How do you divide up your week with your job share partner

[milkingmachine1]

Hi all,

Just looking for some advice on the best/most fair way to splitting a working week (Monday-Friday) with a job share partner.
Also do you have a day when you overlap? How does this usually work and what advice would you give?

We did half the week each, so I did mon to weds and she did weds to fri. It meant we had a good overlap day on a weds to discuss any issues happening or to brainstorm ideas etc. We also had an activity log, she would update on a fri for me to go through on a Monday morning and I would update for her to take over on a tues, it meant we were aligned, knew what was happening with our projects and that people weren't having to say things twice to us. We sold ourselves internally as being one person essentially so that consistency and seamless handover was essential to making it work

Thanks for the info, that's really helpful

I think the best/most fair way is whatever happens to work best for your personal circumstances and the company. There isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. You have only have a handover day if the company feels that the job is really 6 rather than 5 days and that they are willing to pay for an extra day.

The handover day is what I wanted to know about. I'm not sure if my partner and I can justify it. It's something we'll have to figure out.

This is all new to me so I'm just trying to gather as much information and advice as possible. Obviously there is no 'one size fits all' solution. But finding out what works well for others will help me to understand what will work best for me in this situation.

I've jobshared for ten years, with different arrangements. Sometimes I've done 3 days and the other person 2 - works better where you can "split" rather than "share" the role if you don't have a handover. So we would do an electronic log to record stuff that had happened in the office so the other person was aware, and update on where we were on things so we could answer queries etc for each other.

For th past five years, I've been in an arrangement where we both work 3 days, with th handover day being a work from home day for my jobshare partner. I much prefer this - we still do an email update the evening before the other person is back in work, but can chat throughout the handover day on things it's better to discuss.

It does mean we're paid 1.2 in salary terms but I think we'd make a case that the employer gains in extra efficiency and effectiveness (we've had comments that our written work may need less editing by senior colleagues as it comes to them already edited!) And another benefit, now our kids are at school, is that at busy times e.g. at the time of a big event we may be working on, the person not (due to be) working on a particular day can in fact log in from home for a few hours. Meaning that there have been occasions we've been able to do two things at once!

In my first job share one week I worked Mon, Tues, the following week Mon, Tues, Wed. We did have some overlap time although I can't remember when or for how long. We did have a book that we made notes in and went over those notes during our overlap time.

In my second job share I worked all day Tues and then Thurs til 1pm. Lady I job shared with came in at 12.30 and we had that half hour to catch up on anything.

In both jobs both ladies I job shared with had the same work ethic as me, which was get the work out of the way first so we all made sure there was never any backlog of work to come in to, and if there was we warned each other.

Whatever you do make sure that you are both treated fairly in weeks where there is a bank holiday!

I managed 2 staff who did a job share a few years ago - they each worked 2.5 days, but we were able to juggle start/finish times on the day that they both did 1/2 a day so that they had a bit of a handover. They were very good at leaving updates for each other, and I tried to split some of their jobs so that they each had elements that were just theirs, which also helped.
It worked really well for me, as it meant that when one had a week off, I only lost someone for half a week, likewise if children were ill etc, it was a lot easier to manage. They got on really well and each had a similar work ethic which also helped - they were sometimes able to swap days with each other too to help with school holidays/inset days etc, which again, helped me out as their manager.

Thanks for your comments, this information is really helpful 😀