More than three years on from the first Covid lockdown, it is clear that flexible working is here to stay. Recent research revealed that two-thirds of employees now work flexibly, with those who are able to do this reporting greater job satisfaction.
But while working from home and hybrid working have become routine for many, job sharing lags far behind; just 1% of workers surveyed are doing it, despite higher demand for job-sharing opportunities from employees.
While most companies were able to adapt working practices to support home working fairly quickly, the same level of support is largely absent when it comes to employees seeking a job share, according to those who specialise in sharing roles.
“There is a lot of expectation on job sharers to make everything work from the beginning,” says Rachel Maguire, one half of the Job Share Pair. She and her co-founder, Hannah Hall-Turner, successfully shared a high-level HR role in property services before beginning their job-share consultancy.
Employer-run tools to help people find job-share partners are thin on the ground. The civil service used to have a celebrated “job share finder”, which by 2019 had helped more than 100 employees form partnerships, but it no longer exists.
She basically divorced me [from the job share]. And I didn’t see that coming. I was really upsetEmma, civil servant
For Emma, a job share seemed the ideal way to switch to part-time work after having her first child, without compromising on her civil service career ambitions.
But, from the start, she says: “It felt like we were having to design the rules constantly and carry the pressure of being seen to be a successful job share.”
Despite this, everything seemed to be going well, so Emma was blindsided when her partner announced after a year that she was not enjoying it and wanted to end the arrangement. “She basically divorced me,” Emma says. “And I didn’t see that coming. I was really upset.”
With hindsight, she admits they should have invested much more time in understanding each other’s working styles before they started – something that experts stress is crucial.
“Someone who wants a job share might be told by the company ‘OK, great – can you find somebody?’” says Sophie Smallwood, founder and co-chief executive – with her husband, Dave – of Roleshare, an online platform that matches people with potential job-share partners and helps firms hire them.
“What are you going to do – go on Facebook and be, like: ‘Hey, I’m looking for a job share, any of my friends want to?’ Go on the intranet at your company and post something?
“It can feel daunting,” says Smallwood, “and it doesn’t feel achievable.”
View image in fullscreenHow you divide tasks can be problematic. One woman in a job share says she regretted working at the start of the week: ‘You come in on a Monday: everything is in the inbox. Of the things that were shared, I seemed to always do all of them.’ Illustration: Nathalie Lees/The Guardian
This dilemma is the one facing Jacqueline, a job-share veteran of several years. “Job sharing is fantastic,” she says. “It’s given me the opportunity to do senior jobs that I would never have been able to do otherwise.
“But now my partner wants to leave the organisation, and I don’t. It’s like breaking up – we know we can’t go on together, because we want different things, but as a partnership it works so well.
“I would like a new role, but I’m struggling to work out how to find a new partner,” she says. “The only way I’m able to do it is by emailing people I’ve worked with in the past, asking if they, or anyone they know, might be looking for a job share.”
Jacqueline is frustrated at the lack of support from her employer. “You’re given the opportunity to job share, but then it’s all on your back – they make it easier for women to be in the workplace, but they’re not giving them the support around it. It’s really shortsighted.”
Of the things that were shared, I seemed to always do all of them at the beginning of the weekRita, higher education administrator
There is no data on the gender split among job sharers, but in Maguire and Hall-Turner’s experience, the vast majority are women, often returning to work after maternity leave. Yet male job sharers do exist – on Roleshare, about 40% of those expressing an interest in job sharing are men – and it’s not always about parenting.
“We have seen both men and women job share, not just to care for their children but to care for elderly relatives, pursue side-hustle ambitions, juggle sporting commitments, support their community or volunteer, study or pursue lifelong learning,” Hall-Turner says.
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“Post-Covid, we have definitely heard from more men interested in job sharing,” she says.
Yet she thinks the generalisation that sharing jobs is for working mothers, and the fact that many people simply don’t know about it, means it “currently doesn’t feel like an accessible way of working to everyone”.
“We need job sharers to be loud and proud,” Hall-Turner says. “Through our networking, we’ve been surprised to see some who don’t want to shout about it, particularly in traditional industries, for fear of ‘flexism’ [stigma around this type of working].”
