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Grab a Free Resume Template for Stay at Home Moms.
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Hi and welcome to Her Next Chapter's podcast. I'm your host, Christina Kohl. I'm a mom of three and soon to be an empty nester. I'm also a certified HR pro who restarted my career after being a stay-at-home mom for over a decade. I created this podcast to connect with moms who have an empty nest on the horizon and are wanting to redefine their identity outside of motherhood, which might include a job search. On this show, we'll have raw conversations about our ever-changing roles as moms. We'll hear from women who restarted their careers and share tips for a job search after a career break. So if that's you, you're in the right place. Friend, let's get started. Welcome to this week's episode of our next chapters. I'm so excited that we have a wonderful guest with us today.
Christina Kohl:Her name is Melissa Nicholson and Melissa is the founder of WorkMuse, which is the first US job job share company which is a global thought leader in job sharing, and we're going to talk all things job sharing if you've never heard of that before. She is also the host of the Job Share Revolution podcast and, with nearly a decade of job sharing experience in the radio industry behind her, Melissa is working to educate and empower employers and employees to embrace the benefits of job sharing, which is a partnership between two people who together tackle the role of one full-time position. Well, Melissa, welcome to the podcast.
Melissa Nicholson:Hi, thank you for having me. Absolutely, it's great to be here.
Christina Kohl:Well, I'm so excited to learn more about job sharing and, as you and I were talking before we started recording, if this had been a thing back in 2002, when I left work to be a full-time stay-at-home mom, I would have jumped at the chance to have a job share partner and stay connected to my job and my career and have something outside of the home that was just mine and keep making money. But it just it wasn't a thing. It wasn't. Or maybe if it was a thing, I didn't know about it. So love, love, love the work that you're doing. I would love to know more about job sharing and how, how you got connected to this. Like what? What was your origin story about it?
Melissa Nicholson:Oh sure. So I hear you and I feel like you. I this is something I hear all the time is if I had only known about it, if it was a thing and the thing is it. Job sharing has been around since the early seventies and was originated in the U? S and kind of the UK at the same time and it's probably the least known, most underutilized flexible work practice. But you probably know people who've job shared and you didn't even know it because they may have job shared for a short period of time during some kind of a life transition or a career transition. That's how a lot of people end up job sharing and it is an interesting thing because most people go. I've never even heard of it and that was kind of one of the reasons I wanted to start my work with WorkMuse and to help like I found this amazing work practice. I found this amazing work practice. I would not have known about it if I hadn't sat a few desks down from a job share team in my very first job out of college.
Melissa Nicholson:I worked in the radio industry and it was the late 90s. I had one of the few female GMs in the country at that time and she put in place a job share team. It was a single mom of a five year old and the other woman was a brand new mom and they job shared a few dust down for me and I had no idea that I would ever do that. I was single at the time not a thought of kids in my head, but it was just the little seed I needed For later down the road, after I started my own business. I had a production company for five years and we were my husband and I were planning to have a family and I was thinking about going back into a corporate career and I specifically looked into the pharmaceutical area and the media area because I just knew those two areas, that there was some job sharing that existed, but the reality is it's kind of all around you and most people don't even know.
Christina Kohl:Like an invisible gem that, unless you know it's there, it's like a secret code, unless you know it's there you don't even see it.
Melissa Nicholson:It's like a secret code, and I think that a large part of that has to do I remember so I started job sharing when my daughter was six months old and I had friends who were full-time parents you know, full-time that had become parents and that they had decided that they were going to stay at home.
Melissa Nicholson:And I had friends who were working full time and really challenging careers and had infants as well and had little toddlers and babies. And both my friends had all of these you know big feelings of guilt, big feelings about you know the pros and the cons of their choice and what they were doing. And my friends who were stay at home moms, it was like kind of like a loss of that professional identity and that kind of that part of themselves and someone asking them how they're doing and all those kind of things of themselves. And someone asking them how they're doing and all those kind of things. And then my moms, my friends who were working full time, it was just they had so much guilt about not being there for their babies and I remember feeling like I could not say anything to my friends because I didn't want. I didn't want anyone to feel bad. If that makes any sense, I mean it totally makes sense as you're talking about it.
Christina Kohl:I mean, my kids are older now but I'm like, oh my gosh, because I was both. I was the mom that worked full time with a baby who had met. I just kind of kept it, yeah yeah. And I was the mom who stayed home and I'm like what have I given up? And I'm the mom who stayed home and I'm like, what have I given up? And I'm you know I'm just a mom and you're right.
Christina Kohl:Nobody asks how you are, it's like oh, how's this kid, how's that kid Not, how are you? And you just lose so much of your identity. And I wasn't. Neither situation was ideal, neither situation was a script that I would have written, I mean.
