Job sharing is another scheduling option. In this situation two people share one position. They work out between themselves who will work what hours during the week. For example, this type of job scheduling has become popular with married couples who are in the same field like teaching. The wife may teach the morning classes and then the husband may come in in the afternoon to teach the afternoon classes.
This type of scheduling options benefits both the employee and the employer. For the employee, they have greater flexibility in when they are at work and for how long. This allows them to meet their personal needs and responsibilities and still meet their work responsibilities. For the employer the advantages include a reduction in employee absenteeism, improved quality of work, and it attracts high quality employees who other wise might not be available to work for their company.
While this type of scheduling system has many advantages it also has its disadvantages. First, one employee’s work does impact another’s work. For example if at the beginning of the week when employee A is working they prepare a spreadsheet for employee B to use later in the week, but makes a major mistake and inputs the data into the wrong fields, when employee B comes in for their part of the shift the may not notice the error and use faulty information in their tasks.
Continuity is another drawback to this scheduling system. The supervisor and/or other people in the department may get confused on what they can expect from the person who is working on a particular day, during a particular shift as each employee has a unique set of qualifications, strengths, and weaknesses. This continuity problem may affect how long it takes for a project to be completed as both people in the job will need to receive the instructions and learn how to perform the task, or the project will be limited to the days and times that one of the two people in the job share is available.