Some of us might feel that we spend a disproportionate amount of our waking hours talking about sharing. Usually to our offspring - sharing toys, sharing snacks, sharing with siblings. You know the drill. We rather assume that by the time we reach adulthood, we've cracked sharing. But what if we told you that there were many more benefits to sharing than even you had realised?
Job shares aren't a new way of working - they've been around since the 1970s - but they've never really taken off in the way that other forms of flexibility have done. In fact, only 0.3% of workers are engaged in job shares, and the vast majority are women. We can't help but be a bit surprised by these figures. After all, job shares have so much going for them. For individuals, they can provide the perfect balance between part-time hours and career development. They might be the key that enables you to pursue that promotion whilst also fulfilling your other commitments outside work. You'll never need to worry about what's happening at the office on your non-working days - there's someone you trust implicitly holding the fort, and your inbox. You won't come back to a build-up of requests, and someone just as capable as you has been able to progress all your projects since you last saw them.
For organisations, too, there are huge benefits. We'd all love to live in a world of absolute equality, wouldn't we, where childcare was divided equally between parents? But studies indicate that, in today's world, women are still taking on more unpaid childcare than their male counterparts - to the point where some find it difficult to continue their careers. And it's in all of our interests to help women to stay in the workforce if they want to do so. Job shares, like other forms of flexible working, are a great tool to help employers retain knowledgeable and skilled staff, and improve diversity. All forms of flex have their own advantages, but job shares offer to employers twice as much experience and twice as big a professional network as they could gain from one person carrying out a role on a full-time basis. They can mitigate the effect on a company of annual leave - there's someone to move things forward and answer enquiries for at least part of every week. There are two perspectives being brought to bear on any organisational problems, generating novel and innovative solutions. A workplace is always more exciting and dynamic when there are ideas being bounced around between team members - the same principle applies within the framework of a job share.
That doesn't mean that every job share is going to be plain sailing from the off. It would be naive of us to pretend that that's the case. Like all new professional adventures, embarking on a job share can have its challenges. It would be good to have the opportunity to speak to others who've gone before you, for example - to find a mentor to help you iron out any wrinkles - but the truth is that as things stand, those might be in short supply. There simply aren't enough people with job share experience to be able to guarantee that you'll find someone in that boat. Then there's the fact that many organisations are themselves inexperienced in this field. They may not always be advertising roles as being open to job shares; you may need to approach them for a sensible conversation. In practice, they might look to you to do some of the legwork - to find a job share partner yourself, to hammer out the finer details of how the arrangement will work with that person, and to reassure them that the job will be done just as efficiently, if not more so, than it would be done by one person. Then we come to the matter of actually finding your job share partner. Where do you start to look? Do you reach out on your company's intranet? Hmm. Possibly, if you're applying for a role internally. But what about if you're pursuing a new role elsewhere, and want to propose a job share? Would it perhaps be sensible to speak to former colleagues in your field, or use a platform like LinkedIn? We love job shares, but the truth is that they can require a bit of forward planning.
So where should we start, I hear you ask? Well, to quote the ever-cheery Julie Andrews, the beginning seems like a very good place to start...
Pre-match considerations...
Thinking time
First things first. Being absolutely honest with yourself, are you the right kind of person to make a job share work? Do you prefer to work alone, get your head down, finish your own tasks and head home? Do you consider that strong professional relationships are pleasant but optional? Or are you genuinely someone who believes that positive working partnerships are a fundamental part of your professional identity?
Are you happy to acknowledge that you and your job share partner will be judged collectively on the success or otherwise of your output, and that that might not always work in your favour? Are you happy for you both to accept joint praise for a piece of work that you’ve produced? Perhaps more importantly, are you ready to take on the chin joint criticism of you and your job share partner, even if deep down you think that the ball was dropped on your non-working day?
If the answer's no, then that's completely fine; everybody has a different way of working, and yours may or may not be conducive to a successful job share. But if that's the case, it's far better to own it at this early stage - there's likely to be another type of flex which'll make you happier.
On the hunt
If you’re confident that you’re a great fit for this arrangement, your next step is to find a willing partner. And, crucially, it's important not to get so excited by the concept of a job share that you quickly join forces with anyone else who's willing to do it. That way lies only (professional) heartbreak ... Far better to take a bit of time to really investigate each other’s working styles. In reality, a job share will only succeed if you have shared values and a shared vision for your (joint) role. If one of you is hungry and ambitious for promotion and the other person can't imagine anything worse than management responsibilities, it'll be a recipe for disaster, with a large dollop of resentment on the side. Let’s be honest - you wouldn’t choose someone with a fundamentally different approach to be your life partner, so it’s probably not a great idea to choose one as your work partner either.
Similarly, it’s a good idea to think about the organisation you’re approaching. Is it one that is not only going to be receptive to job shares in the short term, but which also has a supportive culture that will help you to make a job share work in the long term? That’s absolutely not to say that more traditional companies are an automatic no-go, but you might want to think about organisational culture and where you and your job share partner will be best supported to do your job effectively. Thank goodness, firms resistant to flexibility are now rare, but it’s no fun to be working somewhere where your agreed arrangements are met with looks of surprise. It's terrible, we know, but we do still hear horror stories, and it'll eventually squash your love of even the most perfect role.
The Finer Details...
