Job Share

A job share can be explained as a condition where two people are employed, who voluntarily agree to share the duties and responsibilities of one full time job position on an hourly, daily, or weekly basis. The position is held jointly and is conditional, depends upon the offer of employment being accepted by both the job share partners.

Since the job is shared by two individuals so, the partners in a job share must work very diligently to maintain strong communication so that the hand off of responsibilities is seamless. The different ways in which hours can be shared in a job share are as follows:

• Half or split days, i.e. one partner working in the morning and the other partner working in the afternoon
• Half or split weeks i.e. One partner working the first 2.5 days (Monday to Wednesday morning) and the other partner working the remaining 2.5 days (Wednesday afternoon to Friday evening)
• Alternate weeks i.e. Job share partners each work one week on, one week off. This normally is on a Wednesday PM to Wednesday AM basis.

This is beneficial to both of them. In this way the organization can widen its recruitment pool, is also able to retain the valuable skills of existing employees who no longer want to work full-time, and enable staff to retain career development opportunities while working fewer hours. The full-time salary and holiday/leave time are allocated on a pro-rata basis to each of the job sharers.

The actual division of hours of job share positions among two individuals is done by the consent of manager/supervisor in consultation with the job share partners. It includes:

• The requirements of the service, section and/or department,
• Any restrictions on accommodation, equipment etc,
• The total hours worked by the job share partners should not exceed the normal full-time hours of the post,
• communication: between the job share partners, between the job share partners and their manager(s), between the job share partners and their colleagues and between the job share partners and their customers, the need to ensure consistency of approach.

The way the hours are divided is done by keeping in mind that the operational needs are met. If any one partner in job share position leaves and other partners are not interested to work full-time, then the vacant half of the job share position should be advertised.

The remaining job share partners can make use of their available contacts and can find a partner for them. If still it is not possible to find a replacement for that job partner share then the only option left is that other partners will voluntarily terminate.