Influence & Impact for female leaders
Influence & Impact for female leaders
Ep 45 Successful job-sharing with The Job Share Pair
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In this episode, I interview Hannah and Rachel from The Job Share Pair. They’re on a mission to normalise job sharing as a way of life.

In this episode, we talk about:

  • Why job-sharing should be normalised and how we can do that
  • The benefits of job sharing for the both employees and their organisation
  • The practicalities of job-sharing and managing the role and relationship dynamics
  • Tips on how you can propose job sharing to your employer

I really enjoyed interviewing Hannah and Rachel and fully support their mission to create a way of working that’s conducive to a happy life. I hope this podcast inspires at least one person to consider job sharing and take action to create a career that actually works for them and their lifestyle.

About Hannah and Rachel…

They started The Job Share Pair to help others realise their full potential at work without compromising family life or free time. Hannah and Rachel focus on demystifying the methodology of job sharing to organisations, providing them with all the tools needed to make it work, as well as providing bespoke coaching services for job share partners, their managers and their teams, to maximise the effectiveness of their unique partnership and provide the best opportunity for seamless working success.

CONNECT WITH THE JOB SHARE PAIR

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejobsharepair/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thejobsharepair

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-job-share-pair/about/

Website: www.thejobsharepair.com

WORK WITH ME:

If you’d like to talk to me about working together do book a call.

How I work with individuals:

How I work with organisations:

Carla Miller 00:00
Welcome to the influence and impact podcast for female leaders. My name is Carla Miller, and I'm a leadership coach who helps female leaders to tackle self doubt, become brilliant at influencing and make more impact at work. I've created this podcast to help you to become a more inspiring and impactful leader. We'll be talking about all the different topics that affect you as a woman leading today. Think of it as personal development meets professional development. And I want to become the leadership BFF you didn't know you were missing until now.

Welcome to this week's episode of the influence and impact podcast where we're talking about job sharing. What I'm trying to do with some of these podcast episodes, is talk about the issues that are relevant to women who are working at leadership level, and have the kind of conversations that perhaps aren't being had elsewhere. So I'm really excited to introduce the job share pair, who are two working moms, Hannah and Rachel, and they're on a mission to raise the profile of job sharing in the world of work and make it an accessible option for everyone. I'll tell you a little bit about them. Before we jump into the interview, they began their own job sharing journey upon their return to work after their first maternity leave. They occupied the role of HR director and a global professional services firm and were the only job share partnership in the UK arm of the business which had 4000 employees after making a success of their own job share and realising both how underutilised job sharing is within the UK labour market. And what a missed opportunity this represented for so many businesses. They initially set up their Instagram account to network with other jobs sharers share best practice and highlight great job sharing case studies. That was the first step towards launching what is now their innovative and successful coaching and consulting business. That job share pair fueled by a passion to normalise job sharing as a way of working and utilising their 25 years combined experience in HR with over half of those in board level leadership positions. They focus on helping others to realise their full potential at work without compromising family life or free time.
They demystify the methodology of job sharing to organisations, providing them with all the tools needed to make it work, as well as providing bespoke coaching services for job share partners, their managers and their teams in order to maximise the effectiveness of the unique partnership and provide the best opportunity for seamless working success. Absolutely fascinating to talk to Hannah and Rachel. They are obviously a great job share pair themselves and are still doing that. But they have worked with so many people in different organisations, so they've got some great experience. For anyone that is thinking about going down this route or thinking about encouraging it within their own team or organisation. You can check out the show notes to find out more about how you can get in contact with Hannah and Rachel. And I hope you love the episode. Before we jump into today's episode. I also wanted to share the exciting news that the doors to influence and impact open today. So we only open the doors a few times a year, they are not going to open again until the autumn. And this is your chance to join my 12 month group coaching programme for women in leadership roles. It's an amazing community. I think that's actually the most powerful thing about it. I teach you all about how to have more influence how to make more impact, how to turn down the volume on that inner critic. And all of that is incredibly useful and powerful in itself. But it's actually when you combine that with joining this community of inspiring ambitious values led women who are there to support each other to encourage each other to learn with and from each other. And the best thing about it is absolutely the women in the group and I would love for you to be one of those women I would love for you to join us within influence and impact. So if you would like to find out more about that you will find a link in the show notes which tells you more about the programme, but the best way to do it is to come along to the free masterclass that I am offering which is available only until the ninth of May. It's called How to be an influential leader without letting self doubt hold you back. And on the masterclass you're going to learn the three big influencing mistakes that could be holding you back from having the authority what I'm going to share three simple but how Four practices that you can do each day to remedy these mistakes, and build your confidence and authority. And I'm going to talk you through my signature three step influence and impact framework that will teach you how you can be an influential leader. Without self doubt holding you back. That's all going to happen within 45 minutes, only the last five to 10 minutes is telling you about influence and impact. So there's huge amounts of value in there. And anyone who comes along and stays to the end gets a free gift from me, which is the 10 powerful phrases you can use for influencing anyone. So the notes, the link is in the show notes to go and register for that. I would love to see you on the master class. And I'm hoping that 3000 Women are going to watch the master class. This time. I'm all about reaching as many women as possible. And I know that even just attending the masterclass has a transformational effect for people. I get all these emails afterwards, telling me about how much it's helped them and how they're already putting it into practice. So I would love to see you on that. So delighted to welcome Rachel McGuire and Hannah Hall Turner. Who are the jobs share. Welcome to the podcast. So how how's your day going, the two of you?