Christina Kohl:I love being home with my kids, but I gave up so much of myself to do that and would have been nice to like you know, like you said that you've got people on both sides talking about the pros and cons and you're like I'm good you know I could see that, that balance, that that elusive work-life balance that we all talk about, I could see you probably had the closest thing to it. Yeah, I really I'm putting that on. I don't know if you feel that way. I wish I could have had that, oh, I really did.
Melissa Nicholson:And it's the complete motivating factor and passion behind why I started work news and why I wanted to elevate job sharing and spread the word about job sharing and empower other people to create their own job shares. And I think part of it without sounding like oh, I just kept this really great secret to myself, and I think part of it without sounding like, oh, I just kept this really great secret to myself. I think that part of it was that I felt helpless to help my friends. I felt like I found this thing. I had this really great thing. I didn't know that it existed outside of my industry. I didn't know that other people could create really create their own job shares. I didn't know.
Melissa Nicholson:I mean, there are so many aspects to job sharing right, because it's got to kind of be a personal fit for you.
Melissa Nicholson:You're finding a partner, so that's an element of it.
Melissa Nicholson:You're creating the business case and selling it to your employer oftentimes, so that's a whole nother part of it that worries people and scares people and is it going to be rejected and is it going to have some kind of a negative impact for even asking to do this?
Melissa Nicholson:So I think that there's a lot of worries and concerns people have around job sharing when it first comes up for them, but on the end of somebody who was job sharing, I think part of it was just I didn't know that my friends would be able to access the same work-life balance I had, and it it was like that because I was able to work in what I call kind of a typical pure job share, where one of us worked three days a week Monday, tuesday, wednesday and the other one worked the other three days a week, with the Wednesday being the overlap day, and so what you would do is you would completely hand over your work hat to the other person and they would take it. So, regardless of how stressful the job was, how demanding it was, how 24-7 it was, it really didn't matter because you were able to completely leave it behind and pick it back up on Monday. So Wednesday afternoon at 5.30, it was over.
Christina Kohl:So did you both work all day Wednesday? In that particular example we did. And then how did you pick up on Monday, like was there, like email, like I'm just curious how the coordination went between you.
Melissa Nicholson:Sure. So it's really upon the job share partners themselves to create systems that worked for them and it's very specific to what works well for their team. But the commonality in all job shares are that they have to have a handover process and a communication system. So for some job share partners that can be an old school notebook with a to-do list and checking things off, it can be a flagging system in their email, it could be using project management software and they kind of create the that system themselves what is going to work well. And so I have worked, I job shared, for almost a decade.
Melissa Nicholson:I job shared for a little over nine years and it was a very high churn and burn industry.
Melissa Nicholson:I had four partners in those nine years and one of the things so I had worked both sides of the week the Monday, tuesday, wednesday side and the Wednesday, thursday, friday, which each had its kind of pros and cons. But when I worked the first half of the week the Monday, tuesday, wednesday besides our communication system and our you know, our notebook and all the things that we use to kind of inform one another, and we finally you know it's kind of like a trial and error process and we finally came to a really great system where my job share partner would leave me a voicemail on our phone and so she would kind of fill in the gap of kind of inner office dynamics, things I needed to know about. Oh, there was this thing that came up with a client. I just want to fill in a little more information for you, and so I would come in on Monday, pick up my phone, put it together with my notes, and after about 20-30 minutes of getting situated would be often kind of rolling, if that makes sense.
Christina Kohl:Yeah, absolutely Absolutely. So what time? When was that job?
Melissa Nicholson:So I worked. So my daughter was born in 2006. So I started job sharing in 2006.
Christina Kohl:And how did that come about? Like how? How did I know the origin story of like?
Melissa Nicholson:Sure. So I had worked with that job share team around that job share team in my very first job out of college. So I worked there. About four years had the production company for five years returned to the radio industry with my kind of eye on being able to job share. And I had just gotten married with my husband we were just purchasing our first home and thinking about that and I thought if I can just work my tush off and be really, really, really great at my job, I think I can work my self into a job share. I had there was a job share team there that had been job sharing for six years. Okay, and they were pretty more senior folks and I thought I'm going to be able to get in there and work myself into a job share and once I got started, you started full time, I started full time.
Melissa Nicholson:I started full time and for a lot of people you know you really do need to work somewhere before you come in fresh Most here in the US, anyway. It's a little bit different culture than it is in Europe and most people aren't going to hire a job share team fresh that they don't have experience with, because it's an unknown and you know it's very risky for them. They're much more willing to take the risk on an employee that has already proven themselves. They know that employee, they value that employee, they want to do what they can to retain the employee. So I thought I'm going to get in there, I'm going to work my tish off, I'm going to prove myself and hopefully I can work myself into a job share. I started working there and I got into it.
Melissa Nicholson:I realized pretty quickly that all the middle managers were men, and mostly middle-aged men with stay-at-home wives. So there was a whole mindset around that they had a job share team. They really didn't necessarily want any more job share teams. They were like why have these two work wives? I already have a wife at home. Why do I want two wives to manage? So I realized, oh my gosh, okay, this is gonna be more challenging than I thought and I just got pretty fortunate in the way that I did prove myself. I did start there with kind of a mid-level list of clients and grow to one of the top.
