Industry: Financial services
Roleshare: HR Director
"We are bolder and quicker in our decision making."
- Lucy Carter & Debra Dean, HR Director, EMEA Capital Markets and Valuations Advisory at JLL (sharing a role for 4 years)
What has sharing a role helped enabled in your personal life and at work?
Lucy – As a widow with a young daughter, role sharing has enabled me to continue my career as well as dedicate real time and energy to being a parent. I now feel I’m better at my job, having someone to talk issues through with that genuinely understands all aspect of the role and bring a different perspective.
Debra – As a mother of two, with a husband who also has a senior global role in the City we found that family life had become managing in shift patterns, rather than coming all together as a family. We now have a better balance and quality of family time. At work, I am more resilient and really benefit from the support, different points of view and set of experiences that Lucy brings. I have been able to progress my career whilst working part-time.
At work it has enabled me to work to my strengths, to learn and accept other ways of doing things and to become really organised! Lucy is a great source of peer support and we both love to sound things out with each other - we have a good amount of challenge and drive for each other too. When your confidence at work grows, this extends to how you feel in other aspects of your life too.
"I have been able to progress my career whilst working.
part-time."
What has it brought to your greater team, manager, organization, stakeholders?
Although we have the same values and work ethic, over time we have discovered we have different approaches, for example, our Myers Briggs types are very different – ESFJ and ENTP. We have found this to be a huge advantage in that we are able to have considered issues from a variety of lens before coming to an agreed way forward. As a result, we have found we are bolder and quicker in our decision making.
What has it done for your performance at work and how does it compare to previous roles you’ve had?
We have become more confident in our capabilities and in seeking to achieve our ambitions.
We recently moved to JLL, and (due to C19 restrictions) had an almost entirely virtual induction. It was interesting to find that we had picked up different messages during our induction meetings, allowing us to take on more information than we could have alone. Being part of a roleshare has definitely increased our resilience, and enables us to be at our peak performance every day that we work.
"When your confidence at work grows, this extends to how you feel in other aspects of your life too."
How did you secure and set up your job share?
Lucy – Having returned from maternity leave, I was keen to work 3 days a week, but knew my role couldn’t be condensed to that. My manager was open to recruiting a job-share to enable me to do this. We advertised externally and were inundated with applications. Having interviewed a handful of people who were all capable of the role, Debra stood out as someone I could easily discuss ideas with and truly open to the sharing aspect of roleshare – it’s very different to traditional part-time working. You need to want to set the other person up for success and feel comfortable with how the content and requirements of the role flow between the two of you.
Debra – I was looking for a role that offered true career progression on a part-time contract, quite a challenge in the job market at that time. When I saw the advert for a job share at EY I thought it was a really progressive idea. Lucy was part of the interview process and I felt we had an instant connection, having the same values and work ethic was important and has been a huge enabler for our successful partnership.
What do you do to make your roleshare successful?
Communication is key, and we embrace technology to make this as easy as possible. We use a joint OneNote for all our meeting notes, and handovers; and have a shared mailbox so we both have access to all our work emails. We are both at the same stage in our career experience so we have complete faith in the work the other does when we’re not working. This is important as everything you do is a reflection of both of you.
From early on working together, we felt comfortable debating issues and seeing that as helpful in finding the best approach that we can both take forward. We often say we are a mini high performing team in the way we approach our work.
How do you handle your personal growth?
We are very supportive of helping each other grow, and bringing different learnings, articles and ideas to each other. Because we’re not working 5 days a week, we have greater capacity and energy to read around our discipline and keep ourselves current and relevant. Yet more benefits of roleshare.
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