Hannah Hall-Turner 06:34
Yeah, so it's Hannah here and not great. I'm having some internet problems. But it's been pretty productive apart from the internet. So I can't complain.

Rachel Maguire 06:44
Any day where we both put our children in childcare starts off as a good one. So yes, we're excited to be here.

Carla Miller 06:51
I totally feel you on that one. What will be really interesting, I think for our listeners is to understand a little bit about how you two came to be job sharing and how it's evolved from there. So I don't know who wants to start us off on that Hannah?

Hannah Hall-Turner 07:05
Yeah, I'll go with that. So Rachel and I met almost 12 years ago now. And we both worked in the same HR department for a large professional services company. And about, I would say, Gosh, about seven years into knowing each other Rachel move teams actually into my team at the time. And we worked together for about two years. And we developed an amazing working relationship. So it was, you know, Rachel, as you'll see is an incredibly intelligent woman. Her organisation skills really helped me in my role, to the point that she progressed then to be an HR director after the two years that we work together. And at that point, we both realised that we were pregnant at the same time. And our babies were born six days apart, it really was fate. And during our maternity leave, we were kind of talking about the idea of working flexibly, the roles that we had at the time were, they were big roles. So you're working five days a week, plus some you know, your your uncle on the weekend, you're at work, probably you know, you're in the office probably seven into late most days. And you know what it's like when you have children, your commitments to the business doesn't change, but your your kind of your life changes. And so when we were on maternity leave, we started talking about the idea of a job share, knowing that we would work really, really well together, pitched it to our line manager. And the rest is history. So we've been job sharing for gosh, it'll be three years, most of that in the corporate world. And then since February, we are now job sharing and owning our own business.

Carla Miller 08:47
Excellent. And had had you seen any job shares in action before you did it yourself? Or were you just kind of making it up as you went along?

Rachel Maguire 08:56
Yeah, Rachel here so now you're getting used to our voices? No, we hadn't been made aware really, of any job share partnerships that we knew we did. When we started researching and building our business case, which is really critical before you present to business. We were looking around for research documents and general partnerships in industry, we didn't know any face to face, but actually, within our first six months or so we really took it upon ourselves to meet with other job sharers. So we met with really high profile job shackle at Aviva, which are, interestingly enough to men as well as some whites and warm McDonald's. And that was such a fantastic meeting for us, we left with such a fire in our belly. But really what we found that in the early months, a lot of how we became successful came from trial and error from working out how a handover might work, how do we communicate to each other?
What are our boundaries, so very much something that we worked on and again, to Hannah's point, that's really why we set Got the Instagram account to be able to share best practice, share our own tips, how we came to make it work and try and kind of pave the way for other people.

Carla Miller 10:08
Amazing. So what is your business? The job Sherpa, what does it do? What does it offer?

Hannah Hall-Turner 10:13
So we are specialists, job share coaches, and consultants. And so, you know, our mission is to normalise job sharing as a way of working as you know, we'll talk and as I'm sure lots of your listeners will understand it's quite, even though it's a simple concept. It's quite alien to so many teams a way of working. And so what we do is we provide organisations with all of the tools to make it work. And then we coach the job share partners, and their line managers to really maximise the effectiveness of those partnerships.

Carla Miller 10:46
Amazing. I love that mission around normalising job sharing. And it's really interesting, because on your Instagram, you share lots of really senior roles, don't you and sharing case studies of that? Because I think for me, that was always a bit of a barrier mentally it was how can I job share at such a senior level. But you haven't found that a challenge?

