible for you do the job in that time alternatively you could look at 4 days a week and keeping the job the same/similar -but that means that you do a full time job in 4 days which has it downsides!

Yes, she is right that it couldn't be downsized into a 2-3 day a week role. I think if I went back 4 days they wouldn't take anything off it, so as you say, I would be trying to do a full time role in part time hours - and for part time money! Hence the jobshare idea.

One of my team leaders is acting up at the moment to cover my role so I wonder if something clever could be worked out there. I will have to give it some more thought.

Why did you sometimes need to talk to both of your jobsharing managers? was it because they both wanted/needed to be in on the decision making?

I did a fairly senior job share role in the NHS. We had 270ish staff in 6 teams so we split routine staff management. We had both been through the NHS management training scheme so we knew a fair amount about what sort of strengths we had (Belbin roles, MBTI, and from psychometrics etc) and we sorted out who was leading on a project based on that. We had on call rotas so we split those as well.

There was no budget for an overlap so, although we each worked 2.5 days, we both worked Wednesday mornings and neither worked Wednesday afternoons. We did partial holiday cover for each other (usually an extra day or day and a half). Initially we emailed each other a lot and copied most of our emails -it made for a lot of reading but it kept the communication flowing and we didn't waste time catching up on Wednesday mornings. Eventually we had the IT department set us up a combined email for our job with both our names on and eventually everyone got used to using that.

It helped that our boss was a woman and that she didn't want to lose either of us.

The downside was sharing a desk and office with someone who liked clutter and didn't appreciate my merciless approach to decluttering and desire for zen like tidiness!