Job sharing

Job sharing is the practice of having two different employees, who perform and split the duties of one full-time job (Bliss & Thornton, 2010).

Job sharing is a form of part-time work, but it varies from what is traditionally considered as a part-time job in a few respects. Working in such hours, is often associated with for example food or retail industries. Job sharing, on the other hand, allows to work shorter hours in jobs that are not usually considered as part-time positions, such as business and professional functions. For example, in the simplest configuration, two employees can share a typical position of forty hours to working only twenty hours. In certain situations, workers can each work two and a half days. Other options include working two days a week and alternatively on Wednesdays or daily working for four hours.

In most cases, the salaries and benefits for the employees who participate in the job sharing are prorated based on the hours each employee worked.

Job sharing types

Three types of job sharing can be distinguished.

• Responsibility participation

There is are no shared responsibilities in this method. Although some people interact in the performance of a job, all are equally responsible for doing it correctly. This method of job sharing is good for people who are active all the time and require high cooperation.

• Responsibility sharing

This method is appropriate when the work can be divided into projects and when participants do not know each other well. Each participant is responsible for and concentrates on his own part.

• Unrelated responsibilities

It is like two people working part-time. Employees do totally different jobs while they are in the same place (Bod, Gholipour, Kozekanan, Pirannejad & Zehtabi, 2010, p. 136).

Job sharing implementation

There are many factors to suceed in job sharing. A lot of resources describes how to develop and propose an ideal job-sharing arrangement.

For example administrative assistants positions or administrators can be successfully shared. Management support is crucial for this type of job split to be efficient. In order to suceed in job sharing, the communication with workers on a regular basis, so to easily resolve every conflict is necessary. Another factor is setting clear goals and responsibilities.

More difficult to share are jobs with unpredictable working hours or with hard to define tasks. For academic positions, a job share arrangement may not be as easy to arrange as for those on ful-time positions due to the requirements for tenure. Not everyone is an ideal job-share partner. The most successful are emplyees with good work organisation and excellent communications skills. They must be team players who are interested not in their individual, but their combined success. Often job-sharing partners have an interest in making their arrangement a success and are committed to making efforts to ensure continuity in it (Rogers & Finks, 2009).

Job sharing advantages

When the agreement is set up correctly, many benefits occur - proraterly for the employer and employee (Crampton, Douglas, Hodge, Mishra, 2003), (Lutz, 2012, p. 7-8):

• Flexibility that improves emloyees work-life balance. For example parents, while raising the children, can retain their positions and continue on their path professionally. Thanks to decreased working time, the time spent with family is increased. Job sharing solution makes future career aspirations won’t hinder and can be easy combined with parenting.
• The employers don’t have to make a retention of workers, so it eliminates the need and cost of finding the replacement for the company.
• Employees involvement in job sharing tends to their increased loyalty and productivity.
• Better work results, because of two different minds (more ideas, talent and creativity) engaged in it. The two workers can solve problems that one person could not be able to solve.
• Job sharing often saves the company from paying workers for overtime (assuming one of the individuals does not exceed 40 hours).

Job sharing disadvantages

Job sharing presents some cons as well (Lutz, 2012, p. 8-9):

• It isn't an appropriate agreement for an employee who needs the full-time job salary, because the pay is smaller.
• The risk of competing personalities between the workers leading to misunderstandings, low working afficiency a whole dysfunctional relationship.
• Additional expenses for the company, such sa increased processing cost due to having more people employed.
• Certain benefits and insurance costs cannot be prorated and often the employer have to pay for two employees in one position.

Job sharing — recommended articles

Job enrichment — Alternative staffing — Multi skilling — Front line management — Workplace design — Delegation of authority — Horizontal organization — Theory X and Y — Free rein leadership

References

• Bliss, W., & Thornton, G. R. (2010). Managing flexible work arrangements. SHRM.
• Bod, M., Gholipour, A., Kozekanan, S. F., Pirannejad, A., & Zehtabi, M., (2010). The feasibility of job sharing as a mechanism to balance work and life of female entrepreneurs. International Business Research, 3(3), 136.
• Crampton, S., Douglas, C., Hodge, J., & Mishra, J. (2003). Job sharing: Challenges and opportunities. Seidman Business Review, 9(1), 11.
• Lutz, J. D. (2012). Alternative Work Arrangements: An examination of job sharing, compressed workweeks, and flextime. A Senior Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation in the Honors Program Liberty University, 7-9.
• Rogers, K. C., & Finks, S. W. (2009). Job sharing for women pharmacists in academia. American journal of pharmaceutical education, 73(7).

Author: Paulina Olszewska