Rachel Maguire 11:07
No, not at all. For us, we actually find that there's very few roles that we don't think can be job shared with the more senior roles, there is some added complexity when you have greater responsibility, and perhaps a team to manage. But it all comes down to organisation. And if you have a shared motivation to jump share. So in our case, our agent stage just so happens to be childcare. We're very respectful of each other's home days, we're very deliberate not to call them days off because time with two small children at home is anything but that. But we are really focused on trying to normalise it make it accessible, and particularly a really strong aspect of that for us. Although we want to make job sharing available to everybody. We believe that it's a really key focus area for businesses to enable women to return to work after a period of leave. So we talk a lot about pyramid structure of mostly Junior Junior women at the bottom in kind of administrative roles. And by mid management level. And at the top you have far less when women are going on maternity leave, that's a lot of the mid management level roles stripped out if they don't return to work. And then people question why do we have a gender pay gap? Why do we not have women on boards? Why do we need this extra diversity? And why is it so difficult to achieve? And actually, we believe that job sharing is a huge enabler to bringing women back in encouraging women to be able to return to work after a period of leave. And then you know making a more even playing field from a diversity perspective in business.

Carla Miller 12:54
And do you think is becoming more common? Because I certainly know that I'm an I coach, a lot of women coming back to work or talking about flexibility and wanting to negotiate four days a week and their employer won't say yes. And most of them when I mentioned job share, it hasn't even really occurred to them. Do you think that's changing?

Hannah Hall-Turner 13:15
It's a really difficult one in the last 15 years flexible working in its entirety, has only grown very, very minimally. But I think, given the COVID pandemic, given the fact that overnight, we had to prove that we could work remotely, but also work flexibly for those of us who had care and responsibilities, whether it's for those who were poorly or for children, you know, it was proven that it can be done. In terms of in short, yes, we think it is going to increase given given the pandemic. But it needs support from your line manager it needs support culturally. And also an Rachel and I are huge advocates of this. We need job sharers to be loud and proud and we need them to be sharing their story to open the floodgates for other people, you know, the more examples we can see the more examples that are in the press that are out there, you know, that or an on podcasts like these, that's how we're going to how we're going to change and how we're going to increase.

Rachel Maguire 14:17
I just add to that, I think there's a great deal of responsibility on businesses to you know, take the reins in terms of advertising, that flexibility is an option. And, you know, roles, like businesses like Zurich have made a fantastic step forward in that case, and by advertising all of their roles with a flexible element resulted in women being hired for senior roles being increased by 33%. That's just such a huge number. So having a kind of business culture that allows for that, and being open to trialling it seeing how it goes and also, you know having beers It says like hers, embedded to support people to make it work means that we think it just could be so much more successful and, and prevalent, really.

Carla Miller 15:12
Amazing. And what do you think are the benefits for an organisation in terms of, obviously, we've talked about the gender pay gap and retaining your female talent, but one of the benefits in terms of using job shares to actually get the job done.

Rachel Maguire 15:31
I'll take that one. So for us, I mean, there's the obvious yet benefits of retention, attraction recruitment. The difference is, we I think is important to raise here is around not thinking that a job share is part time work. It's so different to part time, the benefit of job sharing is that you have continuous client coverage, you don't have issues when it comes to who's going to do this, who's going to do that you've got really clear clarity when it comes to handing over and communicating on who's managing what, you know, the obvious other benefits to business are the double skills, double experience, double the network, the the less opportunity to burn out, you know, we speak a lot about the fact that Hannah and I don't have the Friday law of oh, we'll just take it easier today. Because you know that one day, a week is a third of our working week, it's really important that we're on it all the time. We don't have the Wednesday hump day. Now, when we come into work, we have really renewed energy, because our days off home days are truly days removed from that. So if I'm working on a day, when actually it's Hannah's office day, then I'm only interfering with what she's up to, I'm creating confusion for the business, it really forces you to take that break, and then gives you renewed energy to return.
So the job sharing aspect also means that you don't have the need to kind of take a step back in a more junior role, which is often the case when you want to return in a part time capacity. We speak a lot about the fact that job sharing disrupts the cycle of being overworked and underpaid, it really does allow for a balance, we don't want to use the you know, the usual phrase of Oh, yes, you can have it all. Because you know, job sharing also has challenges, you do need to stick to your boundaries. But for us, certainly, it's enabled a really true work life balance.