Christina Kohl:Thank you so much for listening today. I hope this episode hit home for you and, if you haven't already, be sure to connect with me on LinkedIn and say hello so I can personally thank you for listening and say hello so I can personally thank you for listening. Until next time, remember, your story is uniquely your own and your next chapters are ready to begin.
Melissa Nicholson:I came back to a manager who was in the same stage of life as I was. He had come from Seattle, he had two kids and his wife was pregnant with twins. They moved to Austin because his in-laws were in Austin. So he put in for the transfer when this company bought the Austin group of stations and so our kids were only three months apart or something. You know. When I got back to work after my maternity leave, his wife was about to pop. So he very much after my maternity leave, his wife was about to pop. So he very much understood and appreciated the stage of life I was in. He had checked me out kind of prior to getting there and he just had all this really positive energy about me. It just made me feel so valued and great. And he hadn't even really worked with me yet. And there at that time during that period, there was another job share team on another station and the man one of them had left and the manager asked him can Melissa come over here? And so he approached me and said he would like to hire you over here and I said, well, I've worked so hard for all my clients. I love my clients. I've carefully chosen them. I love my clients, I've carefully chosen them.
Melissa Nicholson:I was self-employed for all these years and I decided to approach my job as if it was my own business, and so I was very selective about the clients that I worked with. And I said I really don't, I really want to stay here. And he looked at the one other person who had an infant also and said well, would you want to job share with her here for me? And I said, oh, I would love to. And I said, but I have one like must have. I must have health insurance, I must have full-time benefits. My husband is self-employed. I carry the benefits for our family. It's very important.
Melissa Nicholson:And so he picked up the phone to the CHRO and they had a simple policy, and part of it was that they had, you know, benefits for both employees, that for the sales folks, you split your commission 50, 50, but you had 60% paid. The things that you accrue, your vacation, your sick time, all that was at 60%. So it was great. And so we negotiated all of our clients and started job sharing, and within that first year of working that way, we were so productive and efficient, just simply by having two people there 120% of the time and that built in accountability to one another that I was making 90% of my previous year's income by the end of my first year. Wow, so it really was a booster Right.
Christina Kohl:For you and for the company.
Melissa Nicholson:Yeah, and so you were working three days a week, and for my partner as well, yeah, who also had an infant. Yeah, right, right, you were working three days a week, and for my partner as well, yeah, who also had an infant.
Christina Kohl:Yeah, right, that's amazing, I love that. So you had this idea. You went back to you, you started working before you had your daughter, your first child, right? So you had this in mind and then it all kind of manifested right Use that big word. Kind of manifested right, use that big word. So what? If so, for somebody listening who maybe, like me, they didn't have job sharing, they didn't know about it, didn't navigate it, and they've been out of the workforce for five, 10, 15 years and they're mid-level professionals before they left and they know they can contribute a lot. But how do you begin from zero? Because you were in a situation where you were a known entity, you proved yourself. But what advice do you have for someone starting over and who's interested in this type of program?
Melissa Nicholson:Yeah, so I was. I was there for a little over a year whenever I really kind of went for it, but I had my eye on that job share ball. I mean that's what I? But I had my eye on that job share ball. I mean that's what I say, I had my eye on the job share ball. I wanted that. And especially once I got home and I had my baby and I realized how demanding and I was running and gunning and pumping and dumping all the whole thing right, running down the hallway to the other side of the building five times a day trying to keep up, I just was super motivated.
Melissa Nicholson:And as you shared, you had a child with special needs and I find that the people who really make this happen for themselves are super motivated. There's something that really motivates them and a lot of people who create their own job shares it's because they saw a job share, job shares, it's because they saw a job share, they worked next to a job share, they had a job share at their company and I think that has a huge part to play in it. You just use the word manifesting and I really truly have become a believer in manifesting more so than ever over the last year or two, and I think that has a lot to do with it. It's seeing is believing and seeing an example and believing you can do that too. So for someone who's taken a career break, the thing is it's very hard because your identity is so wrapped up in your home life and the things that it's kind of like. You need that confidence booster and confidence builder again, and it's not because you're not a confident person, it's just that you're existing in a different space than the people who are in the full-time working world are.
Melissa Nicholson:And so my best advice I actually think one of the most brilliant, incredible ways to enter a job share is returning from a career break, because it is really difficult when you've taken off any significant amount of time, especially if you're a woman, and especially as you hit your 40s, you start facing ageism. It happens much earlier for women than it ever happens for men, and it's really easy to have a lot of bias and stigma because you, because you're a mother much less that you were a stay at home mother. So one of the best ways to get into a job share in that situation is to find your job share partner and to come in to their job. So they've already proven their worth, their value. Their company will do almost anything to retain them.
