When two heads are better than one – top tips for job sharing

Published: 29 Mar 2023

Job sharing is a fantastic way to unlock flexibility, especially in senior roles. We were lucky enough to spend some time talking to senior civil servants Ruth Hannant and Polly Payne about  how they’ve made their job share a success for over 13 years.

What was your main motivation for wanting to work as a job share? 

We were both working part-time before job sharing and found that we were having to do significant amounts of work on our non-working days and with limited control over how we could juggle our time. Job sharing gave us the ability to combine doing the interesting and challenging jobs we wanted to do, and do them well, while also being able to spend quality time with our young families. As time has gone on, we have discovered significant benefits from job sharing, in particular the resilience it brings in demanding and stressful roles. It is this that has kept us both job sharing long after our children have stopped being little!

How did your partnership come about? What was the process? 

Polly was already job sharing but her partner secured a new role in the private sector and Polly didn’t want to leave the Civil Service. She therefore agreed with her line manager, the wonderful Peter Schofield, to advertise for a replacement. Ruth had wanted to job share for some time and had worked with Peter previously so when the role came up he suggested she apply. Meanwhile Polly spoke to someone who suggested Ruth would be a good fit. We had a successful speed date where we discussed how we liked to work, our lives outside and our values. While Ruth had less direct experience for the role than some other candidates, Polly thought she was the best fit. Peter recognised the prime importance of the relationship to making the job share successful, and 13 years later our relationship is still going strong.

What is important in finding a suitable match? 

You must find someone you trust, can communicate with and has the same values as you. You probably need to find someone who has a similar risk appetite and level of organisation as you. We also both like to talk, to think and work through a problem and are quite flexible in our thinking, which we think helps. It is though a good thing to have different areas of expertise and different strengths – you will learn a huge amount from each other.

Have you noticed your team embrace flexible working more after seeing your successful job share? 

We have always actively encouraged flexible working of all kinds in our teams and focused on people’s delivery of outcomes and how they work with others rather than particular patterns of work.  We really think flexible working is for everyone and is how teams are most productive: all staff need to be able to work in a way that suits them while delivering their objectives and not imposing on the rest of the team.

We were proud to be the first DG level job share in Whitehall, and even more proud that since we first took on our role in the Department for Transport nearly 6 years ago, there have been a number of other very successful job shares at that level.

Are you able to ‘switch-off’ on the days you’re not working?

Yes – that is the joy of job sharing and really helps with resilience in stressful periods. While we would both admit to checking in on email on our non-working days it is always reassuring to know that someone else is dealing with it and you don’t have to worry about it.

What challenges are there operationally and how do you work with them? 

Things have got much easier over the last decade as tech has improved – we have a shared electronic notebook, shared diary, shared inbox. Keeping each other up to date does take time and effort but it is also how we make decisions and do strategy and keep ourselves honest.

How can we help get rid of the stigma around part-time working? 

There are so many examples, across all types of industry, of people successfully delivering for their organisations whilst working flexibly or part time.  We need to champion these, particularly at senior levels.

What are your top tips for a successful job share partnership?

• Communicate, communicate, communicate! It’s important that you both know what has been going on, so others don’t need to fill the gaps. A shared virtual notebook as well as shared email and diary helps with this. But this is more than just a transactional download; focus on the mood music, what might have been unsaid in a discussion, and dynamics for example. Talk regularly and make yourselves available for each other.
• Focus on the big picture – make sure you talk regularly about your strategy on key issues, your ideal outcomes and how you would hope to get there.
• Let go – on the days you aren’t working, trust your partner to deliver and be doing the right thing. If you are communicating and have a shared sense of direction and view, you can be confident that they will be. And if they make a slightly different call, back them.
• Be honest with each other – if something isn’t working, let each other know.
• Keep an eye on people trying to ‘divide’ you and address at the first opportunity – whether that is people looking to meet just one of you, or trying to suggest you disagree on something.

Inspired? Take a look at our free job sharing toolkit.