Despite the ongoing challenge of attracting and retaining mothers in the workplace, job-sharing remains under-utilised as a flexible work option.
Despite the fact Australian employers are legally obliged to provide ‘flexible work arrangements’ for employees with caring responsibilities, including parents returning from maternity leave, the reality is not always attractive. Part-time work often involves a demanding workload to be completed in less time for less money.
“The problem with part-time work is you get the pro rata salary, but you end up working much longer hours,” says Melissa Richardson, the director of Horizons Unlimited and author of the 2009 research report, Making job share work: Australian women share their success secrets.
“The key benefit to job sharers is that when they go home, they go home, and their job share buddy takes over so they’re not getting the phone calls after hours.”
One of the workload challenges of part-time work is the difficulty finding a part-time set up that is realistic and manageable, particularly for working parents.
For former lawyer and mother of two Jennie Cadman, re-entering the legal industry and finding a manageable part-time role once her son was 10 months old was particularly difficult.
“When I did find openings they required three or even four days,” says Cadman, who has since started her own business, Olive Periwinkle, which she runs from home.
Similarly for Jody*, who’s currently on maternity leave, returning to work less than four days a week is not an option in her current corporate role.
“Unfortunately the business unit I work in is very demanding and unless a job share is possible, less than four days cannot be supported,” she says.
Her ideal situation would be to work three days a week while she has young children and if she had the chance to job-share she would “absolutely” take it.
The case for job-sharing
According to a research report by Capability Jane, Job sharing at senior level: Making it work, job-sharing allows employees to work part time while maintaining a significant role and meaningful career.
Surveying companies such as KPMG, Deloitte and Barclays, the report showed that job-sharers, compared to a lot of part-time workers, had the benefit of feeling part of the team while also having the ability to ‘switch off’ and handover accountability.
The benefits of job-sharing for an employer, according to Mums At Work and Michael Page, include the availability of a wider range of skills and experience within the job; continuity of coverage (during sickness or holidays); staff retention, especially for employees with family responsibilities; reduced staff turnover; improved staff morale; lower absenteeism and greater productivity.
And while the cost for employers of implementing job share arrangements is no doubt higher – thanks to the cost of training two employees instead of one – the majority of managers surveyed felt that the benefits outweighed the costs.
According to Richardson, the lack of uptake in job-share arrangements to date is mostly due to a lack of understanding among organisations as to the benefits and how it actually works.
“I just don’t think organisations know how to handle it. It’s a lack of open-mindedness about what jobs can be shared … The common myth is that a sales role can’t be shared because it’s customer facing, but actually that’s rubbish,” she says. “I think customers are probably more accepting of job-sharing than companies. Provided that the two people are keeping one another well abreast, the service can be pretty seamless.”
Among those surveyed by Capability Jane, 80% held positions of responsibility including managers, team leaders and directors. The research found examples of successful job-sharing in most role types including sales and client-facing roles, leadership and team management roles, strategic and knowledge-based roles and transactional roles.
And for those doubting the career progression potential for job-sharers, 71% who tried to gain a promotion were successful in doing so, recommending persistence and the support of a senior sponsor to fight in your corner.
Making it work
Successfully implementing a job-share arrangement requires substantial preparation on the employee and manager’s part, as well as constant communication between job-sharers and management.
“As an employee, you have to sell the upside. There’s the argument that part-timers are more efficient,” says the director of The Career Consultancy, Catherine Cunningham.
For career consultant Melissa Johnston from Suzie Plush Consulting, it’s the grey areas of job-sharing that tends to scare many employers away from job-sharing, emphasising the need for a clear-cut business case.
“It’s always going to help if employees put a well thought out plan to their manager, putting the finer details into a business case to the organisation,” she says.
In Richardson’s research, most of the women who were successfully working in a job-share arrangement had made it happen themselves. And to ensure the success of a job-share set up, it’s essential that an organisation matches people with a similar work ethic and commitment to their job and career.
“It doesn’t suit every temperament. You have to have two people who can really share and there are certain personality styles. If you were a bit competitive you wouldn’t want to enter into a job-share arrangement,” she says.
Job-sharing also requires constant communication, the full support of management and other stakeholders, as well as the ability to trust, let go and not compete with one another.
“The women that I spoke to had made it happen in their companies, so where you get a very proactive person who’s actually willing to go to management and say, ‘This is what I want to do’. I know people who’ve done that and it’s been successful,” she says.
*Her name has been changed.