Melissa Nicholson:They might be mid to senior level in their career and in a place where you, coming back in after maybe a 10-year career break, you're not having to jump back in your career but you're able to like step into a career where it values your expertise as a parent, as a community member, as somebody who's talented and educated all of those things despite the career break. So if you're able to come in to that role with your job share partner who believes in you and is willing to take this chance on you to come into their job, they're going to professionally develop you on the job. It's on the job built in training.
Christina Kohl:Right, I was just thinking of that. That would be such a gift to be to have that overlap, like you said, on the Wednesday, to have that overlap with the training and development and then, okay, go for it. You've got the next two days, yes, and then we'll check, we'll touch base and see how you do. It's constant back and forth.
Melissa Nicholson:And it's very easy to be. So job sharing itself is very flexible, so you kind of design your own job share, you and your partner. So, what is interesting, depending on if you're going to into an entirely different field than the one that you were in before you took your career break, or if it's the same field, you might need a different level of upskilling on the job, right. So you, it's very entirely possible to go in and work full time with your partner for two months, so the two of you are working together and you're really getting all that professional development before you walk into your days of the week and your job sharing schedule. So all partners when they start, even partners who have the exact same jobs, and they're just two people working in the exact same job, and they've gone to their employer and they're going to job share together and they're already pros at their job Even those people need to have a little bit of a on-ramping period together, at least a couple of weeks together, full-time, where they work out their systems and they start working through how they're going to share that job, what they're going to divide and share the responsibilities, where their, their strengths lie, what things they enjoy doing a lot and what things they don't enjoy doing a lot, so the other person might yeah, I'm, like you can see, like yeah, because that's awesome, because then I could like do the stuff I love and let them do the stuff they love and we're amazing.
Christina Kohl:instead of like, oh, there's stuff I don't like to do, I'll put it off.
Melissa Nicholson:And that's sometimes where the magic comes in too. For example, when I job shared, part of our job was having to do collections. So having to go back to these clients and say you know, we did your advertising, you're on your 60 day mark, we need you to go ahead and pay this bill, my job share partner could not stand to do that. She just did it. I had no problem doing it. I was never going to let us ever get a charge back from having late collections. She loved cold calling. I could have, I hated that. So she had no problem on, you know, her days of the week really taking the lead on some of the cold calling and stuff.
Melissa Nicholson:So it was really interesting because that's how most job shares operate. You want to find somebody who has a complementary skill set to yours for the role, the position, whatever it is you're doing. And I often tell people when they're going in, when they want a job share, they don't need to be so narrow in how they think about finding a job share partner. So I encourage people don't just look at people in your building, in your company or even in the same role you have, broaden your net and then you're going to narrow it in Look in your community, look at other women that have been. You know, ptsa president, that you've seen those mad skills in place.
Melissa Nicholson:Think about the type of person, because the most important thing is that you are compatible, that you've kind of got. You've got a feeling like, okay, I can see myself working with this person. I can see this and trust your instincts. It's a lot like chemistry, it's a little bit like dating, but it's a professional and a personal relationship in one. So it's kind of like you know, when you're looking around, think about the values of that person. If those are in common with you, they don't have to look like you. They don't have to be a female. If you're a female, they don't have to be a mother. If you're a mother, they don't have to be of the same religious or ethnic background. They can be very different from you. It's just that you're compatible, you have a complimentary skill set and you've got the right chemistry.
Christina Kohl:So that all makes total sense because it's kind of like you said, dating, making sure it's a good fit, a good match. So back to the stable mom. She's been out for 10 years and ready to come back and it makes sense to find someone who's already working and a valued employee. Maybe you have examples of stories of how you've seen this play out. But if I'm in that situation, where would I even start, like, how do I find somebody who is ready to downshift a little bit? Um, and maybe even why would someone be downshifting? So yeah, whatever stories you have to add to kind of like flesh it.
Melissa Nicholson:Yes, there are a lot of people who job share this way and and I it may not, actually it may I might back that up a little bit it may not be the most common way to job share because people hadn't haven't considered it, they haven't thought about it, they didn't realize that that opportunity was there. And I can tell you, I can tell you 100%, that once somebody has hit this stage in their career and they didn't take a break or didn't go part time when their kids were in, you know, elementary, because they told themselves, oh, it'll get better when they're in elementary, they'll be in school, and then that they go through elementary school and they're like, okay, I did all of this. And they think, well, I've done this, I can do it when they're in middle school and high school. But then when you hit the middle school and high school stage, as you know, those demands get even much bigger for parents, because their kids are involved in so many numerous things. The emotional demands get a lot bigger. Your kids need you more emotionally. They may not need you as time intensively, but they need you emotionally. And there are a lot of people who, there are a lot of women who are in their mid 40s and they've made all of these sacrifices and if they knew that job sharing was an option where they didn't have to give up the meaty, important work they do. It's less about the money for them sometimes than it is that gratifying work that makes up so much of their identity. But if they were able to do that same work but do it in less time, a lot of people would be very interested in that.
