The opportunity to work a flexible, part-time job share was one of my best surprises ever, says Kemetia Foley
While evolving towards a teaching career, a realization came to me, and that realization was that I was not ready to make the full-time leap to educator. The administrative field is in my blood! I have been working in the field for more than thirty years, and I knew that I wanted to stay sharp and competitive in the administrative field because teaching is contract-based. I needed the flexibility to teach and stay connected to my area of expertise. Is that even possible? I asked myself.
After a budget issue curtailed a few teaching contracts, I began increasing my outreach to colleagues and recruiters for temporary work. It was not my preference to take a temporary position because I wanted to honor commitments already made, and at no point had I ever thought of the option of job-sharing. I knew of it, but it was a thing of lore. Over the span of my career, I had only met two people out of thousands of Executive Assistants whose role involved job-sharing. These two EAs supported an international, high-level CEO. It was imperative that more than one EA support this executive. One of them lived on the east coast of the US, the other on the west coast. It allowed them to cover time zones and provide breathing space for work volume. Some events required one of them to travel with their executive and the other to run the ship from the office. Each was a full-time employee, working a minimum of 50 to 60 hours per week.
Using Networks
Most job opportunities during my career arrived via referrals from my network – a wide range of business affiliates, other Executive Assistants who I knew through professional organizations, and former supervisors. I began to share my goal within my network, and to anyone asking about my work life, I would state
“I love teaching. I love my career in the administrative field. I am trying to figure out how I can do both without having to open my own business. Part-time, flexible, well-paid positions via staffing agencies have been very tough to find. Any ideas?”
The opportunity to work a flexible, part-time job share was not on my Bingo card until one of my colleagues in the community college system, connected to a non-profit organization, knew they were searching for a part-time EA to work with another part-time EA, a job-share. Curiously, I took on the interview to learn more about how it would work. The interview was with the two executives and the current part-time EA. I stated clearly to the interview team that my teaching contracts were a priority. We talked about the mission of the organization, and why they wanted to provide support to my colleague. As we chatted about my skills, my experience, the topic of work hours, reporting structure, and clarified responsibilities were all addressed. At the end of the interview, I was offered, and I accepted the role.
My favorite part of the job interview? The executives standing up and stating, ‘Well, you two (the job-share colleague and I) can establish how to best work together. We will leave it to you to get it going.” Yes! The acknowledgement that we are grown, experienced, professionals that can do our job and allow us to do it! Absolutely glorious.
Job sharing requires being expert communicators, professionals that are mature and focused on getting things done. In this new endeavor, my colleague and I have had the challenge of creating and implementing the structures of our roles. Mind you, this person had already been in the role part-time for upwards of five years. She was all-in for job-sharing.
Key Elements
Assessment
Much of our job-share work is internal – customer-centric, supporting large groups of volunteers, various committees, and one-off projects. It also includes some of the more foundational EA work, things like booking conference spaces, scheduling, data-entry.
We needed to unearth and understand the true scope of work in front of us, and where efficient processes were already in place. It also meant recognizing that though a process may not be one I would use, patience would allow me to view the problem in context and provide additional insight before making suggestions based on incomplete information.
Respect and Recognize Strengths
It is important, daily, to recognize and acknowledge each other’s strengths. My colleague has a well-established rapport with leadership, volunteers, and the community. She carries a level of trust and respect within this organization and community through her years of experience and excellent customer service.
I brought a wider and deeper set of technology, software, and events experience to the table, and invested time in professional development for administrative professionals.
Communication Tools and Expectations
Key to our focus on customer service is to manage our volunteers’ expectations around the issues of response time, technology challenges, and responsibilities. More importantly, there is the need to address within our partnership, the assumptions, and expectations about our individual communications styles.
Agreements were made to communicate by email for non-urgent issues, text for urgent issues, and text when we are going to be away from email monitoring for an extended period. My colleague works the earlier hours of the day – 4am to Noon, I take the 3pm to 9pm shift. Hours are adjusted, if necessary, for example – community events held outside of normal work hours. This does not mean we are working that entire time; it means we are available to our leadership team, our volunteer leaders, and each other consistently during those hours. Again, if one of us needs to take a day, we notify each other, our leadership does not require us to ask for time off – we are expected to cover what needs to be done and work with each other to do so.
The use of labels and categories, as well as rules to keep the mailboxes as close to a zero inbox as possible were implemented. There is one shared general mailbox which we both must monitor. And of course, we get to work through our own email as well. If there is a particularly complex issue in the shared mailbox that I do not have the full scope of understanding to handle, I will text my colleague, notifying her that it is now flagged for her to address.
Early on in our job-share arrangement, volunteers had frustrations about dropped scheduling issues. My colleague and I were still working through our tracking and tasking processes. Our leadership team drafted an announcement with our input and sent it – to all internal customers (our volunteers) setting expectations and boundaries. Again, we have amazing support from our executives. It has been made clear to our volunteers that our organization’s work is important, but not urgent.
Define and Assign Responsibilities
Be clear as to who is taking the lead responsibility for key support facets in the organization. Scheduling, Training, Facilities Management, Website uploads, Documentation verifications etc.
In this work, my colleague and I have established a core list of responsibilities within our shared job and consistently communicated to our internal client base regarding lead and secondary responsibilities on tasks.
Early in the Game – Invest the Time
Get to know one another. Learn the systems. Ask for clarification and verify deadlines. Overcommunicate. Attend as many of the social and networking events, invest in that face-time to build relationships faster.
Should job-sharing be something you might want to try, spend time talking about it with your trusted circle. Network. Research. It may be one of the best surprises ever!
