Top tips for successful job sharing

Job sharing is a great way to give your staff their best-fit work/life balance, and recruit talented people who cannot commit to a full-time role. However, many companies shy away from joint roles over fears that two colleagues won’t be able to cover one role effectively.

To help you embrace joint contract opportunities, WhosOffice has put together some top tips for successful job sharing. Many of these points are based on our experience working with companies across the world from our UK headquarters.

Getting the best of two brains

Over the past decade, there’s been a steady increase in the number of shared positions, with around 153,000 people in the UK on job sharing contracts in 2019, compared to 113,000 in 2012. However, this figure has stagnated, as some businesses are yet to be convinced that two people can successfully fulfil a single position.

While there are undoubtedly some logistical challenges, job sharing can be a really effective way to get the best of two brains – if you consider the following points:

How are staff going to communicate with two people in one role?

Most companies issue employees with their own email address. However, this might not be the best set-up for a shared position. Consider giving team members a joint email address, specific to the role rather than the person, which they can both access throughout the week.

Channelling communications through one email address will stop colleagues accidentally emailing the wrong person on their non-working day, so important queries don’t sit in an inbox until they return to work.
How will teams know who to contact on what day?

In a flexibly run company, it’s not always easy to know when someone is working – which is why transparency is critical to any shared job role. Rather than relying on people to remember when their colleagues are on-shift, consider investing in staff scheduling software that tracks who’s in the office at any point in time.

With online shift planning software, your entire workforce can be given viewable access to everyone’s schedules, for complete, transparent communication. And editable access can be provided to managers, team leaders and HR personnel, who need to update shift patterns in order to ensure that every employee is given their optimal working hours where possible.
How will you manage shift pattern changes and annual leave requests?

Some job-sharing arrangements may be straightforward; one person works Monday-Wednesday and the other Thursday and Friday, for example. But some companies have a complex set-up, which relies on teams adapting to different, changing shift patterns.

Online scheduling tools are pivotal in this scenario, as staff can be sent digital copies of their rota in advance. Not only that, these schedules can be cross-referenced against their availability, to make sure the role is covered within people’s contracted hours.

Even with regular scheduling, job sharing staff will still need to plan annual leave together – agreeing not to take the same week off, for example, so their role is covered at least some of the time.

Online shift planning tools like WhosOffice can support this area of the business, as they integrate leave management software. This way, you can coordinate holiday bookings and scheduling changes alongside ongoing shift plans, controlling everything through one central platform.
How will you track performance and measure success?

A good job-sharing arrangement isn’t just about logistics. Your chosen colleagues must complement each other and deliver against clear objectives, to provide the greatest value.

As you work towards greater employee flexibility, consider how managerial and HR staff will track staff performance, gather feedback from peers, and measure success in the role. The last thing you want is for one talented employee to compensate for someone not pulling their weight; job sharing is about employing two talented people on a part-time basis.

Chemistry without complexity

An effective shared working arrangement relies on finding people with the right skills and chemistry, and setting their role up in a way that makes it easy for other members of staff to depend on them. While your expertise will be required for the first part, the right staff management software can take care of the second.

WhosOffice is already being used by businesses across the world to coordinate rostering, annual leave and HR records online. Renowned companies including ITV Studios, Dunelm and Ticketmaster are among those using our platform to plan and manage people’s workload. Book a free trial if you’d like to be next.

Dunelm ITV Studios Ticketmaster