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Flexible working is not something that is common practice in Asia. Job sharing – and at the departmental head level – is a rare occurrence in Hong Kong.
We have known each other for many years and we have been job sharing at Linklaters as co-heads of the Hong Kong Employment & Incentives Practice since April 2016. Testament to the success of the arrangements is the fact that in November 2017 we were jointly awarded the Euromoney Legal Media Group Asia Women in Business Best in Labour and Employment Award 2017 and Linklaters received the Most Innovative Firm Award at the same awards ceremony.
Our reason for wanting to work part time is that we both have young families. However, at the same time, we still wanted to maintain our career in law. (We feel passionately, however, that flexible working should not be perceived as purely a woman (or mother) thing and should be something that all employees should feel comfortable considering.) Our current working arrangement is such that we both work three days a week with our overlapping time being on Monday and Wednesday mornings. During this overlapping time we often discuss handover arrangements, arrange client meetings, seminars and plan marketing initiatives. We ensure that clients are not charged for any overlapping work or handover time.
Globally there is a stronger spotlight on diversity and inclusion in the workplace these days. For example, we are witnessing a push for greater female representation at the executive level, on boards and in board committees. Yet at the same time, law firms in Asia in particular, seem to be slow at allowing lawyers to work flexibly. Linklaters is setting the trend amongst law firms in Hong Kong – in fact, we are not aware of any other senior job shares in the Hong Kong legal community. We are often approached by our peers and asked how we managed to convince Linklaters to agree to the arrangement. For us, we have never come across anyone at Linklaters who was opposed to our job share or who hasn’t supported our working arrangement. And the big question – What about clients? One client - the APAC Employment Counsel at one of the leading global tech companies- recently commented after hearing about our recent award win:
“That's awesome news. I agree that it's a well-deserved recognition - sometimes I don't even know who I'm talking to when I work with you both because it's so seamless!!”
Having had experience working in a job share arrangement, we set out some reasons why employers should be stopping to at least think about job sharing as a viable option.
Some of the key benefits we see are:
Our main tips for employers for establishing a successful job sharing arrangement are:
Our main tips for employees who are embarking on a job-sharing arrangement are:
17 January 2018
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