If you have tuned into the news at all this week, you have likely heard how the Gender Pay Gap has barely changed in 25 years. Raising the minimum wage saw some improvement for lower earners; however, there is still a significant difference for those in senior roles and graduates.
So, what can employers start doing now to make a difference to the Gender Pay Gap? The absence of women in senior positions across all sectors is the main driver of the gender pay gap. Well, we believe that one solution could be job sharing. To explore this further, let’s first define exactly what job sharing is…
Job sharing is not 2 people working part-time jobs in parallel – that’s part-time work. Job sharing is 2 people, through shared responsibilities, identities and accountability occupying 1 position. They are a single unit, a team and a complete resourcing solution.
How Could Job Share Be a Solution?
Within the UK, women are still responsible for the majority of parental and other care duties within the family. This often leads to them accepting lower-paid part-time roles. So, why not create a job share where two people can both have access to a senior position with senior pay and still fulfil their personal responsibilities or have the work/life blend they choose.
Similarly, this could work with graduates as well. Whilst many graduates have the skills needed for senior positions, their lack of experience is often a barrier to accessing them. So, why not create a job share where a combination of skills and experience gives you the perfect candidate you’ve been searching for?
If you’re not yet convinced, take a look at some of the benefits to job shares and job shares in action:
Employer Benefits of Job Shares
- Boosts employee morale and engagement
- Improved productivity
- Employee wellbeing
- Reduces tardiness and absenteeism
- Reduces employee turnover
- Improved talent attraction, enhancing employer brand as a family-friendly place to work
- Reduces stress and burnout
- Promotes a healthy work/life balance
- Better job satisfaction
- Better diversity
- Can get work done more quickly and more thoroughly
- Half a problem if one person resigns
- Great for holiday and sickness cover
Job Share’s in Action
So, let’s take a look at a job share in action…
BOGOF: 2 Heads Are Better Than 1 | Sarah Taylor & Zina Pearce | DisruptHR Talks from DisruptHR on Vimeo.
Conclusion
Of course, these are very simple explanations of how job shares could be a solution to the Gender Pay Gap, and both require further conversation and exploration for individual organisations. However, they are very doable in this new world of work. We just have to forget everything we have learned previously about HR and organisational setup and start rewriting a much more flexible, employee-focused book of HR.
In this candidate-driven market, if you’re ready to improve your talent attraction, retention, employee wellbeing, productivity AND become an employer of choice; contact me today to discuss how I can support your business with the implementation of job shares and much more.
Further Info
Contact me at sarahtaylor@careervoyage.co.uk
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Sarah started her career in fmcg marketing working as a brand manager on Clover and as an interim manager on Clover (twice) and Quorn. She founded a start-up interim management company in Gloucestershire and that business changed the percentage of women and diverse talent in senior marketing and HR roles. Sarah specialises in attracting, onboarding, developing, engaging and retaining diverse talent into forward thinking businesses to improve productivity, performance and profit. Flexible working and wellbeing play a large part. Since covid-19 wreaked havoc on the job landscape, Sarah has a created an innovative programme to get senior experienced professionals back into work or fine-tune their current role so that it makes happy.