Employing part-time workers

Benefits of job-sharing

Job-sharing is when two, or sometimes more, people share the responsibility, pay and benefits of a full-time job. They share the pay and benefits in proportion to the hours each works. Job-sharers may work split days, split weeks or alternate weeks, or their hours may overlap.

Offering job-sharing may be an invaluable way of retaining staff who can no longer work full-time and may otherwise leave.

As an employer, the benefits of job-sharing include:

• increased flexibility to meet peaks in demand
• greater continuity when one worker is sick or on holiday
• a wider range of skills, experience, views and ideas
• a reduction in employee absenteeism, sickness and stress
• increased employee commitment and loyalty
• retention of valued employees
• a wider pool from which to recruit

Other points employers need to consider include:

• extra induction, training and administration costs
• performance issues - if job-sharers do not produce the same output it can affect the workloads of others
• communication problems between the job-sharers if they see little of each other
• the difficulty of hiring a replacement who can fill the required hours when one job-sharer leaves
• unclear lines of responsibility

The advantages of job-sharing for employees include:

• less stress and absenteeism, particularly if they are parents or carers
• a greater sense of responsibility and control of working life

Once you have decided that the work can be shared easily, the next steps to help the job-share run more smoothly include:

• agreeing the scheme with employee representatives
• choosing candidates who can work together well, and have complementary skills and experience
• dividing the work fairly
• introducing a log to supplement face-to-face communication between the job sharers