Thursday, October 23, 1997

Job sharing can give clients, employers double benefits

By Diana Kunde

The Dallas Morning News

It was the sale of their careers for Ann Sedita and Carlene Swensson.

Both Dallas-area women had left successful jobs in radio advertising sales to spend more time with their young children. Now they wanted to get back in as a team, sharing one full-time job.

"I just missed the business. At the same time, I wanted to be home with my girls," Sedita said.

Job sharing was a new idea to Dallas radio stations when Sedita and Swensson shopped their proposal early in 1995, although there was one job-sharing pair at KYNG-FM (105.3). After some chilly reactions, they found a receptive ear in general manager Dan Bennett at KLIF-AM (570).

Two and a half years later, their shared cubicle at the talk radio station is lined with sales award plaques. In August, the "twins" -- as they're dubbed by colleagues -- broke another sales record for the station.

"Would you rather have a full-time, mediocre salesperson or Ann and Carlene, who set records sharing a job?" Bennett asked. "Hey, give me Ann and Carlene any day of the week."

Job sharing has grown steadily in recent years, along with other types of flexible work schedules. In a typical arrangement, two people work three days each, with one overlapping day. They share pay. Sometimes, both partners receive full benefits. In other cases, firms prorate benefits or don't extend them at all. Of 1,050 large firms surveyed by Hewitt Associates Inc. in 1996, 258 offered job sharing, compared with 161 in a similar survey five years earlier.

A few large firms known for family-friendly work policies have hundreds of job sharers. The DuPont Co., for instance, estimates it has 175 to 180 pairs, and Hewlett-Packard Co. has 400 to 500 employees sharing jobs.

Still, the common experience for companies that offer job sharing is to have relatively few takers, said Jackie Church, a work and family consultant with Boston-based WFD Inc.

"That's the case with every type of flex work that requires a decrease in pay and benefits," Church said. Sales may be an ideal job to share because the results are easily measured and can increase if the partners work well together, she said. "In those ways, it's a very nice fit."

Dallas-area radio stations apparently are starting to agree. At least five stations have a job-sharing pair among their advertising sales staff. "I get calls from around the country" with questions about the concept, said Ken Roberts, general sales manager at KYNG. The station may soon add its second job-share position.

The idea hasn't always been easy to market, KLIF's Sedita and Swensson said, and experts say it's highly unusual to market a job-share when first applying for a position. The arrangements usually are proposed when a full-timer wants to cut back.

Sedita's view, however, was that she and her partner were offering something special: two seasoned professionals taking two sets of talents to one job.

"We felt that we were worth a lot together as a team," she said.

Some reactions from station managers were "comical at best," Swensson said. "They said, 'Oh, is that so you can have extra time to go shopping, to get your nails done?' They didn't get it. We wanted to make them money and us money."

Bennett "got it," the two said, and negotiated the deal upward through corporate management. It was the first job-share for KLIF and its parent company, Susquehanna Radio Corp.

The two are paid strictly on commission. Each receives full benefits, which they argued for and won after a year. While they declined to reveal their incomes, Sedita said they're exceeding their original annual goal by 30 percent.

From the start, Sedita and Swensson worked to make their operation seamless to clients. They have one business card with two names but one phone number and one fax number. They also share voice mail.

The women try to schedule new-business calls for Wednesdays, the day they both work. Last Wednesday began with a customary weekly meeting with sales manager Richard Frish. There was lunch with a new prospect, an appointment with a client to work up new marketing ideas and details to nail down for a Dallas Cowboys promotion.

Sharing the same work ethic is key, both women said. They believe they have different strengths: Sedita in customers' strategy, Swensson in creativity.

They keep meticulous files and try to respect each other's days off. Still, both carry cellular phones for the inevitable calls.

"Ann called me last Friday around 4 o'clock. I was in the pet store with my kids buying crickets for the lizards," Swensson said. The beauty of the arrangement for her is that "I have the job I want, the company I want to work for, and I know that if I'm not going to be in the office, everything's going to run as though I'm there."

That's not to say there weren't adjustments. Swensson, who works the first part of the week, said she had to learn not to overwhelm Sedita the moment she came in on Wednesdays.

At KDMX-FM (102.9), Jan Jenkins-Poston said she and partner Pam Miller had very compatible work ethics but less compatible desks. "Pam pushes paper; she throws stuff away. I'm a pack rat. So we had to compromise there," said Jenkins-Poston, who added that the 8-month-old arrangement is working well.

Several managers said they were initially concerned about whether two people would mesh as a team. "This type of thing probably wouldn't work if you had two different work ethics," Bennett at KLIF said.

In more than two years, only one businessman has objected to having a twosome service his account, and he wasn't an existing client, Sedita said.

Client Guy Owen, advertising director for A Better Way of Learning, a California educational products company, gives Sedita and Swensson high marks.

"It's not a common arrangement. Neither are they common women. It's an incredible combination of two women with great strengths," he said.

"One'll pitch the ball, and one'll shag the fly."

At The Richards Group ad agency in Dallas, media supervisor Barbara Chambers said she has worked with several job sharers locally in recent years, as well as others elsewhere. "I've had situations in the beginning which weren't as good to work with. I think it takes two strong people who complement each other to do a good job," she said.

Job sharing is one way to retain the talents of valuable people, said the radio general managers who have been trying out the concept.

"It's very expensive to recruit, hire and train new salespeople," said KDMX general sales manager Jon Schwartz.

KLIF's Bennett said, "the reality is that many of the great radio salespeople are women." If a radio station can attract or keep top performers with a job partnership, he said, everyone wins.

"I'm of the belief that great salespeople don't grow on trees," Bennett said.