Thursday, April 28, 2011

Job sharing can work

Job sharing allows you to employ two or more good people to help your company on a part time basis. Between them they offer you the equivalent of one full time person or more.

Yes, I know that you may have to pay benefits for more than one person, but will it help your business more than hiring a full timer who is still coming up to speed on the business?

For example, one of your key staff may have a sick family member, or require paternity or maternity leave. Maybe they just don’t want to work full time anymore and they have skills in an area where there is a shortage of skilled people.

Here are few ideas on how to make job sharing work.

First of all – make sure they coordinate with each other and have a handover everytime they swap. Enforce this if necessary.

Second – are they still available for phone calls during their downtime? Think about it. Do you call colleagues when they are out of the office? Most of us will wait until they come back. Out of sight out of mind.  Break this habit.

Third – can you break the task into pieces, tasks or actions that can be picked up by either and followed through.

Fourth - Do you have a customer relations management system that shows notes on all contacts and conversations? Think of the last time you spoke to your telecommunications provider help desk – it doesn’t matter who you speak to – they can see the record of all previous conversations.

Whatever the reason, if you are compelled to implement job sharing - embrace it.

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