How flexible working has helped retain EIS talent- Job sharing: Emma and Esme’s story

In recognition of International Women’s Day 2018, we spoke to Co-Heads of Physiology Emma Ross and Esme Matthew and learnt about how a job share has enabled them to stay at the organisation and effectively balance work and home life, whilst still allowing them to develop and progress in their careers.

Emma

I started at the EIS in 2013 as Head of Physiology and at the time it was a full-time position but the EIS were really supportive in allowing me to work it in a part-time, flexible capacity as I had a young son at home. I worked three and a half days a week and I did that for four years and really enjoyed the role. It was challenging and exciting with lots of variety and learning opportunities for myself and the people I oversaw.

However, after I returned from maternity leave for my second child I decided that it wasn’t a sustainable role for me whilst maintaining a balance at home.  Doing the role three and a half days a week with all of the travel and stays away from home that it entailed meant it wasn’t workable for me whilst still achieving the balance of being a mum and being at home and present with my children.

I thought the answer was that I would have to leave the role and explore opportunities elsewhere and I started to do so. A colleague of mine suggested a job share would be a good option. I wasn’t convinced at the time that a job share would be right for this role; it’s a leadership role where you are managing and leading a national team and I couldn’t quite see how it could be effectively split between two people. Luckily there’s lots of resources on the internet and our HR team were fantastic in supporting me and looking at how that option might work.

When I sat down with my boss Kevin Currell to see what the challenges were in my current role and why I thought I would have to leave it, we decided that a job share would mitigate a lot of those challenges and allow me to do the role and still achieve the work:life balance that I really desired. So, we’ve started exploring how job shares work in other industries at senior leadership level and found some really good case studies that helped to shape what the job share would look like moving forward.

The role of Head of Physiology at the EIS is responsible for developing and delivering the national strategy for the discipline. Esme and I are both responsible for delivering that and have a consultative and collaborative approach.

We each have different accountabilities across the strategy, so for example I’m responsible for quality assurance and accreditation of our practitioners, whereas Esme is responsible for people development. On an operational basis, Esme takes responsibility for the north and I take responsibility for the south.

With the role being spread out geographically, it reduces our travel but it also means that people in those areas of the country, stakeholders, people in our team and the sports we work with know who their primary contact is.

Esme

I first came in to the EIS as a practitioner over ten years ago and worked as a physiologist with British Cycling for six years. During this time I went on maternity leave and wasn’t really sure how things were going to work for me when I went back to work. I really loved my role with British Cycling but it was quite intense and took up quite a lot of time away from home. I knew coming back to work having had a baby would be difficult and that I wouldn’t be able to commit as much time as I used to or fulfil the job in the way that I wanted to. It was a tough decision to leave the sport but I was fortunate that something else came up for me within the EIS.

After maternity, I went back into a part-time role as a technical lead doing two and a half days a week. When the opportunity of a job share for the Head of Physiology role came up I leapt at the chance as that would have probably been what I would have considered as my next step in my career anyway. If offered I wouldn’t have been able to take on the role in a full-time capacity so when it came up as part-time, that was a perfect opportunity for me to make the next step and progress in my career whilst maintaining a balance with being at home.

A job share definitely provides more complexity than just doing it on your own. I’m very lucky in the fact that I’ve had an amazing job share partner in Emma, we have a very similar outlook in the strategy for the discipline and that’s been really key for the direction that we are going in for physiology at the EIS.

We have to really trust that we are each doing the best for the discipline and make sure we are on top of our communication with each other so on Emma’s days off I can easily pick things up and vice versa. We both understand what we are trying to achieve together and we’re both committed to making it work.

Emma

The brilliant thing about a job share is that the role gets the full-time capacity that it deserves in two people giving 100% of their energy when they’re at work, with the full working week covered. The job share really fits the need to have time and space to be present at home with your children and family but still have a challenging job at senior level that you love.

Previously when I was doing the role, I would be travelling a lot, staying away from home one or two nights a week, be up early on trains travelling around the country, but now the job share means that firstly Esme and I spread the travel load of the job and I also know that when I’m not at work Esme is there doing a brilliant job in the role.

I don’t think you can underestimate the value of having a supportive organisation in terms of allowing people to find a balance between family life and work and the EIS have been absolutely extraordinary in doing that for me. In my instance, they were creative and thought differently about how they could retain talent and mitigate some of the challenges that might have forced people out of the organisation, so both myself and Esme can now give 100% of ourselves to our job but still feel like we have a balance between family and work life.

Women are still chasing gender equality in many aspects. For example, if you look at senior level; with the jobs that are advertised at the moment only around 5% of them would say that flexible working was an option. We’ve shown that with a bit of creative thinking that you can do it differently and I think it’s really important that we push and encourage employers to think outside the box about how they advertise roles, otherwise it become very competitive for women who want to balance family time and still be in work.

Esme

I think it’s a massive credit to the EIS that they have allowed us to do the job share. The EIS is really committed to retaining their staff as and when they can and without a doubt if it wasn’t for this job share I wouldn’t still be working for the organisation.

I’m really fortunate that the EIS has been supportive of working parents and that’s not just working mums- flexible working hours apply to men too and allow them to fit in home and work life, especially in this industry as it can be quite difficult to do.

I think it’s really important that we shout about all the good things that go on for women in sport and in senior roles. Although there have been some shifts towards equality and things improving for women in the work place, we are still not there. This is one really good example of where we’ve been supported but I know there are other industries where this doesn’t happen.

We’re really proud of what we have done with the job share and with flexible working at the EIS. We want other people to see how we have made it a success and how it’s possible.

You can be a working mum and have a senior role and progress in your career whether you have young children or not, it’s just about having the right environment around you both at work and at home to support that.