Why Jobsharing is a new horizon for flexible working

It feels like you can’t scroll the news or pick up a paper without reading another headline about flexible working, return to the office mandates or hybrid hell. However, the narrative on flexible working seems to have honed in on work from home versus work from the office and perhaps it’s time to zone back out and talk more broadly about flexibility and what it means.

Flexible working encompasses everything that differs from the traditional “9-to-5” model across five days per week. Across our industry we’ve seen an uptake in certain models of flexibility – particularly a “80% contract” or working four days a week. (Not to be confused with the “the four day working week”, which is becoming increasingly popular and relates to entire teams or businesses shifting to work four days, but receiving full time pay).

In Yorkshire, a pair of former finance leaders are blazing a trail on an innovative (but not new) form of flexible working – JOBSHARE! Jobsharing is probably the most transformational and least utilised form of flexible working – and often the missing jigsaw piece in the pursuit of talent attraction and retention.

It really is win-win! For employees, it allows talented, ambitious people to continue doing high impact, challenging roles whilst working part time, it vastly improves wellbeing, by creating time and space for other activities and it can lead to much more fulfilling work.

• Those managing long term health conditions or disabilities - who may benefit from a shorter working week  to manage their conditions. That doesn’t mean they should be locked out of leadership – jobsharing means  they can continue to do big roles, but on fewer hours.
• Experienced professionals - retiring at 55 may sound like the dream, but in a world where we’re increasingly likely to live to 100,  ambitious career folk may struggle to find purpose when they step off a retirement cliff. Jobsharing means people can stay in the  workforce and continue with their big career but work a shorter proportion of the week.
• Portfolioists – across the generations, but increasingly earlier in our careers, we might  not want to be constrained by only having one professional persona. Portfolioists build  multiple professional interests – so you may be an accountant for half the week and a  physiotherapist for the rest. Jobsharing allows this to happen.
• Everyone! – there are multiple reasons you might want to work part-time. You might  want to spend Thursday and Friday surfing, or volunteer at a food bank, or spend  time with friends. Whatever the reasons, finding a working pattern that means you  can accelerate your career but not sacrifice your life and wellbeing appeals to many –  jobsharing is that solution.

About the Jobshare Revolution

After starting their careers on the Deloitte Audit and Cadbury Finance graduate schemes respectively, Laura Walker and Chloe Fletcher moved to Asda and individually held various posts including Head of Internal Audit and Finance Director – George Clothing. After working various part-time patterns, they came together as the most senior jobshare at Asda – sharing the role of Senior Director Finance Shared Services, leading a team of 160 across AP, AR, Data & Analysis, Record to Report and Commercial Admin. After the sale of Asda from Walmart to TDR Capital, they then moved back into core finance to lead the finance change readiness and implementation of the biggest tech transformation in Europe.

Sharing two very different roles and supporting the implementation of various jobshares at Asda, led them to the conclusion that all roles can be shared. They then embarked on the mission to increase adoption of jobsharing in leadership roles. The Jobshare Revolution is now the leading voice onjobsharing in the UK and is particularly focussed on increasing jobshare to drive diversity, equity and inclusion across Professional Services and large corporates, as well as some pro-bono activity with local and national charities. 

The Jobshare Revolution offers end to end jobshare support including:

• Keynote talks, upskilling workshops and awareness events
• Role assessments and toolkits to enable jobsharing
• Candidate attraction and matching services
• Pair and line manager training
• Jobshare pair onboarding and ongoing coaching & support

Visit The Jobshare Revolution on LinkedIn to follow their progress or get in touch with them.