Dividing and conquering
Now that you've thought about who you'd like to work for and with, it's a good idea to sit down with your job share partner and hammer out what sort of job share set up might work for you both. Do you want a fully shared arrangement, where you both work on a single role, with joint and equal responsibility for all tasks? Do you want a partial job share where each of you is responsible for specific areas, but some elements of the job are shared between you with equal accountability? Alternatively, would you prefer to completely divide up the areas of responsibility which fall within the job description so that each of you has distinct areas of your own? How will you arrange your week? Do you envisage that one of you will work two days and one of you for three days? Or will you go for the more common approach of having one crossover day, where you both work?
If you’ve gone down the route of sharing responsibility for some tasks, it’s important to agree these clearly in advance, and to make a joint note of the tasks which will fall into this category. How will you divide up that responsibility in practice? If it's common in your industry for an influx of requests to arrive in your inbox over the weekend, it probably isn’t fair for the person working on Monday to end up with responsibility for all of that work - effectively doing five days' worth of work - whilst the partner working on Thursday and Friday only has to take ownership of two days' worth of work. Similarly, if you've decided to avoid shared responsibility and instead to divide all of the tasks out between the two of you, it’s important that you’re both still able to receive any ongoing training and updates in all of the areas which the role covers. You don’t want to accidentally become de-skilled in the other half of your job – this could make it much harder to move on to a similar role in the future when you may no longer be job sharing.
Together we stand
The next bridge to cross is how your job share might work for the team you’re joining, and for the stakeholders with whom you're building relationships. It’s sometimes said that the most effective job shares are those where both partners present a united front to the wider world, as if they were one person. The language they use might reflect this – they might often say, for instance, that "we believe X", or "our conclusion is Y". It can be helpful for everyone on the team and in your wider business community to know and understand that you're working as one and, especially where you're carrying out a management role, that there's no confusion about whether you have the same views on a particular issue.
On that note, you might want to consider with your job share partner how your collective decisions will be reached. For example, is it the case that decisions on strategy and HR matters should be decided jointly between you? Are you happy for all other decisions to be made by the person on duty on a particular day? And what about decisions that affect your joint budget? It's important to remember that there aren’t necessarily right or wrong answers on this front, as long as everyone’s on the same page and happy to accept joint responsibility for the outcomes.
A seamless transition
While we’re on the matter of joint responsibility, an effective handover is essential to any successful job share. Again, this is something you might want to make time to discuss with your job share partner – after all, people have different ideas about the best use of their joint time. Will you agree that you’ll each provide a written handover note at the end of your last working day each week? Would you prefer a verbal catch up, to highlight any major developments or areas of concern from the previous few days? Should important emails be flagged? The truth is that a job share may require a greater level of organisation from both of you than a single-person role. On the plus side, though, this increased organisation may offer you an opportunity to crystallise your thoughts and lead to more effective outcomes overall. For example, you may need to make notes in all the meetings you attend so that these are available to your job share partner. You’ll probably need to create a rolling, joint to-do list and to update it daily, so that your partner has a clear idea of what needs to be done when they come in each week. Technology is your friend here. A shared email inbox, shared calendar and shared digital notebook can help enormously in ensuring that everyone is on the same page and has access to all the information they need.
Holding the line
And the last thing to consider before you start are boundaries – yours and those of your job share partner. Is your rule going to be that you are not to be contacted on your non-working days, or would you prefer to be involved in big decisions that can't wait? Will you agree to cover for each other in emergencies, or is that not possible with your other commitments? Wherever they fall, you have to be able to rely on each other to respect these boundaries and to hold the line if they are challenged by other people.
Rolling, rolling, rolling…
A little TLC
Once your job share is up and running, it can be a truly wonderful thing – but it can also be precious and delicate, and might need some tending from time to time. At its most fundamental level, a job share depends on honesty, trust, and transparency. You need to feel comfortable enough with each other and trust each other enough to be able to discuss what’s going well and what perhaps could be improved. And, crucially, you need to be able to discuss this between yourselves professionally at an early stage, before the relationship breaks down, rather than immediately referring any tricky issues up to your line manager. You might feel it’s sensible to schedule a regular get-together every few months to catch up with each other and to evaluate how things are going. On that note, you also need to be able to give regular feedback to one another. The wonderful part of a job share is that you and your partner can build a truly warm and mutually supportive, professional relationship, mentoring and sharing your skills and experiences to build one another up professionally. In the best cases, you’re able to bring twice as much experience to the table between you and as a result, to offer a fresh perspective on professional challenges your partner may be facing. The downside, of course, is that you also need to be able to accept constructive criticism from each other on occasions when things are not going as smoothly as they might. If you both go into the arrangement acknowledging that there will be times when this will have to happen, and agree to both approach it as an opportunity to learn and grow, it’s easier to manage such situations as they arise – and they inevitably will.
Moving on...
Finally, it’s true that life changes, however professionally rewarding your partnership has been. What happens if one or both of you want to move on and apply for a promotion? Will you move together? It’s also the case that personal and financial circumstances might change. What if one of you wishes to return to full-time work or wants to end the job share arrangement for another reason? Can you both informally agree to be transparent and to give each other enough warning to provide the remaining partner with sufficient time to hunt for a new job share? When carried out with mutual respect, a job share can be brought to a close amicably and leave behind great memories - but it might be useful to consider in advance what this might look like for each of you.
The highs and lows of job shares are undeniably different from those of other flexible arrangements, but when they're set up well, they can produce a special sort of magic that can be enormously professionally beneficial, for the individuals concerned and for their organisations. If you think you might be interested in a job share, do get in touch; we'd love to talk to you about how we can help you to set up a hugely rewarding form of flex. We speak to thousands of candidates who may not be registered elsewhere. What if your ideal job share partner is out there, just sitting on our books? Maybe your perfect match is just around the corner...