Hi all

I'm trying to get my head around a flexible working request and would appreciate any views.

I have a returning new Mum in to our accounts team - coming back from maternity leave.  She has requested a job share on a 50:50 split of a week.  We're considering that request at the moment.  

First consideration obviously is could it work?  We're not sure.  initial view was 'no' but we're now challenging ourselves.  There is certainly some real concern from the managers as it involves splitting a ledger, how will it work, how will customer service be maintained, what about jobs that involve making decisions on customers where 2 people have been involved, how do we measure for bonus etc, what do we do if we aren't getting the performance right - which of the two is accountable - all things we're thinking about.

This leads us to considering a trial.  But to run a trial, we need somebody to run it with.  We have a current temp who is willing, but isn't suitable long term for this role, so it wouldn't give the trial a fair go and it would fail.  So, exclude that and consider a trial with somebody else - say a temporary member of staff via an agency to job share - or at least see if that is possible in the market.  If we find somebody - we go ahead and trial - but we would have to give some leeway to the fact we have a new member of staff involved who doesn't know our systems and add to that, that by being part time the induction period is longer.  If we can't find a temp of the right calibre we say we have tried and failed.

Our local agency is saying part time in this type of role are hens teeth - but we mustn't be lead by that, we need to try and see?

I'm weighing up going to those lengths for a trial and seeing if it works, against management, that whilst open to the idea, do feel in their experience this role is difficult to split up.  I don't want to waste anybodies time, including management and create cost.

But in terms of justifying saying no to the request, I'm also struggling to get clear justification.  Clearly we are concerned about the quality of our customer service, but unless we trial how can we prove/substantiate that?  I've tried to think how to get evidence either way - so we've looked at how we note keep on each customer to see if it's 'aide memoire' type notes, or detailed enough to be able to hand over one to the other through the week.  We were trying to establish how much extra time detailed note keeping would take for a job share, and how long a customer would have to wait on the phone whilst our staff get up to date - instead of just 'knowing' as they've been involved in the case all the way through.  But there is a wide range of note taking detail among the team, so that drew a blank - other than to show it is possible to spend time on detailed notes and still do the job for one full time person on it.

Any views, suggestions, good experience to share would be great.  Thanks!