We are so pleased to celebrate Job sharing gaining more traction in senior roles.  With increasing numbers of leadership Job shares, I thought it would be timely to publish our experience of what is important to consider when it comes to leading as a Job share Partnership.  The more senior the role, the more relevant the point that "success in Job sharing requires a Talent Partnership mindset, as opposed to a Job share mindset".

Adopting a Talent Partnership mindset

Ironically, interpreting a Job share as "sharing a job" doesn't lead to success, quite the opposite in fact; it encourages a mindset of "arranging cover" as opposed to "ensuring continuity".   It is this mindset that informs the all too common judgement of "this role isn't suited to Job sharing".   Adopting a Talent Partnership mindset from the outset builds a partnership approach to full-time continuity, with inherent communication and commitment to building reputation around a Talent Partnership identity; this approach is crucial for success in leadership. 

Practical considerations when leading a team

Having created and supported Talent Partnerships for several years, we recognise that whilst there isn't necessarily a "one size fits all" approach to managing as a partnership, there are common success criteria.  Our advice is to avoid splitting the role, since this introduces breaks in continuity and instead to take lead in certain aspects, whilst ensuring the partnership retains ownership and accountability for all duties.  Some partnerships successfully split out the man management duties from other project duties and this can work.  Other partnerships have split man management at first and later found that a full partnership approach works better.  So with this in mind, our advice is to start with a plan, stick to the plan, review effectiveness early and be prepared to refine the approach based on success.  

Pioneers of senior level Job share partnerships are inherently part of building cultural acceptance in their organisation, by delivering successfully and becoming role models to support further roll out.  It's important to bare in mind as leaders and managers of teams, that your effective, transparent communication and a consistent approach sets a great example and is part of building wider trust and cultural acceptance.

Top tips to take away

With a Talent Partnership mindset, our top tips for getting started in leading and managing as a Job share are:

1.  Agree your vision and communication plan for managing the team together at the outset, stick to it, and review regularly, with a first 360 at 3 months. 

2. Whether your approach is a pure share, or you are taking lead on certain aspects, ensure this is clearly communicated to the team.  Share how you maintain continuity and ensure that your system is set up to reflect and support your approach e.g. should team members be able to specify one partner over the other?. 

3.  Present a united front; always back each other up and tackle differences offline during your comms sessions.

4. Be prepared to flex based on what works best; run regular 360 feedback with the team and wider stakeholders.

5. Schedule performance reviews on overlap days to reinforce the partnership identity with the team.  

A final point to consider when managing teams is to be intentional about creating opportunities to deputise e.g. by taking holiday at the same time at certain times of the year to give team members the opportunity to step up.

Advice and support

At Ginibee, our Partner Up training programme has been designed to address and accelerate cultural acceptance of implementing Jobsharing.   If you have any additional comments or questions about this post we would love to hear from you.  Or to find out more about how we can help you to successfully implement Job sharing, contact sara.horsfall@ginibee.com or julian.stanley@ginibee.com. 

Article produced by: Kathryn Jump & Lisa Tye

Partners Kathryn Jump and Lisa Tye job share and are joint Head of Shoosmiths Planning and Environment Team.

Lisa talks about her and Kathryn’s job share journey and their experience of job sharing as Partners at Shoosmiths:

“In 2005 I had my first child and my second followed a couple of years later. It was on my return from my second period of maternity leave that I first started to feel that things didn’t seem fair at the firm where I was working. I had been told I was on track for promotion, but suddenly I was told I wasn’t being put forward because my utilisation over the previous year wasn’t high enough – this was a year in which I had spent 6 months on maternity leave!

My colleague at that firm, Kathryn, had also come back to work after having a child and we were both trying to squash a full-time workload into a 4-day week. A germ of an idea started to form - what if we could work together to create circumstances in which a semblance of a work life balance might be found? We had no examples of successful job shares being undertaken, either by fellow lawyers or indeed anybody around us, but given that we had very similar backgrounds and level of qualification, and were both struggling with the way things were, it seemed like a good plan.

So in 2008 we joined DWF in our first position as a job sharing pair of Associates. In 2010 we moved to Semple Fraser as Legal Directors and in 2013 became Partners at Shoosmiths.  We applied for all of these posts and promotions as a pair, even attending interviews on each other’s behalf during the other’s maternity leave.

After a period heading up the Northern Planning team at Shoosmiths we now jointly lead the national Planning and Environment team, responsible for driving the team’s growth forward across the UK.

In the early years of our job share we worked a 3 day week each, with a full day overlap on a Wednesday. This enabled time both for handovers and for seeing clients and contacts together where needed. It also meant that we could have proper time to discuss strategies at a time when we were growing our practice, and to bounce ideas off each other on client matters. Whilst there were some clients who were sceptical at first, the benefits of ‘two heads’ plus much more cover than one person can provide (holiday cover etc) soon erased any concerns. We have a number of clients who have been loyal to us over a number of years, through different firms, who are very happy to shout about the virtues of our working arrangements on our behalf. In order to be completely seamless there is inevitably a need for some email watching on our non-working days but the knowledge that there is someone else ‘back at base’ limits the need for us to be directly involved. As we have grown a team around us the sharing of client matters has lessened as there is more scope to delegate, but the need to share managerial responsibilities has increased.

Sustaining a successful job-share partnership for over 10 years has not been easy but we think the keys to our success have been (1) shared ambition; (2) honest and open communication; and (3) patience and perseverance. We have driven each other to be the best that we can both can be.
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As Shoosmiths in now a fully agile office and business, this has helped to facilitate our job share arrangement and enable us to make the most of our part-time, job share arrangement so that we can flex our work around family life. Law is a very full on career, but a job share has been the perfect way to manage our burgeoning careers and growing families.  A way to deliver on our ambitions whilst also being “present” at home.”

Kathryn and Lisa were recognised as Power Job Sharers in the 2019 Timewise Power 50 Awards. They were both also named Leading Individuals for planning legal work in the 2019 editions of Legal 500 and Chambers UK and as Women of Influence 2019 in Planner magazine.