Melissa Nicholson:And for the person who's taken a career break and they're looking around they go how do I find that person? I really encourage them to network, starting with their children's community. Starting with that's where you, that's where you form your community ties Most people unless you're like a board member of a nonprofit, which I did that when I was job sharing because I had extra time. I was. I was a board member on a reproductive health care organization nonprofit board for eight years. The full term the month after the pandemic started is when I rolled off the board. I was the only mother who lasted on the board more than two years because nobody had enough time to give to that kind of a nonprofit. That really was a working board and really needed all hands on deck type work. You know they didn't have that time with their jobs and their children.
Melissa Nicholson:So so that's one area is like look in the places that you're volunteering, where people know your skill set. They see you working. Look in your school community, if you're involved in the PTA or things like that. Look where other parents, they know you and they see you in this different light and they see you in this way. You are lit up around your kids and all the things that you do and you might be organizing the parent prom and organizing the yearbook and doing this and people see you in that, in that way, and it's really looking at and putting it out there and saying I'm interested in job sharing.
Melissa Nicholson:Have you ever heard of it? I'm looking for someone putting it out there to your community, letting people know I am interested in returning, I'm interested in relaunching my career at a higher level and I want to do it job sharing and putting it out in the universe. Because and then you have to kind of explain a little bit what is job sharing? You know it's two professionals sharing the responsibilities of one fulltime position, so it's essentially two people sharing a job. There's a lot of questions around it, you know and you share the resources. Let them know about WorkMuse. Let them have them look on the internet and find more resources on it so they learn a little bit about it. But once people learn about it, they're so interested.
Christina Kohl:I can see all of that and I did a lot of these things and I coach women to do these things, particularly strategic volunteering. It's a way to get current experience and it goes on your resume and you talk about it in interviews. It's a way to expand your network and your your managers, if you will, of your volunteer roles, can speak to you, can be a reference for you. But it never crossed my mind say and I would love to job share if you know of anyone um, that's a whole other layer that you can add on to it. And again, that manifesting you can't just think about it, you have to talk about it. Um, and that's what I, what I coach my clients on too, is like you need to be telling everyone in your network that you're ready to go back to work. Yeah, if you, it's exactly that.
Christina Kohl:I'm ready to go back to work, and this is the other thing I would love a job share yeah, I would love to job share the.
Melissa Nicholson:I found out about it. It is really interesting and really great, and let me tell you a little bit about it so that you can help me find someone.
Melissa Nicholson:And that person might turn around to you and say I want to do that. I mean especially just to know a couple of statistics and research data around. Job sharing is so strong, just like it is for flexible working right, but job shares are up to 30% more productive than full-time employees and it's because they are leveraging two skill sets, two minds, in that one job. Oftentimes they're working 120% of a work week and what we want you to do when you're doing that and you're not a commission employee who's splitting your income 50-50, what you want to do is you want to prorate the income. So if you're working 120% of a work week together, you want to prorate that salary up and you negotiate that in when you go into negotiating the job share. To negotiating the job share, the people who job share over 70% of them are promoted as a team together and so they're highly promotable and it is truly because they are leaning in to those things that they are very good at. They are being professionally developed, whether they're a returner or not. They're being professionally developed by their partner. They learn from their partner. They learn to be better at areas that they're not so great at. They learn to enjoy areas they don't really like, but they also lean into their strengths.
Melissa Nicholson:So it's really interesting because a very common thing you hear job sharers say all the time is and I would say it all the time very common thing you hear job sharers say all the time is and I would say it all the time and I'm telling you, these people say the same thing back at me. It's like we're all in some secret society. I would say, what would Stacey do? Like my last job share partner, or what would Kelly do? And they'd say what would Melissa do? Like what would Melissa do in this situation?
Melissa Nicholson:You're like psychically turning in your partner. You have a big decision to make a huge project, a you know something that has a lot of weight to it in your job, and you're thinking how, what would they do in this moment? So there's just so much you gain from working in this way and it's just such a positive, supportive way to work and I think that that is one of the most comforting, wonderful things for people returning and relaunching when they've been on a career break. You can walk into an office and right now when people walk into an office, it's 75% empty because people are in various hybrid remote work. You don't have that same Office 5 you used to right. So it's like having that person who's just your buddy system in it with you is so it just. It's so refreshing and so wonderful. It makes the job so fulfilling.
Christina Kohl:Yeah, definitely. That seems like there's a lot of advantages. I'm curious. So two things, two questions, and we can get to both of them. One is someone who's currently in a job that's full-time that would want a downshift. What would be some of the reasons why? And then the other question is from an employer standpoint. So my background's HR, so someone would have to be coming to HR to say, hey, I really want to job share, so I'd love to hear your advice around how to approach your employer with that. So if we can first talk about like the downshifting side of it, like what would be some reasons in someone's life that they would want to do, that I would say, especially if they are a caregiver.
