More Than Just Reducing Work Hours — Job Sharing at Uniper: Part 1

Job sharing will soon become a major aspect of working life at Uniper, according to both Jenny Banczyk and Nikola Feldmann. They have been sharing a single job position at Uniper since 2016, initially as Head of Product Management at Uniper Energy Sales. Since 2018, they have jointly taken on the role of Managing Director at Uniper Wärme, the Uniper district heating supply branch in the northern Ruhr area that supplies district heating to private customers and the industrial sector. The idea of job sharing seemed a logical solution for Jenny and Nikola. Both had reduced their working hours to 80 percent on account of having children. 

However, since they both held management positions, the work piled up on their days off in the form of outstanding important phone calls, meetings and tasks. They had known each other for a long time, and ongoing conversations together eventually led to the desire to share a position. Stefan Bockamp, Director Operations Steam & Biomass, was willing to listen to the their ideas and hired them both to fill a Managing Director position at Uniper Wärme on a job sharing basis. Alongside his HR business partner, he developed an arrangement to see how well they worked together — and was impressed by the result. "It was very exciting to see how they complemented their respective tasks, helped each other and acted as a team in an effort to meet their goals," says Stefan.

In the current model, both work for 60 percent of the working week — Nikola for three full days and Jenny for four days with reduced hours: There are enough overlaps for them to agree on an approach, and together they are able to take on tasks that the role of Managing Director demands. They deliberately made the decision not to divide their areas of responsibility, allowing them both to benefit from all of the advantages of the model. This makes it easier than before for them to switch off from their professional duties during their free time, as they can rely on their partner in the job share to work in their absence to achieve a shared goal. "I have one hundred percent confidence in Nikola, her knowledge and her decisions," says Jenny, elaborating on the collaboration. 

In addition to the overt benefits of job sharing, such as the ability to hold an exciting and demanding job position even with reduced hours, there were other advantages to the model that Nikola and Jenny were initially unaware of. For example, they consider it highly valuable to have a partner by their side to discuss the things that motivate them. This is because their partner is equally interested, involved and working to find solutions — which is not necessarily the case in a private environment, where individuals are simply not involved to the same extent. In recent years, they have also become aware of their incredibly high level of resilience, which has been built up through close collaboration and the job-sharing strategy. It is precisely through crisis situations and the resulting increase in external demands that they have realized how robust they have become compared to others — and all because they discuss what situations are causing them stress on such a regular basis. "In stressful situations, it is also often the case that one of us is more relaxed than the other. We then think and reflect together on why this is the case — like a kind of stress coaching session," says Nikola.

This close collaboration reaps a number of benefits, not only for the partners in the job share, but also for their managers and the company as a whole. This work model provides a solid opportunity for the management team to think about their management style and receive a more balanced picture of and feedback on situations, which results in a much more significant cultural change. The fact that two different people hold one role also makes it very easy to look at specific topics from different perspectives. What's more, a job share typically consists of two highly motivated people who want to lead the project to success. "I definitely want to enable more people to job share and to have this experience because I think that this is something that really benefits both parties. I think it could be a very good solution for Uniper when it comes to acquiring talent that we are currently finding it impossible to attract," says Stefan Bockamp. Job sharing offers Uniper the opportunity to recruit and hire employees who want to limit their role in terms of time, but not in terms of responsibilities.

Job sharing is not just intended for people who want to work fewer hours. In the next series of articles, you can find out why this is the case and how exactly job sharing works—and can even bring about a number of benefits—when both partners are working full-time. Stay tuned!