Carla Miller 17:38
And how does it work between the two of you? How do you how do you split your hours? And how do you split your responsibilities and decision making and things like that.

Hannah Hall-Turner 17:48
So in terms of the hours, I would normally work the first half of the week, and then Rachel, the second half of the week, with one crossover day. And that's kind of that's the most common model, I guess, job sharing that we've come across, there are differences. And in terms of responsibilities, you know, we share all the responsibilities, the performance metrics, connected with our role, or our business now we completely share. So we're measured on the output that we both both share. When we were in the corporate world, and we lead a team. Again, we completely shared the leadership and the management of that team. And so we would take it in turns to have bi weekly one to ones. And then we would have kind of monthly performance reviews on a crossover day and monthly team meetings on a crossover day. And we would make sure that when we handed over, there was a section on team so that they didn't feel like they had to say the same thing twice and that we were completely, you know, on top of everything to do with the team and their objectives. We I think it's a it's a job share partnership for any job share partnerships work, you've got to be obsessed with your handover. And Rachel and my handover completely evolved during our time has has evolved since being job sharers. So we started with an email, then it went to an Excel document. And now what we love to use is a voice memo because not only does it set the tone, but you know, when you work in HR, sometimes you need to talk confidentially about things. And it just really helps the flow of the conversation. And so I normally do my handover, on my last working day. And then Rachel, we listened to it either on her commute or you know, dropping the boys off to their childcare. And we kind of fit it around our working life.

Rachel Maguire 19:41
And that's actually a really, really key point for us because we both, you know, in a senior role as HR directors, we were very often in a corporate sense, you know, accosted as soon as we walked through the door, so one of our key working principles was being completely seamless, so outwardly. We didn't want anybody to have to repeat themselves. We wanted a continuity factor so that people didn't think, Oh, who's working today because it really shouldn't matter. By the time I walked into the office, I was fully briefed on what was going on what needed to be done, the moment I got in, and where Hannah had left things and where things needed to be updated in order to finish out the week and then vice versa. So that by the time Hannah came on, on a Monday morning, she, she could go up on the same trajectory as well.

Carla Miller 20:28
Sounds brilliant. And you talked earlier about how you used a business case, to get your employer on board, what what would you put in a business case, what makes a good business case?

Rachel Maguire 20:39
A lot of the business case comes really from you knowing your own role. So you know your own role, you know, your business, and what challenges are likely to be presented from an employer's point of view. And again, we have the added benefit of working in HR. So we've seen we always see business cases from both sides. So being able to write down the challenges, prepare, prepare, prepare, and provide an outcome as to how you will overcome those challenges is really, really critical. So putting a lot of work in ahead of time will really do you, stand you in good stead. So speaking to your manager about your need for flexibility, and we think obviously now is the right time to do that. We think that really managers need to be more open to trial, trialling things, you know, we've have trial periods available in the UK, and they are there really to protect business and the individual know, your three month trial period or longer is to enable you to determine if the working practice is working for you. Let's say you do start job sharing three days a week, but you end up in fact working five days a week, that's not working as a job share. And that would, you know, show in their trial period outcome. So use it as an opportunity to really see how it's going to work for you. And use the flexible working request to make sure that you're fully aware of your company's policies and practices. There are seven legal reasons as to why a company can reject a flexible working request. But depending on the size of the business, they have to be quite strong arguments and there needs to be really genuine business reasons. So really, the pre thought the planning and the the anticipating challenges parts are really the most important things when you're coming to build your business case.

Carla Miller 22:40
And obviously, you two knew each other. So there was some trust there already. Mutual respect. If someone wants to Job share, but needs to go out and find someone to help them or their employer needs to find someone, what can they do to take control of that situation?

Hannah Hall-Turner 22:58
You're right about 50% of job share partners know each other before starting their job share relationship. If you don't have a partner, there are certainly lots of ways out there to find someone. And the first thing we always we always suggest to people is think about your network, there might be somebody in a similar position to you that wants to maybe go down to part time working for a variety of reasons. It could be learning, it could be childcare, it could be anything. So think about your network, as Rachel said, talk to your manager, because they also have an amazing network and they might know people. Secondly, there are specialist recruitment agencies that work with only employers who will offer flexible working, and I'll see job sharing is a huge part of that. And then you've got companies with amazing technology now such as roll share, who can match your skills with a prospective partner, and then work with organisations? So there are definitely ways you can do it. There's definitely ways of doing it.

