Quite often, people ask what exactly is employee sharing, and how is it different from freelancing or part-time jobs. In response, we say its kind of an amalgamation of freelancing and traditional roles, giving the benefits of both. Let's deep dive into the details here.

What is employee sharing?

Employee sharing means two familiar jobs are merged to form a single full-time job to hire an employee jointly by the employers.

Why hire an employee on sharing?

By making it a full-time job, employers ensure that it opens up to everyone looking for a traditional full-time job in the industry. The majority of the candidates still look for a stable full-time job. A shared employee works like any of the current employees of both companies.

What are the use cases?

Expansion plans?: Companies looking to expand their operations either geographically or vertically (by creating new product segments) require an asset-light model. And it can be easily achieved by hiring shared employees.

Hiring freelancers?: Freelancing is booming due to factors like freedom for freelancers and the flexibility of having a diverse talent pool for companies. Still, the risk of losing IP rights and limited control over the freelancer haunts employers. Hiring a shared employee gives the benefit of freelancing to both the employer and the employee while eliminating its limitations.

Hiring first employee?: In the initial days, Startup founders or single business owners work tirelessly on their own by hopping into multiple roles. The very first hirings are done either in the form of interns or freelancers due to their low budget. Hiring the first employee on sharing could give access to the right expertise without burning a hole in the company's pocket.

Want to retain existing employee?: An employee asking for an appraisal beyond a company's budget could lead him or her to jump off the ship. In such cases, converting him or her into a shared employee could help not only in their retention but also in diverse exposure to the employee.

Looking to hire domain experts?: Startups and SMBs, in particular, lack the resources and overload a single employee with multiple roles. By hiring shared employees, companies can now employ numerous domain experts with a specific skillset.

Low on budget?: After a rigorous evaluation process, the company finds the best-fit candidate, but the candidate has higher salary expectations. In such cases, the company can offer to co-hire the employee with another employer as a shared employee.

Want to upskill existing employees?: Hiring employees on sharing paves the way for experienced domain experts to work in your company. It also helps your current employees in energizing and upskilling themselves through the shared employee's expertise.

Hiring for a startup?: Startup hiring is tough, and neither freelancers nor freshers can help with the requirements of an agile job with the level of experience needed. Shared employees are the experienced ones and can easily fit into any agile work in the startup.

What are the advantages?

Higher salary: The salary provided to the employee is generally higher than average compensation provided in the industry, making it an attractive point for the job-seekers.

More exposure: A shared employee works for two companies simultaneously, making them more prone to working on diversified projects, helping them acquire critical skills.

Work environment: A shared employee with good work experience and critical skills will help upskill the existing workforce in both the companies.

Employment expenses: The payroll is managed only by one company, so compliances and other employment expenses are also distributed amongst both the companies.

What are the disadvantages?

Managing a shared employee: After the successful hiring, managing the employee could become painful as the employers have to coordinate with each other regularly. Thanks to Sharedpro's mobile app, it can be automated transparently.

Co-employer leaves: If, after some time, the other employer is willing to fire the employee, then the whole arrangement can become painful for the single-employer left. Thanks to Sharedpro, matching the candidate with another employer to make the job full-time is done quickly through its platform.

Shift flexibility an issue: This arrangement might not help if the employer needs the shared employee for an entire next week due to some urgency. Thanks to Sharedpro's mobile app, it can be handled easily with its shift request feature.

Not possible for every job: Employee sharing is not feasible for every job profession like hiring a support executive for a telecom company cannot help in any way. Employee sharing is highly focussed on professions wherein at least two out of these three aspects are present: Need of an in-house domain expert, affordability, less workload for the job.

In terms of its effectiveness, it was first started in Hungary in 2012, with 54 employees employed on sharing, and their number increased to 14000 heads till the year 2015.

Hopeful that we were able to include most of the points around employee sharing and for those queries that still need to be addressed, shoot us an email on support@sharedpro.in