Melissa Nicholson:They may be in a different season of life also, where they have achieved a great level of success in their career, but they might find themselves as a dual caregiver in the sandwich generation. They're suddenly facing aging parents and issues there. They've still got children living at home that have a lot of emotional needs. There are lots of life situations that come up for there. They've still got children living at home that have a lot of emotional needs. There are lots of life situations that come up for people. They may have a spouse who's got cancer or has an illness. They may have a chronic illness themselves.
Melissa Nicholson:There are so many reasons. It's so specific to people. But even if they have none of those things and they've just been in their career a very long time and they're maybe another parent, they likely have been living at a very high level of stress, burnout and overwhelm for a long time in that profession, you know, and when they learn of the opportunity to work in this different way, that's that is a lot funner, it's a lot more fun and it's really supportive and just having that person to share in their job with and having that time off. Many people can't imagine it until you get it and I worked I will say that it's a very good practice for workaholics and I am a former workaholic myself Because, due to the structure of job sharing, you cannot overwork. Your partner is working when you are not there and if you were to look over their shoulder that would actually compromise your job share. So it's a great practice for people who have put so much into their careers. They really, really value the work that they do. They're go-getters. They work in these high-impact roles but they don't necessarily have to be pat on the back. Work in these high impact roles, but they don't necessarily have to be pat on the back. You know they don't need all the personal accolades and they work well in a small team environment.
Melissa Nicholson:So for somebody who's in their career, it might just be that incentive of being able to share the load with someone else. You know, being able to have that and just knowing the case studies, the data, the statistics around it, that so many there are men and women who job share. There are director level senior people who are very senior in their careers had their first co-CEOs of the consumer banking division right during the pandemic, and there have been other companies who followed suit. Ford created their own job share internal partner matching platform during the pandemic. So just to know that this is a different way to work and that you're able to still have that very meaty career, that it doesn't hinder your career progression and, even if you're sharing your income, that such a high percentage of job shares are promoted, it can be a very satisfying way to work together and have that extra time that you've never had to yourself yeah, yourself you know, say, I found a drop show partner and we've already talked, we worked it out.
Christina Kohl:We are like so excited, the two of us, the pair. How do we sell that to the employer? Because I gotta tell you, as an HR person, I've never had a job share situation and I've had part-timers. But it just feels a little uncomfortable from an from my perspective as an employer. It feels and how do I know the work's going to get done, I'm going to have to pay you more. I've got two health insurances to pay. Now I'm paying 60%, 120% salary instead of 100. Why would I do this? So what would that approach be like and what would the sales pitch be like?
Melissa Nicholson:Sure. So you're absolutely right. Employers typically have very little, if any, experience with it, even HR professionals. They may have heard of job sharing. They may have learned a little bit about it. They may have had a job share team there at some point. Maybe they didn't even have the best experience with the job share team. Maybe they didn't even have the best experience with the job share team. So it does present a lot of misconceptions, fears and worries for employers.
Melissa Nicholson:So the first thing that an employer is going to think is we've got two people. This seems like a huge liability. What if one is great in the job and the other one's not good in the job? Could we let one go and keep the other? Like, what's that look like? What if one leaves? Do I then have to continue to let the other one job share? Or like, how am I opening myself up there? Who's going to be accountable? How's communication going to work and how's vacation and sick going to work, to work, and how's vacation and sick going to work? Those are the most common, definitely the accountability and communication. I add in the sick and vacation because of all my experience job sharing and I had eight managers in 10 years of working for my company super high turn and burn industry no-transcript out of it. So for.
Melissa Nicholson:So, for people who want a job share, what they will need to do is they'll need to present the business case, and so, in that case, what you want to do is you want to alleviate any kind of kind of like concerns, or how is this going to work that the employer is going to come at you with? You want to make sure that you lay out exactly how are you going to divide and share responsibilities of that job. What days of the week are you going to work? How are all the deliverables of the job going to be accomplished? You want to really lay out a really succinct, clear, easy proposal that takes care of all of their top concerns. You want to share case studies that are relevant. You want to share statistics that matter to them. Knowing that job shares are up to 30% more productive than full-time employees is a pretty fabulous one. Another one is that job share teams are 87%. Job shares are 87% more likely to stay in the job because of the job share. I believe every other flexible work practice is in the 70th percentile somewhere, so it's that's pretty high almost 90%. So you're really buying lifetime loyalty from those employees and having them work this way.
Melissa Nicholson:And the truth is, on the back end, as great as job sharing seems for the people who are doing it and it is your employer gets even more out of your job share than you do. And it seems impossible, but it really is true. And when employees give up all their power on the front end, they will never get it back. So that is why you want to really create the business case and take it to your employer. You want to create a job share proposal. You even want to create a job share agreement that lays out exactly how pay, sick, all these things are going to work out. They can take it up the run to HR. They can take it up the run to legal.
