INTHEBLACK June 2022 - Magazine - Page 40
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THE “WORK BUDDY” BENEFITS
Alilovic perceives the modern job-sharing arrangement
as more about the work relationship than the work itself.
“We hear a lot of joking around about having a
‘work wife’ or a ‘work husband’, and I do think there is
something special about having a person at work who’s
got your back,” she says.
Such a job-share arrangement, in which two people
are working together and are committed to supporting
each other, is a “beautiful thing”, she adds.
“It makes work so much nicer, and it means you can
relax about work when you are not there,” she says.
It can also mean that managers, contrary to what
they may fear about job-sharing arrangements, can
be less hands-on.
“If you are an employer, it means that you’ve got
less-stressed individuals and, in some ways, they are
accountable now to each other,” Alilovic says, “so
your management should in some ways decrease
with regards to those people.”
COMMUNICATION AND CLARITY
Padraig “Pod” O’Sullivan, leadership adviser, executive
coach and partner at The Leadership Context, thinks
this modern style of job-sharing aligns perfectly with
the hybrid workforce.
“Most of us are now moving in an asynchronous
work environment anyway, because we are no
40 ITB June 2022
longer relying on people to be in the office from
Monday to Friday, and we have set up hybrid work
communication channels,” he says.
In fact, in many ways, job-sharing is already
happening informally among management.
“If you think about the concept of a leadership team,
ideally executives are sharing the role of leadership
across an organisation anyway,” O’Sullivan says. “If you
buy into that – and I do – then everything else
just flows naturally.”
O’Sullivan says leaders often fear job-sharing will
result in a lack of control at their end, or a doubling
up on management tasks.
“The classic first hurdle for the manager is the
thought that they are now managing two people
instead of one,” he says. “But if you set it up properly,
then it can work really well.”
Both communication and clarity with regards to
the shared roles must be established from the outset,
he notes.
“There should be agreement among the two jobsharers that their communication together has to be
more overt than usual,” he says.
Secondly, both job-sharers must have clarity on who
is doing what, and what the communication line is up
to their leader.
“Job-sharers need to establish who is accountable for
which part of the role and how decisions get made by