The number of people sharing jobs has declined slightly in recent years, and increased awareness of other types of flexible working, such as compressed hours, could be one cause, she thinks.
When they are coaching employers who are making the option available, Maguire and Hall-Turner encourage them to work with new job sharers from the beginning, ensuring they have the right support to agree on crucial practicalities such as handovers and communication tools. But beginning a job share is only part of the process; what happens when it goes wrong?
Rita, who works in higher education administration, thinks lack of such support led to her feeling she was doing more work than her partner, while simultaneously becoming deskilled in key parts of the role. “We had a line manager who was perfectly supportive on the face of it, but really wasn’t interested in how we made it work,” she says.
She and her partner agreed to split the job by theme. But a year later, Rita realised processes in the areas she did not handle had changed, and she had been left behind.
She also regretted having chosen to work from Monday to Wednesday: “You know what it’s like when you come in on a Monday – everything is in the inbox. Of the things that were shared, I seemed to always do all of them at the beginning of the week. And her days were somehow much quieter.”
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Maguire says that setting clear principles around working practices at the outset – for instance, around respecting time outside work – is the bedrock of a well-functioning job share.
Those principles can be drawn up at any time, she adds, so if things start to go wrong and you have nothing in place, it’s not too late.
What about contemplating a job share with someone you have only just met? Although they have yet to meet, Carmen, a startup founder, and Nicola, a chief operating officer in the tech sector, have already applied for a job as a pair after connecting on Roleshare.
Each describes being blown away by the other’s honesty and openness, and an instant recognition of their shared values. They insist they have no anxieties. “When I meet Nicola in person, it will be the same as now – except that I will give her a big hug,” Carmen says.
For Nicola, it seems like dating: “You meet somebody, you get a good feeling about it, you’re willing to give it a try. OK, maybe it doesn’t work out in the end. But what’s the alternative – you don’t give it a go?”
The dos and don’ts of job sharing
Do Invest serious time in understanding a prospective partner’s working style to make sure it’s a good fit. “You don’t have to be like for like – in fact, yin and yang can work really well together,” says Sophie Smallwood, from Roleshare.
“[It’s about] being aligned on work values and how you like to work. The other thing, though you don’t necessarily have to be identical, is motivation, and really understanding why your partner would want to work this way.”
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Do Set up – and be prepared to evolve – the processes that will allow a job share to run smoothly and efficiently, from shared inboxes and filing conventions to the all-important handover.
“Make sure the practicalities are thought through before the job share starts,” says Rachel Maguire, of the Job Share Pair. “Handover is what a job-share partnership lives or dies on. The seamless nature of job sharing is what you constantly need to work on, which takes effort and discipline.”
Do Agree working principles at the outset, and be honest with your partner if there is an issue. “If things start to crack, you come back to those and say, ‘this is what we agreed, here are our boundaries, let’s have a really adult, open conversation about how this is starting to not work for me’,” Maguire says.
“We encourage the onus to be on the job-share partnership to have those discussions between them, rather than present them to the business.”
Don’t Let colleagues divide you. “We said we’d always unite, and portray ourselves as one,” Hall-Turner says of her partnership with Maguire.
“We would use language in emails, meetings, on the phone, as ‘we’, as ‘our’. Sometimes there were challenges to that – you might have somebody in the team that would prefer talking to one of us over the other. But we would try and take charge of that quickly, and doing that empowered us.”
Don’t Be unrealistic about job sharing if your personality is not right for it. “If you’re a glory hunter, or you’re not happy to accept praise and criticism together, then you’re not going to be suited to job sharing,” says Maguire.
“There is no room for blame. And if you’re ultra-competitive for your own gains, rather than the gains of the partnership, that doesn’t lend itself to job sharing.”
Don’t Try it in the wrong working culture. “If you have a culture which is archaic – where 9-5 is the norm, where people are staying late, if you don’t have an open culture to flexible working – job sharing is going to be a failure at the outset,” Hall-Turner says.
