Introduction
The world of commerce is always concerned with maximizing output while keeping expenses at the lowest level. The interchanging of workers forms one of the arrangements that organizations can adopt to increase their productivity. This plan requires a carefully designed employee-sharing agreement between employers of departments that are willing to share the particular employee. The agreement should focus on both time and job distribution for the employee. This paper will present a proposal of how two departments can effectively share the same employee for the best utilization of company time and to ensure cost-effectiveness. Employee sharing is a relatively new field with little research. Hence, the literature review available is limited in scope. A lot of information presented will be obtained from web pages and other sources that the writer will find useful for this study.
Problem Statement
Employers who rely on either full or part-time employees characterize the current practice. Full-term employees are costly to maintain for an employer. Employee sharing is one way in which employers can ease the burden of maintaining full-term employees in terms of certain aspects that include expenses such as wages, insurance, social security, and employee training costs. Another benefit of shared employees to a business is that of maximum utilization of the shared employee. Organizations often find themselves under-using their employees, especially where the firm’s workload is seasonal to the extent that at times an employee has little or no work to do. Sharing will allow the employee to be useful in another department or organization whose workload is high relative to other units.
Significance of the Study
This study aims to identify the various advantages and benefits of employee sharing for both the employee and the organizations (departments). Two employers who are willing to engage in employee sharing will have numerous objectives in mind. The first objective is better utilization of the existing labor in the particular organization. This goal may be in view of reducing costs incurred in hiring, training, and compensating employees. Secondly, employers will have the shared employees acquire expertise in various fields by working in different environments. The skills obtained from one department may be useful in another department. The third objective relates to organizational costs. Sharing employees will also mean splitting the wage bill and other expenses between the employers, which effectively minimizes expenses for each organization. Lastly, employee sharing may be looked at as an opportunity to strengthen career growth for the employees through working in a diverse environment.
Literature Review
Orsi argues that full-time employees are expensive to hire and manage for an organization, especially where the said organization is a small business (par. 1). A firm may be willing to hire employees on a part-time basis. However, not all candidates would be willing to work part time. This situation leaves the firm with the option of venturing into shared employment (Orsi par. 1). Employee sharing is most suitable where the workers share a common physical space. This plan minimizes the time lost by an employee crossing from one office to the next. In this case, a proper harmony between employers is crucial when it comes to the particulars of the employee sharing agreement (Orsi Para 1).
Pahl observes that the Fair Labour Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938 authorizes an individual to be the employee of more than one employer at a given time (par. 2). This arrangement may be termed as joint employment. Pahl describes joint employment as a form of service in which more than one employers share, not only common employee(s), but also responsibility for monitoring a recruit’s working hours (par. 4). Monitoring an employee’s working hours is particularly important for determining wages and overtime. Joint employment is suitable where the employers have an existing business relationship. An example is where the employer owns more than one business (Pahl par. 1).
Herbaman points out that one advantage of work sharing is that it differs from temporary employment because a company will engage the same employee at the same time the following year (par. 3). This principle is employed in time-sharing for vacations where an individual buys a vacation time slot for a specific number of days each year for some years. Additionally, Haberman points that work sharing cushions employees from unemployment, especially in fields that experience seasonality in jobs (par. 4). On the other hand, the company benefits from having many professionals at its disposal. Onesto terms this approach as a “pool of professionals” (par. 4).
Employee sharing has been successfully practiced in some major organizations. Charles Darwin University (CDU) and the Northern Territory Government (NTG) have a partnership agreement that allows the two organizations to share their employees (CDU&NGT 1). The agreement was designed to maximize opportunities for the two organizations through the mobilization of human, infrastructural, and financial resources. The partnership is also an opportunity for fostering common goals between the CDU and NTG (CDU&NGT 1). The arrangement offers a chance for exchange of specialized skills. The host partners can acquire temporary skills that are otherwise not available to them easily. This principle explains one of the major benefits of employee sharing for an organization, which is mobilizing human resources. Departments within the same organizations may also share employees with specialized skills instead of hiring different workers who end up inflating the organization’s costs.
The Employee sharing Criteria
This section describes the criteria to be followed by managers in the DWC departments that wish to engage in employee sharing. The first step is for the departments to create a partnership agreement that allows the sharing of employees under their departments. The agreement should emphasize the purpose for the proposed sharing and its benefits for the organization. Additionally, affected employees must be notified of the agreement and assured that their interests shall remain safeguarded. This program will affect only certain employees; those that qualify for the inclusion in the program. The first qualification is a minimum service of one year at DWC. The requirement applies both where an employee wishes to be considered for the employee sharing program, as well as where the department manager has made an application for the transfer of the employee to his/her department. Secondly, an employee’s performance must be impressive and above the performance appraisal ratings. The purpose of this sharing program is to minimize backlog in departments by increasing the mobility of dedicated employees across departments. Therefore, only hardworking employees may be selected for the program.
Another qualification relates to the employee’s grade. An employee shall only apply for a job in the same category or lower in the other department. This requirement aims at ensuring employee skills match those of the job being applied for. However, a specific assessment may be administered upon an employee who applies for a job in a higher grade. This assessment shall be administered in the same way that assessments for the promotion of employees are carried out at DWC. Appropriate training may be carried out on employees who demonstrate an interest and aptitude that match the requirements of the job applied for. This strategy will be treated as promotion. The compensation schemes for successful employees will be adjusted to match the new responsibilities. Additionally, employees to be included in the program must possess strong interpersonal skills, which will ensure they adapt quickly to working in the new department. They must also possess a high level of administration skills and be customer oriented.