Carla Miller 24:07
Excellent. And how would you what do you think are that so we talked about the practicalities, but personality wise, well, the dynamic of the relationship between the two of you and generally in Job shares, what do you think makes it work?

Rachel Maguire 24:23
Yeah, we've spoken a lot about the fact that we think a lot of roles can be shared, but there are certainly personality traits that make that an easier proposition and some personality traits that just mean it's not for you. So for us being really openly communicative. Having a natural trust, you know, you mentioned that Carla, which is important, because we speak a lot about the fact you know, we're we're motivated driven ambitious women. We've worked really hard in our careers to be qualified and to build up experience and in essence you are hand Sending part of your career over to somebody else to help you move forward. So, having a social aspect helps we speak, we say, you know, you don't necessarily have to be great friends like we are. And actually, our chemistry can be a bit off putting for people, because prospective people because they think, Oh, I, you know, I don't really have the same dynamic as Hunter and Rachel, you know, maybe it won't work. It's, it certainly can. But a social element where you can relax together and kind of enjoy each other's company obviously helps. traits that make it more difficult are if you if you are incredibly competitive. That can be difficult. And we speak also about that, that you, you know, it's important to be competitive as a duo. So if Hanover smashed it in the first half of the week, I want to smash it in the next half of the week. So I feel competitive with myself in order to help our partnership progress and move forward. But if you if you're kind of a glory Hunter, from a personal perspective, and you're not happy to take critique and praise on the same plate, then job sharing is not probably going to be suited to you, you know, when we both do a good job, or we both need to pick up on certain things. It certainly open feedback is certainly something that we take on really seriously. And we take it on as a pair.

Carla Miller 26:32
Do you feed back to each other?

Rachel Maguire 26:33
Yes, you do. Yeah. So there were times a good example of that is, you know, in the early stages of our relationship, we there were days when you know, I'd want to be closing something out, I might have gotten 80% of the way there. And the following day would not have been my working day. But I'll think, Oh, well, I'm just going to log on and, and finish that off, Hannah would see me on my, you know, ping button on Skype because green. And she'd say, What are you doing, you know, you shouldn't be working today. And it's actually, that's quite damaging, because it sends a message that you don't trust that your partner can achieve as well as you can. And so we actually bashed that out really early on. And I can't think of any other examples, but it's that 100 there any other personality traits you think I've missed?

Hannah Hall-Turner 27:23
I think two things, I think for any job share partnership to work, you've got to have a similar, you've gotta have similar values.
And you've got to have similar approaches to things like ownership and accountability. Because if one person is owning a certain project, or task or the work, and the other person has kind of taken a bit of a step back thinking, it's okay, because, you know, on in the last half the week, it'll be done, that is not gonna work. And I think to answer your question around, do we feed back to each other, you know, you are trusting this other person to make decisions that you would probably made on your days in the office. Now, if there was an you know, if there was a time when Rachel was working on a case or on a project, and she made a decision that perhaps I wouldn't have done, you know, you need to talk about it, and you need to be mature enough and professional enough to do that in the proper setting. And so I probably wouldn't have done that on a handover using the voice memo. But perhaps when we have time together on the crossover day, you know, I'd sort of say, Have you make that decision, actually, if I was I would have done it this way. And you'd better get out. And you know, together, you can only get better from learning from each other and learning from each other's experiences.

Rachel Maguire 28:43
But just like in a marriage, we wouldn't air our dirty laundry, you know, if we are having those feedback conversations, we're not having them in front of the business, they're very private, we want to ensure that from a business point of view, we are on top of it. And actually, in that example, if I'd made a decision that Hannah hadn't quite agreed with on her working days, she would have fully agreed with it. And she'd have been on board and we've both been in that scenario. So as long as it doesn't challenge your perceptions from a business point of view, then that's definitely our way forward.

Carla Miller 29:21
Obviously, I coach a lot of leaders, and we talk about leadership styles, quite a lot to two people job sharing has to have the same leadership style, do you think?

Hannah Hall-Turner 29:29
And no, absolutely not. So absolutely not. And I think the team and your clients and your stakeholders can only benefit from complementary styles. So I would definitely say we're both very inclusive leaders and we like to bring people through with us. I would say I'm probably more of a risk taker in terms of my leadership and my decision making, whereas Rachel is Very much the most organised person you will ever meet, and is definitely a thinker. And actually, because of that, the decisions that we come to together, so when we're problem solving bigger things together, it means that actually, it's the decision has come about in a more rounded way. And so you'll see lots of there's more and more kind of CO leadership roles. And it's being spoken about at the moment. And we can see a reason why that model might fit big, big roles, because of the complementary skill sets.