Melissa Nicholson:If you've taken care of a lot of the questions and concerns and not left these to the employer and said hey, I want to do this. Do you have a partner? No, I don't know. I just want to do this. I can't do my job this way anymore. Well, how's that going to work?
Melissa Nicholson:You know I'm not saying that job shares don't get created that way. There are a lot of handshake job shares around where someone just threatened to leave and couldn't work that way and they had a good relationship with their manager and their manager really trusted them and valued them and they tried it out. That's another thing that you can do Pilot your job share. Approach the employer and say we want to pilot this as a six-month pilot, we want check-ins, we want accountability. When they see that you want the accountability, that you and your partner are going to be highly accountable to one another, the truth is that job share partners are super accountable to one another. They're super communicators. All the things that employers fear are the exact opposite in practice, once those teams on-ramp together and really lift off in their job share. So that's kind of the beauty of it is you just have to get together with the person you want to job share with. You kind of create your job share plan.
Melissa Nicholson:Approach the employer, you have the small conversations. Go, look at the companies. What does the company value? You build in that kind of language into your proposal. So if they value health and well-being, show them how job sharing helps those employees have better health and well-being. If they value ingenuity, show them how two minds and two skill sets lead to better ideas. Show them how a diverse team of people from different backgrounds lead to better results. Way that speaks really specifically to your employer and allows that manager who's going to take that up the rung, take that up the ladder, to feel really excited about it. So when they're going to whoever they need to get the buy-in from, they feel well-prepared. That's what you want to do so.
Christina Kohl:is that something that WorkMuse helps people with? Is that something more how people can get those types of resources to help? Because it all sounds beautiful and I fully agree as an HR manager professional, Like yes, that makes total sense Everything you just said and have it all mapped out. But if I'm starting with a blank piece of paper or a blank screen, it's like I don't know where to begin. So I'm curious what tools you guys have through WorkMuse Sure.
Melissa Nicholson:So to just basically get started and learn a little bit about job sharing, we have a guide, a free guide that's available. You just it's workmusecom forward slash guide and it's a comprehensive, step-by-step guide with case studies, with video case studies and article case studies in various kinds of fields and roles, and exactly the steps to create a job share are laid out in the guide so you can really get a good sense of what that would look like we are. Our entire model with WorkNews is built on what I wished I would have had as somebody who job shared. My managers didn't have any training. My HR folks didn't have any training.
Melissa Nicholson:I had eight managers, as I mentioned in the decade I worked there, and my partners and myself we didn't have any training, so we were on a ship with no oars, learning ourselves along the way what made for great job sharing how. How do we work effectively this way? And so that's why I kind of founded Work News on training, implementation and support. We have an online education program. It's a nine week group coaching cohort program and we really teach people everything they need to know about creating their job share, with the end goal being that they create their job share and have the best practices to on ramp very smoothly.
Christina Kohl:Is that for the employee, the job sharers, or is that for the employer?
Melissa Nicholson:It's for the employee and it's almost for. You could do it as a train the trainer, because once the employees have this wealth of information, know how to frame things, have a full understanding of job sharing, they're easily able to communicate these things to their manager as well. So we really started with that. We have an end goal of also having an HR management Job Share Academy version.
Melissa Nicholson:But it is more important to start with the employee, because in the US, I would guess that over 95% of people create their own job shares. So you're not going to go out and find a job share listed on a job board somewhere. You really are going to have to create your job share yourself, and that's how they happen. That's the truth. Another thing we have is we have a free master class where you can learn everything you need to know about job sharing. It's worknewscom forward slash masterclass and we're going to be offering several of these masterclasses over a week long period of time, so you can enroll, you can take the class for free and learn quite a lot about job sharing, possibly enough to get you in your job share.
Christina Kohl:Hey, wonderful, that is a great resource and I'll make sure to include that in the show notes, the address, so everyone can sign up that way. Wonderful, and that was one of my questions that you just answered. As far as are these advertised? And you said 95% are created kind of organically. Yeah, so maybe there's a 5%, but even then are they going to be advertised? And you said 95% are created kind of organically. Yeah, so maybe those are 5%, but even then are they going to be?
Melissa Nicholson:advertised. There's no data on it. There's no data on it.
Melissa Nicholson:I don't have research on it, but I am telling you as someone, as the person who's been in this space for nearly a decade in the US. I spent a lot of time in my early years with work news homing the internet for job share positions advertised, trying to culminate them and bring them to people, and I would be lucky if I could find 30 or 40 a month. So it's just not something you're gonna you're likely to see advertised. I hope one day that we will have something like. Indeed is in my backyard and I would love if they just had a little checkbox on there where Job Share was one of them, where they had one of the options, and we may be there one day, but at this point and I don't really foresee it changing it's really something that is self negotiated and self-advocated, so it takes self-advocacy yeah.
