In a perfect world, all your customers will file through your doors between eight in the morning and five in the afternoon, which will also be the times all your employees will be available to work. Of course, it doesn’t always work this way in the real world. Between customers expecting extended hours and employees needing alternative work schedules, many businesses are turning away from the standard eight-hour workday expectation in favor of job sharing schedules. Could job share be right for your business as well?
How job share works
Job share works exactly the way you’d expect it to work from the name. Instead of filling a 40-hour per week role with one employee, you would fill it with two 20-hour per week employees. Many businesses break up the job responsibilities between morning and afternoon shifts. The morning person completes as much work as they can before they leave around lunch time and the afternoon person takes over the work and the workstation when they come in after lunch.
This isn’t the only type of possible job share arrangement though. You could also have one employee working three full days a week, while their counterpart works the remaining two days in the week. It’s really more about finding the combination of schedules that work best for your business, not trying to fit your employees into a one size fits all schedule.
Why employees like job share
There are a number of reasons some employees like job share, the primary being the flexibility within the position. Depending on the position, some employees will over-commit themselves to working 40 hours each week because they want the experience they’ll gain in the role. Trying to fit themselves into a schedule that doesn’t work for them can cause issues in their personal life that fosters stress in the office.
When you offer a job share arrangement for positions that are typically standard full-time schedules, it gives your employees the opportunity to gain the experience they desire without sacrificing the quality of their work.
Why job share works for businesses
Perhaps the most obvious benefit of opening a position up to job share is that you increase your potential talent pool by letting part-time workers apply. It can also give the role a second set of eyes looking over the work. If one employee skips a task, their partner in the position has the opportunity to catch the oversight before it becomes an issue.
Offering job share may also save your company money on benefits, depending on what you offer to part-time employees. Even if it doesn’t, you will gain an extra person within the company who you can groom to one day promote to a new position.
