Jobshare Stories - shining a light on the power of jobsharing

Last year, we started a podcast! It started as a whim - an idea sparked by a conversation at a jobshare hackathon - and has since grown into a powerful exploration of jobsharing from all angles and perspectives.

We set out with an aim to inspire and celebrate the power of jobsharing - by talking to jobshare advocates, jobshare allies and jobsharers themselves. Fast forward a year and we’ve now recorded over 25 episodes and featured CEOs, politicians, authors, directors and founders. The stories are varied and unique but there’s one common element - the energy that comes from jobsharing and collaborating to drive mutual success.

To celebrate our podcastiversary, we thought we’d take a short walk down memory lane and share some of our highlights from the first year of #JobshareStories.

Laura getting giddy when given let loose in an actual podcast studio!

The beginning - eating what we cooked

Having collectively spent decades working in retail, a rite of passage is “eat what you cook” - basically meaning if you ask someone else to do something, you must be prepared to do it yourself . So, we kicked off our podcast journey by talking about our own story. Feeling quite nervous and unprepared for how our podcast would evolve, we did what we do best - and had a chat! We shared our experience as finance professionals navigating careers and parenthood, how we came to know each other, the challenges of juggling big jobs on a part-time basis and how that led us not only to jobshare in very senior roles in Finance at Asda, but then to co-found The Jobshare Revolution.

Talking to experts

Joy Burnford was one of our first podcast guests (Episode 6). As the author of “Don’t Fix Women”, Joy literally wrote the book on driving gender equity through strucutral and organisational change. She’s a passionate jobshare champion and getting her perspective on how jobshare drives change was illuminating. Likewise, Tanya Stevens (Episode 7) is a recruitment and executive search expert - and she talked powerfully about how to embed jobsharing into the hiring process, and how that benefits companies and indiviudals. Dr Sarah Dauncey from Timewise (Episode 18) shared her experiences of making flexible working the norm and explored the evidence to support the benefits of flexible working, including jobshare. And Tiger de Souza MBE (Episode 10) talked about the power of allyship and being bold in changing the system, taking risks and making things happen. We’re grateful to all these experts, who really do bring their experience to the fore in changing the world of work.

Joy Burnford

Founder of Emcompass Equality & author of “Don’t Fix Women”

Partnerships smashing ceilings and changing the world

It’s been a privilege to speak to some truly inspiring leaders. Helen and Julia (Episode 9) shared their story of being promoted to Partner in top law firm Baker McKenzie. Will McDonald (Episode 14) shared his experience as an all male jobshare in the role of Group Sustainability and Public Policy at Aviva (alongside Sam White) - showing that jobsharing isn’t just for women and can be done in senior roles. Suzy Kulsoom and Suzy McKormick (Episode 22) talked about the power of jobsharing to create organisational and individual resilience during times of crisis - and they would know, having led HR in the Health Security Agency during the roll out of Test & Trace in the Covid pandemic.

We’ve been so inspired by the But the most inspiring, innovative partnership must be Bronwen Bock and Lucy Bradlow (episode 5) who ran for elected office in Australia on a jobshare ticket. Powerful, moving, inspiring stuff.

Brownwen Bock & Lucy Bradlow

changing the game on political leadership in Australia.

Powerful energy

The theme that runs through all our interviews on Jobshare Stories is the energy that fizzes out of jobshare partners when you talk to them. Speaking to Cathy Sinclair and Carol Castle about the power of jobsharing to enable ambition (Episode 4) or Mhairi McKenzie and Katie Volbracht (Episode 12) about adapting to changes as a jobshare, their energy is infectious.

Thank you

So thank you all, to everyone who has participated in Jobshare Stories or listened to an episode. Hopefully this is the first of many years of Jobshare Stories episodes - continuing to shine a light on the power of jobsharing, the impact it can have and the potential for this way of working to transform the world of work.

If you want to find out more about the work we do, get in touch. To listen to the podcast, search “Jobshare Stories” wherever you get your podcasts - and please do like, subscribe and let us know what you think.

#Podcast #JobshareStories #PowerPartTimers #Jobshare #Jobsharing

Power partnerships - a small selection of our wonderful podcast guests