Job sharing offers unique challenges

HR Magazine, Jan, 1996 by Elizabeth Sheley

Flexibility first became an issue when workers in dual-income households found conflicts with family obligations. Flexible options were a means of keeping valued employees on board and avoiding unnecessary recruitment and training costs. Now companies are seeing that flexibility carries its own rewards. Wilmington, Delaware-based DuPont, for example, has empirical evidence, gathered over a 10-year period, that shows its extensive flexible work program has resulted in a more committed and productive workforce.

Of course, some options are easier to manage--and promote--than others. Allowing all employees to stagger arrival times between 8 and 10 a.m., for example, will not carry the impact of a senior manager taking phased retirement. One of the more complex flexible options is job-sharing, in which two workers do just that--share one job.

According to an April 1994 Conference Board survey of 131 companies offering flexible options, 74 percent offer job-sharing, mostly on an ad hoc basis. The survey found that job-sharing has significant benefits, such as the two partners bringing a broader range of skills to the job than would be possible with one employee alone. The survey also discovered that compatibility of job-share partners, strong communication skills, trust between job sharers and managers, and dependability are the most important qualities of good job share situations.

PROBLEMS AND CHALLENGES

The Conference Board report noted that the greatest challenges to instituting job sharing include management resistance and skepticism, corporate culture and the specific nature of the job. Those who lack experience with job sharing often worry about compensation and benefit costs, management of an extra employee, and consequences if the arrangement fails. The study did not find significant problems based on resentment from co-workers, scheduling difficulties, duplication of work, or union negotiations. Difficulties did arise, however, from job sharers' differences in work styles, communication styles and quality standards.

According to Maria Laqueur, executive director of the Association of Part-Time Professionals and co-author with Donna Dickinson of Breaking Out of 9 to 5: How to Redesign Your Job to Fit You, "Job-sharing isn't for every job and it isn't for everybody."

Laqueur believes job sharing requires creative thinking-but she also believes that it is viewed as more difficult than it really is. It does, however, require more work than other flexible options, including evaluation of how it will fit into the overall work flow. Matching is complex, and the odds of finding a good partner are low, particularly when the initiating sharer which is usually how such positions arise-is restricted to looking inside the company. Success is often due to the people who compose the team.

"It is not in the nature of many people to work in that close bonding," she explains. "Commitment, compromise and communication are the core qualities required for job sharing." Laqueur sees a trend towards the use of job sharing for professional-level positions that cannot be cut to true part-time.

One HR manager who found job sharing difficult to arrange, but nonetheless, worth the trouble is Beth Gulding, director of human resources at the National School Board Association, based in Alexandria, Va. There are 130 employees and two shared jobs at NSBA. Gulding finds that in an organization of NSBA's size, the HR burden of administering a job share program falls on fewer people.

She is pleased with the way it's working out, however. The key, in her experience, has been flexibility on the part of the supervisors and department directors. The challenge was to find the correct sharers. As a small organization, NSBA had to recruit share partners from outside in both situations.

"Recruitment is more complex because not only do you have to find a person with the right skills and experience, you also have to find someone who doesn't mind sharing, who doesn't get proprietary about her work, who communicates well, and who is a good team member," Gulding explains.

Gulding recommends that any HR director considering job share arrangements think it all the way through before beginning to recruit, considering every possible problem and concern, like backup, travel responsibilities, benefits, administration, and so on, from beginning to end, and have the supervisor go through that same exercise. "If the supervisor is not 100 percent committed, it won't work."

At United Air Lines, headquartered in Chicago with more than 75,000 employees worldwide, employee ownership of the company led to a formalization of the flexible workplace in recognition of work/family issues. Patricia Carson, director, people services at United, explains that when the company became employee-owned in July 1994, the company culture became more team oriented. Employee involvement teams addressed various issues, including work schedule flexibility.

In terms of work schedules, United has three types of employees: those whose schedules have built-in flexibility, such as pilots and flight attendants; those whose jobs must be covered 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and include reservations and ground personnel at airports; and those who normally work a traditional 40-hour week, such as engineers and analysts. The task force looked at this last group for the first phase of its flexibility initiative.