Job share question

[Bellavida99]

A couple of years ago someone at work semi retired so their job was made a job share and advertised as a 2.5 days a week job. Everyone in the team would have loved this job and it would probably only ever come up if someone retired. As it was only 2.5 days not many people applied as there were some rules attached like you couldn’t then do another job in the same team or for a rival company on the other 2.5 days. So the few who applied generally were either semi retired themselves or had young children and were happy to work part time. The person who got the job is ok but to be honest in an open market probably wouldn’t have been successful. Now the semi retired person is retiring. The company has decided to avoid this being a job share for all eternity that the easiest thing to do is offer full time to the job share person. There are many unhappy people who would have applied for this as a full time role. I can see both sides of the argument but wonder if anyone has had this situation before. It might not normally be such an issue but for various reasons this is a dream job for so many people.

I don’t think people can really complain. They had a chance to apply and didn’t.

If it was me I would want the 2.5 days and be fuming if they suggested I went back to 5 days.

As it covered a partial retirement it would have always been on my mind what happens when that person fully retires and this was a possible outcome.

People moaning about this would annoy me, and I would end up saying, this was a likely outcome you should have applied then?

In an ideal scenario lots of others would have applied originally but in reality they couldn’t afford to only do 2.5 days a week and the job had lock out clauses to work in the same directorate or at external companies so no chance to make up loss of income elsewhere.

Does the person doing the job share on 2.5 days actually want to go to full time? If not, then the organisation will probably have to keep it as a job share. Or - worst case scenario - current person ups to 3 or 3.5 days and the rest isn't covered.