The Hub and job shaking, example: Gardens Springs

The Hub & job shaking

Job shaking in a nutshell: a person has a primary job with the freedom to occasionally switch to doing other jobs.

Case 1: Bahesha, the head of the Challenge Garden

As the head of the Challenge Garden, Bahesha spends more time in her office than she likes. But for some months now, the garden has been running so well that she considers joining the job shaking programme. Over the last weeks, she has trained Min so that she can take over more responsibilities in Bahesha’s absence.

Once Bahesha feels ready to leave her job for some weeks, she logs into the town’s Hub space and enters the job shaking area.

Gardens Springs is all about gardens, but it also offers jobs which have no direct connection to gardens. And while Bahesha loves gardens, she feels like doing something completely different.

On the job shaking page she registers as a new member of the job shaking pool. There are two sides to every job shaker: the primary job, which becomes available to someone else for the time of the jobshaking, and the new occupation(s) the job shaker accepts.

Since Min takes over Bahesha’s tasks, Bahesha registers Min’s tasks as available for job shaking. And for herself, Bahesha decides to do one of the job shaking tests to see what kinds of occupations might be fitting and available.

After several hours of perusing all the job shaking options available in Gardens Springs, Bahesha decides to train as a help nurse for the local Mental Health Clinic, to work two days at Mila’s bakery and to get back into training martial arts. Though the latter brings her back to the Challenge Garden. But that’s OK. She missed training. And that’s one of the points of job shaking. The job shaker decides what they want to do.

Once all matches are confirmed, the Hub does the rest of the paperwork and sends Bahesha a work and training schedule for her job shaking weeks.

Case 2: Bono, a teacher for geography at the secondary school

Bono feels pretty lucky that he can teach in a place like Gardens Springs where children grow up in a wholesome environment and are therefore a lot more attentive and curious about everything they get to learn.

And yet, Bono would like a break, and do something different.

A little uncertain, Bono logs into his Hub account and enters the Gardens Springs Hub space. At the job shakers counter he inquires whether anyone is looking for a job shaking opportunity as a teacher. Surprisingly, he finds quite a few people, only none of them could do his job.

And then he has an idea. Via the job shaking counter, he contacts three potential job shakers and asks them whether they would be interested in splitting his job between the three of them since each of them brings something to the classroom that is needed.

All three and the head of the school agree, Bono trains all three, and some weeks later he leaves the school in a happy mood.

Only when he sits in a café in the Minerals Garden, he realises that in all this excitement he had forgotten to register as a job shaker and to find something for himself to do.

Bono takes out his town phone, connects to the Hub, and registers. The online assistant asks him where and when he would like to work. Bono smiles and writes back: anywhere any time so long as its nowhere near a school.

‘Well,’ the assistant writes back. ‘We have a bit of a shortage at the Moonbar in the party den. The shift starts at six.’

Now Bono grins, and writes back: Perfect! In fact, I wouldn’t mind doing something different every day, wherever someone is needed.

Case 3: Julia, a doctor at the main hospital

Julia is pretty tough, but there are days when the severe cases in the intensive care ward get to her. For a while now, she has been considering to include job shaking into her annual routine. All nurses jobshake, and the positive effects are incredible. By now the nurses and some of the doctors jobshake whenever they feel their concentration or their temper slip.

It helps that the nurses earn well so they could afford to earn less in a different job, and so can Julia.

It is a little strange. Julia is a doctor and a good one, but she feels uncertain about doing something completely different. What if she fails?

Last night, Julia confided in Mia, her mentor at the hospital, and Mia told her that the job shakers have a special programme for such cases.
‘Such cases?’ Julia snapped.
‘Yes. A lot of people are afraid of moving outside their comfort zone, even though they could really do with a temporary change in occupation. But if you want to take a smaller step first, you can use the Hub resources. There are questionnaires, exercises, analyses and materials as guides to becoming a job shaker who is happy with the shaking.’

Julia wasn’t happy about being such a case, but something told her that she should take a break if she wanted to continue to perform well as a doctor.

After using the online material as preparation and after adding some sessions of the special job shaking preparations programme, Julia finally felt confident enough to register as a job shaker.

The first job, the Hub suggested was as a tour guide in the Worlds Garden, the second job was as a plus teacher at the primary school, teaching children about the human body, and the third job was a placement at the local woodworker who urgently needed a hand but would take time to share some skills.

There were other suggestions, but Julia decided to start at the top of the list and put in an offer for the first three jobs. The next day, the Hub send Julia a schedule for her job shaking period which would start after her holidays.