Industry: Social Enterprise
Roleshare: Senior Leadership
"I’ve always been my biggest critic and the self-doubt has been debilitating at times; not always trusting my instincts. Having someone by your side to bounce ideas off, sense check, and sometimes just debate with is so valuable."
- Camilla Rigby and Rachel Mostyn, co-founder and co-CEO, of the Women’s Work Lab CIC
Camilla Rigby and Rachel Mostyn, share the role of co-founder and co-ceo of the Women’s Work Lab CIC - which aims to support socially disadvantaged mothers, with little to no work experience, to find a career that works for them and their families. Having faced their own challenges as working mothers, together they help now each other and other mothers.
What has sharing a role helped enabled in your personal life and at work?
Annabelle - Achieving a full-time role while having a work-life balance that suits me.
Clare - Feeling empowered to have a great career whilst also being able to spend time with my family and support the community projects I am passionate about.
For both of us it has allowed us to grow and progress in and outside of work, being able to make a difference together in our role as well as enabling other role sharers to do the same through our jobshare coach project.
What has it brought to your greater team, manager, organization, stakeholders?
We feel that one key factor of our success is that values are much aligned. This allows us to operate seamlessly for our stakeholders. We are also very aware of and leverage our differing strengths and we use this to ours, our team’s and our organisation’s advantage. Our skills combined provide a broader perspective to any challenge or project.
What has it done for your performance at work and how does it compare to previous roles you’ve had?
It has enabled us to perform at a high standard and be recognised as such, which was harder when working part-time as an individual.
How did you secure and set up your job share?
A few years ago, we were working almost full-time hours in a secondment as coaches to the Finance Community team. We discovered that both of us were keen to reduce our working hours to achieve the work-life balance we desired, but also wanted to continue to deliver an outstanding service. We were very excited when a permanent role came up in the team and we decided to apply together as a role share!
We pitched our idea to our head of function and presented a contract that outlined how we would work as a job share and how it would work for our team and stakeholders. We agreed to a review period in which the success of the job share would be decided.
We are proud to say that feedback from our team and stakeholders was overwhelmingly in our favour and five months after we started, we received a CEO award recognising us for working together seamlessly in a job share!
What do you do to make your roleshare successful?
We think the key to success, as with any relationship, is open communication. Our regular catch-ups create a safe space for us to voice our opinions and ask each other questions. We often catch up on the phone in the mornings whilst out for a walk or run to bounce ideas and we know that each other is always at the end of the phone line if needed. We are comfortable challenging each other, but we also ensure that we always agree on a shared way forward. We are both fully accountable for any decisions either of us makes at work.
In order for us to understand each other better we have discussed our values and assessed our personality types and interestingly we are opposites on the ‘Insights Discovery Colour Wheel’ which we feel is a strength and key success factor of our partnership.
How do you handle your personal growth?
We have a joint development plan which we discuss as a pair and with our manager regularly. We ensure it aligns with our career aspirations as a role share. We include growth at work as well as outside of work as is evidenced by our promotion at work just over a year ago and our latest exciting project outside of work; The Jobshare Coach.
What tips would you offer a manager wanting to enable a Roleshare who isn’t sure where to start to make it happen?
Discuss it with your team and your leadership team and consider what needs to be in place logistically. Look for the positives it will bring your team and the organisation, there are many! We can help you with this as we have hired and have experience managing a role share in our team.
What tips would you give a manager who is new to managing a Roleshare vs a single person in a role?
Be clear in your expectations in terms of communications and ways of working and review these regularly, asking for and providing feedback. Our top tip is to consider it as a single role rather than the creation of two roles.
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