This paper proposes a novel switched second order sliding mode (S-SOSM) control strategy grounded on the suboptimal SOSM algorithm, which allows to enhance the closed-loop performance and to tune them to the current working condition. Such a control approach allows us to deal with systems characterised by different levels of uncertainties associated with different regions of the state space and to accommodate different control objectives in the different regions, and can improve the transient performance. Further, it ensures global finite-time convergence to the origin.