In our latest episode of Jobshare Stories, Chloe spoke to Helen Williams and Kate McGavin, who jobshare the role of Chief Strategy and Policy Officer at the National Wealth Fund. They’ve been jobsharing for more than ten years across three roles, which makes them one of the longest-standing pairs we’ve met. Their story shows that jobsharing works at the very top of an organisation, and that a great jobshare can model exactly the behaviours a strong executive team needs.
A role at the heart of the UK economy
The National Wealth Fund is a public sector investment bank, headquartered in Leeds. It invests taxpayers’ money into projects, companies and assets that drive growth in the UK, with around £28 billion of capital supporting three missions: clean energy and climate change, place-based growth, and the UK’s sovereign and strategic capabilities.
Helen and Kate were among the first through the door of what was then the UK Infrastructure Bank almost five years ago. Since then they have helped grow it from a team of 12 to around 300 people. They sit on the executive team and lead policy, strategy, and communications and engagement, with a team of around 35. As Kate summed it up:
“We help the CEO set the direction. We build brilliant conversations with government because we’re having to help solve their policy challenges. We also build innovative financing models to solve those challenges with the bankers in the organisation. And we try and tell great stories about what the organisation does.”
If anyone ever needed proof that you can jobshare in any role, this is it!
Where it all began
Helen and Kate have known each other for the best part of 20 years, having first worked together at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in the early 2000s. About ten years ago, both were returning from their second maternity leaves. They wanted to work a different pattern, but with the same drive and ambition they’d always had. Their director at the time suggested they try jobsharing.
They were keen, but a little nervous about what sharing responsibilities so closely would mean. They quickly found they had a mix of skills that really worked, and from there it simply fell into place. After heading up an arts team at DCMS, they moved to the Cabinet Office, leading on devolution and the relationships with the governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. They led a team of 200 through the intense period of COVID and EU exit and then moved into their current role.
Kate is full of praise for the civil service as a model of jobshare culture:
“Job sharing is a fantastic success story. And I think when Helen and I became jobshare directors, there weren’t that many around… and it has just blossomed.”
Moving as a pair
From the start, Helen and Kate hoped their jobshare would be for the long term. They saw themselves as a package that could move together beyond their first role. That made planning each move easier, but it also meant thinking carefully. As Kate explained, they are really different. On any psychometric or strengths-based assessment, they know they’ll come out at opposite ends of the spectrum. So every potential role has to be tested: will this work for both of us, or is it too skewed towards one person’s interests?
Recruitment processes can be a challenge too. Outside the civil service, employers are often nervous about getting it wrong. Helen and Kate have even been asked how they would like to be interviewed! Kate sees them as part of a pioneering generation that is helping to set the conditions for others, and she has a simple ask for recruiters:
“Great that you say it’s open to full time and part time, but perhaps you could also include… also open to jobshare. I think that will be a great first step.”
When they joined the National Wealth Fund, many of the bankers they met had never come across a jobshare before. Kate describes the reaction as “polite curiosity.” What helped was an organisational culture built on bringing together the best of the public and private sectors, with real respect for everyone’s skills and expertise. That culture has held through three successive chief executives, all of whom have welcomed the jobshare. Helen hopes that’s partly because they’ve proved it works, and because they’re always mindful of making sure the jobshare works for the people around them.
Modelling great executive leadership
One of the most powerful insights from this conversation is Kate’s view that a good jobshare models the behaviours that underpin a strong executive team culture:
“A good jobshare will be founded on rock solid levels of mutual trust and respect, and will be able to give and receive open feedback. And I think that it will often be very focused on an agreed vision and delivery.”
Helen works the back end of the week and sets the priorities for the start of the next one, which Kate says drives “an incredible amount of momentum.” There’s also resilience built in, and what Kate calls a “magic pocket of reflective time.” On the days they aren’t working, their deep brain is still turning problems over. That’s exactly the thinking space so many full-time senior leaders struggle to find.
“That’s when the kind of creative ideas flow, right? You kind of land back into work and something in the back of your brain has been thinking… and that is quite magical.”
And at the most senior level, having someone in your corner matters more than ever. As Kate put it: “It’s lonely at the top, right?” Having someone to work through difficult cultural, team or delivery issues with is incredibly valuable.
Top tips — and a warning about cliques
Helen’s top tip is all about communication: be clear, be open and lean into the discipline that jobsharing brings, with its razor-sharp focus on priorities.
But she also offers an important warning. A close partnership can tip into being cliquey. You mustn’t lean so far into your jobshare that you stop building relationships with your colleagues and your team. Helen and Kate keep checking in with the people around them to make sure everyone is on the same page.
Recognising that it’s different
Helen and Kate are refreshingly honest that jobsharing is a different model, with risks that need managing. Helen isn’t in the room on a Monday or Tuesday, so she relies on Kate to share not just what happened, but the softer “mood music” too.
But Helen also makes a great point. At a senior level, you can’t be in every room anyway. Knowing what you absolutely have to grip and what to delegate is a core leadership skill, and jobsharing is a brilliant training ground for it.
Kate adds a word of caution about sounding too evangelical:
“We will sometimes slip up, we will drop a ball or we will accidentally give the team conflicting steers. And we work really hard not to do that… but there are occupational hazards in having a single boss as well or a single person occupying a job. They’re different… no one is perfect, no two are perfect, but we try and make this the best it can possibly be.”
One voice — and two individual perspectives
Like so many successful pairs, Helen and Kate leave their egos at the door. They take joint responsibility for the great things and the difficult things, and you’ll never hear one say “that was Kate, not me.”
But that doesn’t mean they always think the same. On the executive committee, they take part as individuals, and they’re encouraged to bring different views. Kate mentioned they had disagreed on something only that week! That isn’t a jobshare at odds with itself. It’s two perspectives enriching the debate, which is exactly what a good executive team should want.
Ambition, alive and well
Asked what she’d want people to know about jobsharing, Helen didn’t hesitate. There’s still a presumption that if you work part time or jobshare, you’re not ambitious. Helen and Kate’s story is proof that couldn’t be further from the truth: they have been able to work a different pattern and keep their ambition very much alive.
And their one-sentence summary of jobsharing? Helen, who confesses to loving a good tagline, offered this:
“Two minds aligned, twice the momentum.”
Want to hear more?
To hear Helen and Kate’s full story, including how they’ve moved roles as a pair, what jobsharing at executive level really looks like and how they keep their partnership outward-looking, search for Jobshare Stories wherever you get your podcasts.
To find out more about how jobsharing could transform your organisation, get in touch at hello@TheJobshareRevolution.co.uk
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