Rachel Maguire 30:41
Exactly that I actually think you'd benefit more from having two leaders in certain roles because you have different approaches. And that's part of the benefit that a business will feel by having two people in a senior role that you get the diversity of thought you don't get with one person, and the ability to back things out before you present it back.

Carla Miller 31:02
Yeah, I can imagine. And I can imagine there's a great role for you to as job share coaches there as well in terms of helping people to navigate that dynamic, because that stress of coming to work, when there's tension with some of the team, someone on the team must be so much worse, if that's the person you're actually sharing your job with. And the reality is, in any relationship, there are going to be those points aren't there of tension.

Rachel Maguire 31:25
That’s something that we're challenged about a lot, actually, from a business point of view that people think, oh, you know, what, if you're, what if you do have a challenge or an issue, or you don't get on so well, with your job share partner, and really, a job share is just a very small micro team. You know, if you're used to team working, you know, you're not going to get on brilliantly with everybody. And it's just your way of professionally managing that and presenting yourself in the best way possible.

Carla Miller 31:51
Yeah, I really like that way of thinking about it. And, and then in terms of as a leader, if someone comes to you and says, I'm interested in job sharing, how what do you need to weigh up and think about?

Rachel Maguire 32:07
Yeah, so you've got obviously the issue around pay. So you're going to have to work out financially, whether it works for you from a, you know, the point of view of naturally, you know, it's a pro rata salary. So you also need to review your working practices. So in a senior role in particular, you're less likely to stick to your contracted hours. But for us, if as long as our our home days were protected, then the job share still worked for us, you know, we used to work used to drop the kids off, and then pick them up in the evening. So we used to have to come in around 9:00 leave at 4:30. That's a shorter day for a senior role where, you know, often you're kind of you're getting evening emails and things. So we want to be logging in after the children have gone to bed, let's say. But for me, if it meant that I had Monday and Tuesday, totally free from work that was worth it. And being really open with your job share partner about your boundaries in that sense. So again, for me, when I left the office, I'd have about an hour commute home. So from 530 till seven, when I put my children to bed, they were hours where I was not looking at my phone, and I felt actually 90 minutes in a day is not going to be an issue, you know, it's not that much of a problem, someone surely can wait till seven o'clock. And then, you know, reviewing your personality traits, whether it's something that you think that you are able to commit to. So if you're used to being in control, you do have to relinquish some of that. And be careful about the job share partner that you pick. And you know, we did go we did mention this earlier. But, you know, our motivations were very shared. So they don't have to be shared that it has to be both about childcare, they can be about whatever you want it to be to Job share, you can just job share, because you want to, but you don't want to be resentful about the fact that your handover is big this week, for example, or, you know, anything related to that actually, for us, we found that job sharing made us even more efficient, because, you know, most people aren't accountable to another to demonstrate what they've done pretty much every day of their working week. You know, when your workload depends directly on somebody else, you actually work harder to try and relieve that and vice versa. So we want to make it a more enjoyable experience in that sense.

Carla Miller 34:46
And what about when one of you wants to leave the job? Do you when you set up a job to do you talk about how it might end?

Hannah Hall-Turner 34:55
We think it's important to do that for sure. And there might be things that put the job show on hold for a little while. So I've actually had another job share partner, and for six months when Rachel went on his second maternity leave. So it is really important to kind of set it out at the very beginning of your relationship. Lots of job share partners will jobs share with three, four partners throughout their career. And some job share partners use job sharing as a way to increase their skills from learning from the other job share partner, and then they go to full time. So what happens when one of the job share partners wants to leave or wants to go into full time is you have a conversation about it. And then normally, the organisation would ask the remaining job share partner if they want to go full time, or if they want to then get another job share partner, and then you kind of begin the cycle again.

Rachel Maguire 35:52
Because it's kind of a new working practice, I think there is probably more at the moment responsibility on a job share partner to try and look for their own as well. A lot of it is about chemistry. So Hannah mentioned role share, there are another a number of flexible working recruitment specialists that can help you find somebody if you're lost, but also just tapping into your network. You know, a lot of people would find it a really attractive proposition to be able to work in a really senior high profile challenging role for three days a week. So try and kind of expand that and and have conversations that way.