Time Distribution in Employee Sharing
Employers that share an employee must decide how time shall be distributed between the employers. Where both employees are required to work the same number of hours, the decision becomes easier to make compared to where the number of hours differs (Orsi par. 4). The decision for time distribution is important as it will affect each employer’s contribution toward the employee’s wage. An equal number of hours between the employers mean that the wage bill will be split equally between the employers. However, the calculations become more complicated where the numbers of hours that an employee is to be engaged by either employer differ. Here, the employers must strike a bargain on how the payments will be made. Orsi proposes a scenario where the employee, as opposed to his employers, maintains a record of the number of hours spent in each company (Orsi par. 5).
Job Distribution
Distribution of work for the employees in a sharing program depends on the amount of work. Proper distribution minimizes time loss. Therefore, the departments must come up with a detailed schedule for the daily distribution of workload between the departments, taking into account the number of hours that the shared employee is available for that department. The following is a sample agreement to share employees between two departments, showing how work from both departments may be assigned to the employees. The particulars may be modified to suit the requirements of any two departments within the organization.
Agreement to Share Employees
The human resource department and the sales department wish to enter an agreement that authorizes the exchange of employees between the two departments based on a standard criterion as authorized by DWC. We will conduct joint interviews with employees in our departments that wish to be included in the program. The distribution of work for the shared employees shall be carried out in a manner that allows each department’s work to be completed for the day, to avoid carry overs. Each shared employee will work for 8 hours a day as required by the Fair Labour Standards Act. However, employees may work up to 11 hours a day out of their own volition, and the extra hours shall be considered as overtime. Enumeration for overtime shall be made according to DWC policy for overtime hours.
Distribution of work will depend on the nature of tasks based on the common understanding that some tasks are more time involving than others and may require the employee to work extra hours. The departments shall hold a meeting every Friday evening to distribute working hours based on the anticipated workload for each department. If before or during the engagement of employee, the manager of one department foresees a scenario where the work assigned to an employee may not be completed by the specified time, he or she shall notify the manager from the other department in advance. In the event of the above case, another employee from the former department, with similar qualifications as the engaged employee may be deployed to the latter department to perform the pending task.
Advantages of Employee Sharing
Employee sharing has many advantages both for the organization and the employees. One of the most obvious benefits for the organization is cost-sharing. Orsi points out that hiring full-time employees may be costly for a small business. The high operational costs inhibit profit making (par. 1). Employers of full-time workers incur more expenses than the normal hourly wages. Expenses such as insurance and health cover may be minimized through employee sharing between two or more organizations. Employees, on the other hand, will benefit by gaining extra work hence extra pay. Employment sharing is an efficient way of eliminating seasonal unemployment. Seasonal unemployment is common in industries that have peak and off-peaks seasons such as tourism (Taylor par. 3). Some businesses also peak in the morning, while others peak in the evening. In such cases, employees who work for more than one employer can shift from one employer to the next as demand for labor arises.
Another advantage is sharing of specialized skills between organizations or departments in an organization. Some employees may possess vast skills in various fields. Thorough employment sharing, these skills can be made useful across various departments affordably. An employer can access skilled workers, who will be available for full-time employment during the peak seasons. Additionally, this strategy saves employers revenue that would have spent paying employees during the low seasons when their services are not being engaged. At the same time, employees have the benefit of job security since under shared employment, the employee may remain engaged by the same company even for years, unlike in part-time or temporary employment.
Employee sharing enables employees to attain skills in diverse fields. Employees gain various skills by working under different organizations or departments. Each job has its description and requirements that are different from the next. This plan enables employees to gather different skills. The acquired skills will help to improve the capacity of the employee, which, in turn, benefits the employers. Working in diverse environments may also boost the morale of an employee by eliminating boredom. Employee sharing also enables the employee to attain higher job satisfaction. An employee’s success in shared employment depends on his or her ability to balance the demands of each job. Thus, it requires dedication and hard work, which are self-rewarding for the employee.
Conclusion
Employee sharing is a relatively new field that promises to solve certain problems inhibiting business success today. These problems include high business operational costs, underutilization of human resources, and seasonal unemployment. Employee sharing has various potential advantages such as equipping employees with new skills and promoting career growth. Organizations wishing to share employees must design a detailed agreement describing the manner in which the sharing shall be carried out to avoid conflict. The agreement should discuss the manner in which time and work are to be distributed among the organizations or departments.
Works Cited
CDU&NGT. Framework for Staff Sharing Arrangements between Charles Darwin University and The Northern Territory Government, Casuarina, Australia: CDU&NGT, 2005. Print.
Haberman, Michael. Future Friday: Time-sharing Employees | Omega HR Solutions, 2014. Web.
Onesto, Antony. Employee Sharing – The New Employee-Employer Relationship, 2014. Web.
Orsi, Janelle. How Your Small Business Can Share Employees With Another Employer, 2016. Web.
Pahl, Christine. Joint Employment between Companies under FLSA, 2014. Web.
Taylor, Porcher. Timesharing of Jobs could Cure Unemployment, 2011. Web.