Job shares: how do they work?

[teff]

My boss has agreed in principle that myself and a colleague can job share when I come back from maternity leave. However we need to come up with a proposal to show him it will work. Does anyone have any tips? I'm fairly clueless at the moment so nothing is too basic. We work in higher education as administration managers.My biggest worry is therefore how we deal with the staff we manage so they get consistent support.

Thanks

My coleague works MOn & Tues and i work Wed, Thurs &Friday.
We meet once a month (on her day, she has 2 kids i have 1 to juggle)to discuss stuff.
We talk on the phone regularly.
We have a diary which is our daily ommunication, we write any thing that needs to be communicated daily in there.
This works ok for us.
Is this what you mean?

I worked 2 days and my collegue 3 for 6 years and we made it work by being obsessive about leaving notes on everything and always sent a round up e-mail on our handover days.

We didn't ever meet up, but had an understanding that if nec it was always fine to call each other at home. Only happened a handful of time though.

I think you need to take some advice on the way the contract is done though. Some require you to cover for each other's hols or sickness, so if she was off, you'd have to work a full week. Also, to some extent she has your destiny in her hands, as if she leaves and you can't find another job share partner, you'll have to go to. Our set up was 2 part-time jobs, although it worked like a job share in terms of getting the work done, we had individual part-time contracts.

Thanks DonBean. Do you find your non-working days get eaten into with enquiries from your colleague and vice versa? Do you manage any staff? If so are they happy with the arrangement?

Thanks worrier. I will look into the contract. It's interesting you managed without meeting.

Yes we manage staff but thats a shift by shift situation.
I do get enquiries for my colleague and unless she has specifically communicated to me about a situation i refer people back to her to contact her on her working days.
It isnt usually an issue.She does the same.
problem does arise when we need annual leave, as she is unable to work full time so we spread he out so that there is cover mon and Friday. This works okish, not ideal tho.

donbean - I don't get the thing about holiday cover - I know it's done, but if you were one person doing one job, you'd take a week off and they'd manage. Why does the job need covering because you job share? Surely it means they're actually getting more than the equivalent of one person -does this mean that between you, you earn more than one person would?