Job-Sharing: Half a Job Is Better than None
The social effects of job-sharing are likely to be beneficial, since it attempts to match work opportunities to a wider variety of lifestyles. The combination of one full-time and one part-time spouse might become much more common: which was the husband and which was the wife would vary according to taste, time of life and career requirements.
What exactly is job-sharing? The Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) defines it as "a form of part-time employment where two people voluntarily share the responsibility of one full-time position." Salary and benefits are divided between the two sharers. Each person's terms and conditions of employment are the same as those of a full-timer. If each works at least 15 hours a week, then they enjoy certain employment rights that ordinary part-time workers do not have.
Part-timers usually earn less per hour than full-timers, have fewer benefits and less job security. They have virtually no career prospects. Employers often think that working part-time means that a person has no ambitions and so offer no chance of promotion.
But job-sharing bridges that gap and offers the chance of interesting work to people who can only work part-time and that does not mean just married women. As Adrienne Broyle of "New Ways to Work" - formerly the London Job-Sharing Project - points out: "There are various reasons why people decide they want to job-share and so have more free time."
"A growing number of men want to job-share so that they can play an active role in bringing up their children. It allows people to study at home in their free time, and means that disabled people or those who otherwise stay at home to look after them, can work. Job-sharing is also an ideal way for people to ease into retirement."
Many employers are careful of new work schemes, but a survey carried out by the EOC shows that they can profit in various ways from sharing. If one sharer is away sick, at least half the job continues to be done. Skilled workers who cannot work full-time can bring years of experience to a job.
One job-sharer in the EOC survey said, "Both I and my job-sharer do at least one and a half times the hours of work we are paid for. Half-timers have to work flat out without a tea break." Another attraction is that two people bring to one job twice as much experience, sets of ideas and discussion. At best, two workers can complement one another's skills.
But there are financial pitfalls for the job-sharers.
- If you become unemployed, you should be eligible for Unemployment Benefit. But you have to sign on as being available for full-time work. So, those who chose to job-share because they could not work full-time cannot claim the benefit unless they are prepared to sign on for full-time employment.
- Pensions are a big stumbling block. Many job-sharers may be ineligible to join company pension schemes. The EOC paper points out that the Local Government Scheme excludes people who work under 30 hours a week.
- Those who are attracted to job-sharing as a way of easing into retirement, beware. Most occupational pension schemes are based either on the average annual earnings during membership of the scheme, or on the employee's final salary.
In the latter case, it could mean that a person who has worked for 15 years full-time, and job-shares for the next five years for the same firm, will receive a very much smaller pension than if she or he had worked those last five years full-time.