Carla Miller 36:32
Are there any roles you think can't be job shared?

Rachel Maguire 36:35
Yes, we again, we're quite jokey, we joke about air travel, space travel. Those are kind of the obvious ones. But actually, we only been doing some market research at the moment with businesses. And something that I came across that I hadn't really considered before was let's say, you've got an accounts and park department where you've got, you know, a team for credit control a team for accounts payable team for cash. And if it's a shared inbox, where all of the emails come to one place, and they're just kind of divvied out and kind of labelled, then job sharing probably isn't necessary in a kind of call centre environment in in that sense. But we really struggled to think of anything else that couldn't be as long as you have a clear handover and rarely open and clear communication, then there aren't any others.

Carla Miller 37:30
And you two seem to have obviously, really similar skill sets. Do you ever see job share partnerships, where perhaps the role in code encompasses five things and one person brings to another person brings to and then there's some crossover? Does that happen? It does, yes,

Hannah Hall-Turner 37:47
that's more the kind of jobs split model, I would say we still have the accountability of the whole role. But you divvy up the responsibilities. And we've we have seen that in learning and development departments where they've got more projects to deliver rather than a more generalist role. And you'll see, gosh, I can't remember the example. I think it was a high profile, finance, job share partnership in Australia, one of the job share partners was incredible at business development. And so she would take on the new business side of things, but the other job share partner would almost do the kind of current contracted client work, and that fitted really, really well. You've just got to be, you've got to be really, really smart. And even in our job share, you know, there might be certain employment law cases that I would say to Rachel, actually, this is more suited to your skill set, can you pick this up? Or she might say, you know, we've got a team issue here, can you have this conversation? And so you've just got to be smart. And you've got to be really, really aware of your what you bring, but also what you bring as a partnership. And that's really how you impact I think, in the business that you're in.

Carla Miller 39:06
What do you think is going to be the tipping point to making this normalised like, will it be something like having a prime minister? That's job sharing, for example, what do you think is going to create the momentum that tips it over into being on every job description, for example.

Rachel Maguire 39:23
That's a really great question. Well, the leaders of the Green Party job share. So that might be one example. But not enough people know about it. You know, it's, it's about, Hannah mentioned about being loud and proud, having storytellers having people who are really openly discussing it. And we actually interestingly spoke to a fantastic job share partnership, you've been job sharing for a while. And we're just, you know, building our networks. And they were saying, Actually, even though we've been job sharing for a number of years, we're still not very I open with our clients about the fact that we do it. And it's not on our LinkedIn, it's not something that we, you know, openly really share because it's it, it makes us nervous it, you know, we don't want to present ourselves that way. And that was quite interesting for us because although obviously, it's everybody's personal choice. Without that, we're not going to be able to demonstrate to the wider community that this option is there. And it works. You know, you mentioned job sharing in your social circles, everybody's heard of it, and they kind of understand what it means, but they don't know anyone who does it. And so for me, I think it is a really slow gradual process, you need really open leaders who make it happen. You say, who wants to make this work? Let's let's try it. Let's see what we can do. And really builds a culture where it's okay to have a life outside work, frankly, and for work not to be on your mind. 24/7 We actually speak about we spoke to our network, the two guys I mentioned before it Aviva. And they brought up a brilliant concept to us called toothpaste time. So, Hannah, and I guess we only work three days per week each, but we brush our teeth twice a day. And a benefit a business or benefit from two people's toothpaste time. On one day, I'm not working. But actually when I'm brushing my teeth when I'm making dinner, when I'm lost in thoughts on something I am thinking about work, I'm thinking about props or problem solving, I'm thinking about various things that are going on. And actually I have that detachment from work where I'm not making a decision on depression. And businesses benefit so hugely from that. I think it really will just take leaders to go on the front foot and make it happen for their business, be open to it.
And really put the support structures in place around the people who are doing it like what we're doing around coaching, like demystifying what job sharing isn't isn't, which is a lot of what our business is about. Which actually evolved because a lot of the business leaders we spoke to, when we said what would make you reticent to drive try job sharing is that they don't know enough about it. They don't know how it will work when someone goes on holiday. How do they communicate? How do they handover, it's all of the logistical nuts and bolts that make people reticent to try it. And if we can solve that in some way, then we'll go some way in kind of making it more accessible for people.

Carla Miller 42:44
I can see a book in your future. Is there a book? Because Hannah, can you can you imagine?