Christina Kohl:And I can see maybe that we're just guesstimating on the 5%. But maybe a job share partner retired or changed you know, left the company for some reason and now I need my other half and so we're going to advertise it that way. But I think that's probably pretty rare. And I know on the podcast just recently we had a couple episodes around returnships and those are employer-sponsored, employer-originated. You can't necessarily create a returnship, so they're different programs, but they're both excellent vehicles or returners to reenter the workforce. Um, so you just want to make sure that that point is clear. You're not going to go yeah, if you search for job share, I'll have to do it.
Melissa Nicholson:I'll have to search for job share hr and see what I find, see if there's anything out there and another great idea, since you bring up return chips and there's a lot of great opportunities and I know iRelaunch and a lot of other great organizations really have a lot of opportunities and communities and areas where people who are relaunching after career break can go and access how to apply for returnships. After you have your legs in and you've done a return ship and you're back into a role there similar type thing you can be working in that role there and then put your sea legs in your six months to one year, prove your worth and go for the job share and you know, it's just a really. It's just a really great goal to have in your head, because it's because it just alleviates so much. Our lives are so busy at every stage. And the truth with job sharing one of the reasons you don't see them advertised to is that people come to job sharing at different life stages. So maybe they're nearing retirement or they're getting a master's or a PhD or and they just job share for this short period of time and then they go back to full-time. And one of the great things about our program and our training too is that a lot of people job share, find it the best work-life balance they could ever imagine, think they have their partner for life. Maybe they job share with someone for 12 years. That person leaves. They can't even imagine doing it with someone else.
Melissa Nicholson:Well, one of our goals is to help people move easily in and out of job sharing and back in at the point they want to and they need it in their life, so that it's not such a glass ceiling door to break down.
Melissa Nicholson:You know, we want to make it easy and accessible and really understanding the different ways of how you enter a job share, how you find a partner, how you broach it with an employer, how you position it and how you get them on becoming a job share champion for you. That is kind of key to the entire thing. If you get your champions on board, you find your champions everywhere. And you start by what you said, christina. It's putting it out into the universe, sharing it, it being open, being transparent. I see more and more people on LinkedIn putting it in their profile. It's very common European countries. It's very common in Europe for them to put it right at the top of their profile on LinkedIn and it's less common, I notice, among people who live in the US no-transcript more than ever appreciate the fact that their employees are taking care of themselves first, so they can bring the best version of themselves to work.
Christina Kohl:Yeah, it's definitely been a big shift. The pandemic has changed so many things for us culturally, but it seems like an even greater opportunity. So, you know, like you and I, we met and we are having this conversation across the country, and you know we may have done that before, but not so much. I mean, this is just a new, natural way of working. Well, melissa, this has been incredible. I thank you so much for, I mean, this is just a new, natural way of working. Well, melissa, this has been incredible. I thank you so much for spending time with us and sharing so many insights. I've learned so much. Is there anything else kind of in closing, that we haven't covered that you feel would be important for people to know that are interested in job sharing?
Melissa Nicholson:I just want to say believe in yourself. It takes a leap of faith. There is nothing. There was nothing special about me, honestly. It was that I worked next to a job share team early in my career and it just planted a little seed. This is your little seed. You don't need much more than that. You don't have to work next to a job share to job share that. You don't have to work next to a job share to job share. You know, just just you know. Believe in yourself and and and go for it.
Melissa Nicholson:The worst that can ever happen is someone can say no, you know, that's the worst that can ever happen. And what happens then? We don't grow in life. If we don't put ourselves out there, we don't try things, we don't say what we want, and you're at a point in your life I know that your audience is at a point in their life where they've put so much into their families, they've put so much into their community, the people that they love, and it's really a time to explore what you want out of life and it's a really enriching way to be able to do it with a supportive partner at work.
Christina Kohl:Thank you for that Very inspirational and, melissa, for those that want to know more, you said it earlier, but tell us again where people can reach you.
Melissa Nicholson:Sure, so I'm on LinkedIn, melissa Nicholson. We're on LinkedIn at WorkMuse. We're also on Instagram and you can also contact. You know our website has a lot of information. You know our website has a lot of information. There's really great FAQ section. You can go and learn all about job sharing. It's workmusecom, w-o-r-k-m-u-s-ecom and yeah, so those are the places to find me.
Christina Kohl:And then I want to do a quick plug for you as well, because you are a new podcaster yourself. Oh, thank you. Where can people?
Melissa Nicholson:listen to your podcast. Sure Gosh, it's hard for me to even think about that, but Job Share Revolution is the podcast and you can find it all the places that you find podcasts.
Christina Kohl:All right, Wonderful Well thanks again, and that's it for the places that you find podcasts. All right, wonderful. Well, thanks again, and that's it for this week's episode. Everyone, have a great week and we'll talk to you next time, thank you. Thank you so much for listening today. I hope this episode hit home for you and, if you haven't already, be sure to connect with me on LinkedIn and say hello so I can personally thank you for listening. Until next time, remember, your story is uniquely your own, and your next chapters are ready to begin.