(Almost) seamless collaboration, handovers that take hardly any time at all and efficient work organization – job sharing could work beautifully like this... Unfortunately, however, this is often prevented by rigid human resources management systems.
Our 2019 satisfaction study of job-sharing tandems already made it clear that IT systems are one of the biggest hurdles for tandems.
When it comes to communication tools and their functionalities, a lot has developed in favor of job sharers in recent years. New Microsoft 360 elements, such as Microsoft Teams, shared email accounts and calendar management options, make it easy for tandems to collaborate as a team and still present a unified front to the outside world. The cloud-based nature of all the tools makes it possible to coordinate in real time or work on documents without duplicate files or hic-ups.
But when it comes to HCM systems (Human Capital Management), very little has changed, as our new survey of active job sharers makes clear:
❌ 4 out of 5 job sharers are generally dissatisfied with the way their job sharing tandem is represented in their HR Suite.
❌ Only 22% are satisfied with the way their tandem is depicted in the organization chart.
❌ Two-thirds of participating managers are not shown as the joint manager of their entire team.
❌ Only 13% of the surveyed top sharers can process and approve requests and the like from their employees equally with their tandem partner – 42% use (unsatisfactory) workarounds such as substitution rules for this purpose, while 45% have no equivalent access at all.
Despite these hurdles, job sharers are going all out and not letting the unwieldy nature of HR software providers get them down. They are trying to reduce the problem with bridging solutions.
Here are a few of the most common life hacks – but also their associated pitfalls:
💡 Substitution rules: These often only allow asynchronous processing, which makes seamless handover much more difficult.
💡 Additional “shared” user in the system: This increases the headcount from 2 to 3 and thus does not reflect the reality of the company.
💡 Same job title, mutual linking: Visible in the organization chart, but no effect on IT rights and access.
💡Taking turns in the leadership role and thus also in tasks such as vacation approvals, employee appraisals, applicant management, etc. Not really a life hack, but rather proof of how necessary technical adjustments are.
Not a hack, but also common practice: the systemic division of teams (one part is attached to a tandem partner). However, this counteracts the desired shared team responsibility and can cause unrest and imbalance in the team. Matrix organizations take a similar but more charming approach: both tandem partners lead the entire team, but only one part is responsible for professional and one for disciplinary matters, and they do so crosswise.
And stopgap solutions should only ever be a temporary solution. This is a clear message to SAP (Success Factors), Oracle (Peoplesoft), Workday and Co.: get involved in the professionalization and implementation of the job sharing model in practice! Despite the IT hurdles, job sharing is not always implemented, but is not even attempted. And so a large number of change requests are missing, which traditionally drive system changes of this kind. So it's a case of the cat biting its own tail. Be proactive! Model working in tandem systemically and thus live innovation, equality, family friendliness and, above all, collaboration directly in your products!
The expectations are pretty clear (here: listed in descending order of frequency):
1️⃣ The same role assignment and system access for both job sharing partners.
2️⃣ More visibility and equality in organizational charts etc.
3️⃣ Transparency in processes, e.g. through notifications about workflows.
We welcome discussions about possible changes and are happy to provide support wherever we can in implementing them!
The detailed results are given below (German version):
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