Hannah Hall-Turner 42:50
Yeah, I mean, we, we you know, our mission, as we said is normalised job sharing. We, you know, we've got the practical side of it down to a tee because we are job sharers, but equally using our HR expertise, we've kind of got the process, the strategy, the operational side of it, as well. I mean, that would be amazing, wouldn't it?

Carla Miller 43:16
I said it first.

Hannah Hall-Turner 43:19
Might have to use your publisher, Carla.

Carla Miller 43:23
Excellent. And are there any myths that we have? Because I want to I want this to be a myth busting session. For the women listening, whether they're listening, thinking from their own perspective, or as a leader thinking about their team? Are there any myths that we haven't touched on our covered or anything else that you think is important that people should know or think about?

Hannah Hall-Turner 43:41
Definitely, so for all the women listening, you don't have to have children to be a job seeker. You don't have to have hearing responsibilities. You don't have to you could job share? Because maybe for you know, you want to involve yourself in the community. Maybe you just want to watch TV for a day. Maybe you need a bit of your time. You know, you don't have to have children structure. That's the first thing. I think the second thing is you don't we've kind of covered this already. But you don't need to know your job share partner. You don't have to be an administrative role. You know, we've seen job shares work in engineering roles, political roles, features, you know, it can work anywhere. Have I missed anything? Right?

Rachel Maguire 44:23
I don't think so. I think you actually had that covered. We usually finish each other's sentences, which is nice. Now, no, I think you've got that.

Carla Miller 44:33
Excellent.And is there if you wanted to leave the people who are listening with one last thought about job sharing, what might that be?

Rachel Maguire 44:44
It would be that 40 hour five day working week just doesn't reflect the reality of how people want to live anymore. It's a really antiquated concept that's 100 years old and The fact that when somebody leaves a business, and we just quickly replaced them with a full time equivalent is not a creative way to manage business and to look at how we can be most effective. So, job sharing is something that it frustrates us because it should be more prevalent. And that's kind of what our message is about. And we, from a studies point of view, there's a couple of bits of research that I'd actually highlight. So 87% of people in the job share project research, said that job sharing meant the difference between staying in a job and leaving, that is certainly the case, in you know, our situation, we worked in high profile, high volume, roles that were busy and senior. And if we couldn't have returned part time, or in a job share, we would have left. And we now have so many fantastically talented, amazing women who haven't returned to the workforce because they've not been offered flexibility. So that's what we're all about, we want to try and provide an avenue back in through that. So that was a very long winded. And but certainly, job sharing is something we're hugely, hugely passionate about. Our mission is really clear. And if anybody needs any support, you know, we're here we've got 25 years experience behind us in HR and our practical experience of job sharing ourselves, and we love helping people, you know, people drop us a LinkedIn message or DM on Instagram. And we're really happy to help. So look at our website, job, share pair.com and get in touch if there's anything we can do to help you.

Carla Miller 46:51
Amazing what's your Instagram handle?

Hannah Hall-Turner 46:54
We are acutaully named @thejobsharepair

Rachel Maguire 46:59
Not to be confused with people saying oh yeah, we've seen your Instagram, the job share repair. It's the job share.

Carla Miller 47:10
Funnily enough, I did I was scanning my emails from you the other day, and I saw that on my mind saw repair. And I was like, what? And then I was like, oh, no, it actually it’s pair

Rachel Maguire 47:18
It’s easy mistake to make, but it's not quite on brand for us. So the job share pair.

Carla Miller 47:25
What a real pleasure to have you both on the podcast, I completely sign up to your mission, I hope is hugely successful. And I hope that at least one person listening has been inspired to take action, and try and create the career that actually works for them and their life because that's what you're talking about. And the world of work is not set up in a way that's conducive to living a happy life, and particularly when you are juggling children as well. So I think, brilliant to have you on here. And I'm sure that my listeners will love the episode. So thank you very much. I have set myself a mission of empowering 10,000 women in their careers by 2030.

So if you'd like to help me with that mission, there's a couple of things you could do. If you haven't already subscribed and rated and reviewed this podcast, please do so that would be brilliant. It really helps bring it to other people's attention. And I'd also really love to know what you have taken away from this episode. Take a screenshot of yourself listening to this episode, and post it on social media and tag me I am this is Carla Miller on Instagram, or on LinkedIn. I'm Carla Miller one I would love to know what the main takeaway you got from this episode is so take a screenshot tag me and tell me what your main takeaway is.