5.6 Introduce job sharing for management functions and other key roles
Content
Description of Best Practices
Implement job sharing [1] and leadership sharing opportunities for women with diverse social identities:
- Expose them to new roles and responsibilities or to new business areas within an organization
- Provide them opportunities to grow into a new position and to learn from a more experienced person with whom they share duties
- Better reconcile work-life and family-life duties especially in times of transition such as return from maternity leave with reduced working hours
Identify suitable job-sharing opportunities and pair women with partners who have high awareness of their responsibility to make the arrangement work
Support job sharing candidates to make independent and cooperative decisions about job sharing, including splitting responsibilities, tasks, and reporting lines, with good communication and knowledge sharing system (e.g., common drives, access to each other’s emails, etc.)
Challenges of Implementation
Bad pairing, strong competition, and lack of understanding for the need to work as a team to be successful can harm the success of job-sharing opportunities
Co-workers and management may resist change needed to adapt to the model
Company culture and politics that may not be in favor of successful women can threaten those sharing a job (e.g., complaints about the person not being available full time)
What Success Looks Like
Job sharing model is in place and used by the organization to retain and support talented women
Women who have used job sharing models can continue in challenging key positions and in leadership roles afterwards
Managers of those who are sharing a job report high satisfaction with the performance of both candidates
Retention rate of talented women with diverse social identities in management or key functions after maternity leave or with part-time working arrangements increased
Resources and Tools
Report/Study: Job Sharing At Senior Level: Making It Work (The Job Share Project)
Report/Study: Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success (Harvard Business Review)
Article: How To Make Job Sharing Work (The Guardian)
Article: Will Job Sharing Support Gender Equality at Work? (The Guardian)
[1] JOB SHARING. Type of flexible work arrangement in which two different employees work part-time schedules to complete the work one person would do in a single full-time job. (Source: Monster, What is Job Sharing?)