Did You Get The Work Arrangements You Wanted Post-Baby?

[peanutter]

I can't see any reason why any job that one person does in 60 hours a week can't be done by two people working 30 hours a week each. All it takes is a little extra effort at communication between the two workers and a bit of thought and consideration on the part of the employer. ETA: I guess there could be a problem if expensive equipment is involved and the employees need to work at the same time but I don't think that would be the norm for jobs that women are more likely to do.

I understand what you're saying, but I don't think that's always the case. It certainly isn't in my experience, or what I've seen from others.

There is no way that my job (and plenty of others) could be done by 2 people each working a .5 role. For me to do handover I would have to tell the other person what I've done today, which would take almost a day itself, and that second person still wouldn't know those files, clients, cases, etc as intimately as I would (and vice versa). If something happened on a file I'd worked on the day before, they'd have to read up on it to see where it was up to, blah blah blah, before actually *doing* anything. And tasks which I started yesterday they'd have to finish today, and if they want it done a little differently, and it carries over to another day, andthen I'm back, we're back where we started. It's confusing for clients, there's enormous amounts of double handling and duplication, and at the end of the day I can't ask the Court to only schedule my trial on set days for my convenience, or expect clients to be available when it suite *me* as opposed to them, etc etc etc. It simply wouldn't work.

My husband's job could totally be job shared (and was for a while) because once each task is done, it's done! A dedicated 15 minutes spent emailing his co-worker at the end of his day would get the other person totally up to speed on anything that was still under way, or things which needed to get sorted out, or to make sure the admin was up to date, and he could waltz off at the end of his shift confident that his co-worker could pick up where he left off.

But I believe that an awful lot of office roles, management roles, and other senior roles fit more into the first category, rather than the second, where the amount of doubling up in work makes it uncommercial for the business (because a significant proportion of the time they're paying for is spent in handover rather than getting the job done) or ends up being unpaid overtime (either because the employee is trying to finish stuff off so it's not needing to be handed over, or because the handover is getting done after hours, or they're taking calls from colleagues when they're not in, to get answers, troubleshoot or whatever) which is unfair on the staff members and frustrating for their colleagues.

[fionas]

I agree that some jobs can be jobshared and some can't. It would be good if, in large organisations, there were some sort of guidelines around what jobs COULD be jobshared rather than, as seems to be the case, it being decided on an adhoc, discretionary basis.

[peanutter]

Agreed.

When DH wanted to go back on a part time basis, from home, he foreshadowed it and he and I spent a lot of time (probably 10+ hours) analysing his job, what could be done from home, what it would need, what it would cost, how he could add value or take on part of colleagues' work so that they weren't overburdened absorbing his, etc etc etc. We then put together a business case (about 15 pages long) with his proposal, costings, facts and figures and bottom lines, etc, and he had a meeting with management to put his case forward ahead of time, and they agreed to give it a trial sun of 3-4 months.

Ultimately, the part time hours was fine, the working from home without any regular (daily) time in the office ended up not being ok for his employer, so he either had to agree to come in for an hour or so each day. Not feasible with a newborn and a one year old... so no deal for us.

But not everyone is in a position where they can sit down and write out a case scenario, budget, business plan and all the rest of it. And not everyone has a boss that will sit and listen with an open mind.

Those are the things that can definitely be improved on

A process for people to make that business plan with suggestions and realistic, win-win solution, and an open minded employer.