Job Sharing Case Studies

Commonwealth Bank

With more tshan 900 job sharing arrangements in place, the Commonwealth Bank has clearly succeeded in offering employees flexible arrangements to accommodate their family responsibilities. 

The Bank places no limits on the level at which job sharing takes place. Job sharers have included managers, assistant managers, solicitors, researchers and tellers. 

One successful job sharing arrangement has comprised a husband and wife team who shared the role of Manager of a suburban branch in Melbourne. They chose their own arrangement, alternating a week on and a week off for each. 

Appraisal of the Bank's job sharers is done on an individual basis, but the sharers are assessed as a team if seeking promotion.

One team, Dianne Regan and Rosy Russell, began job sharing at the Bank in 1997 with a position in Customer Services. When she began, Dianne explains, she had two school aged children and had worked full time for most of their pre-school years. 

She was exhausted by the effort of balancing work and family needs "but I desperately wanted to stay in my career." "When I added up the dollars I was spending on the cleaner, the gardener and the childcare I figured that a part-time salary without those expenses would not make much difference to the family's finances." 

Dianne and Rosy have succeeded three times in being promoted and now hold the position of Manager, EFTPOS System. They believe that their initial success in convincing the Bank to allow them to job share was mainly due to their established reputations as committed and effective employees. They see their status as job sharers as no impediment to further promotion either - "we're still in the market!"

NRMA

At NRMA Insurance Limited, a second job as a dance teacher is possible for one employee who job shares as a Personal Assistant. She is able to pursue her passion because her shared position only takes up 25 hours per week. 

Cheryl Squire has been a dance teacher for over 10 years. She previously worked a second job in retail, with a lot of work at unsociable times such as on weekends. 

In a quest to work more regular hours, she applied for a position as a receptionist with NRMA Insurance. The advertisement required her to work from 8.30am to 1.30 five days a week. At the same time the company secured Nicki Velingos to work afternoons in the same position, from 12.30 to 5.30pm. 

Nicki is the mother of a one year old baby boy. She's fortunate that her mother is able to care for her child each afternoon and is adamant that she will not place him in child care. "If my hours were full-time, Mum couldn't come and I would not be working." 

Cheryl and Nicki have subsequently been promoted to the position of Personal Assistant to the Senior Manager for Recruitment and Development. They credit their success to a perfect match. Before working together they didn't know each other but have marvelled at their compatibility - "we have the same level of commitment, the same temperament, we even finish each other's sentences!" 

Both agree on the importance of good communication and feel that the fact that they are in the office every day, with an hour together, contributes to the apparently seamless way they pass the baton. Nicki and Cheryl often cover the other when taking sick leave or annual leave. 

They are quite determined to make the arrangement work and conscious of the fact that if one of them is not up to scratch they will be letting the other down. 

The figures say it all:

• Since 1990 the overall proportion of job sharers has increased from 2% to 4% of the workforce
• 60% of job sharers surveyed would have resigned if not for the opportunity to job share
• Of those 60%, 50% have more than 10 years' experience with the Bank
• Staff at higher levels of classification, including managers and executives, are increasingly starting to enter into job share arrangements.

Source: Commonwealth Bank Survey of Job Sharers, 2000