Celebrating, elevating and respecting part-time roles
Why embracing part-time careers is part of the gender equality puzzle
Coming to the end of my parental leave in early 2020, I remember being certain that I didn’t want to work full-time at this point in my life (and perhaps not ever again, now that I do a four-day week - more on this in an upcoming newsletter). I hadn’t yet committed to freelancing, a risky move without a guaranteed income, but when I looked for part-time positions in anything to do with my skillset - communications, PR, content marketing or journalism - at a level that matched my 15 years experience (not a lot to ask, right?)I was met with pretty underwhelming results. In fact, I didn’t see a single opportunity I was enthusiastic about.
Maybe I just didn’t know where to look, having been out of the workforce for over a year and having just moved back to the UK after three years in my native Australia. But I think my expectations had been set high after my last full-time role as a communications advisor at the University of Technology Sydney.
The topic of me returning from parental leave part-time had already been raised, and while moving back to the UK was going to be better for us all as a family for various reasons, I was gutted to be missing the chance to progress my career at such an inclusive and forward thinking organisation. Flexible working was already in people’s contracts, and policies like domestic violence leave had already been introduced as far back as 2018. And not least because the head of internal communication - a very senior and important role in my department - had returned from two consecutive parental leaves, at three days a week.
This gave me no end of inspiration and hope for my professional post-baby future - so why wasn’t the rest of the corporate world as excited and optimistic as I was about my new part-time career? I didn’t want to waste lots of time knocking on closed doors, so I got stuck into freelancing. While it was a slow and unsure start, mired by the small matter of a pandemic, I feel I’ve found my space as a freelance journalist writing about the future of work with a spotlight on gender equality in the workplace.
All’s well that ends well, as they say, right? Well for me, sure, but I come across stories pretty much daily of working mothers who want to work part-time, but are either told they can’t, and it’s all or nothing, or they settle for a less demanding, less stimulating, and of course less financially rewarding role, that fits the hours they want to spend working. And voila, here you have one of the big reasons for the gender pay gap as many working mothers end up in career no-man’s land (literally - not many men there).
This is why I write so much about job sharing and its ability to make a virtue of two highly skilled and ambitious people, both working part-time yet creating a full-time level of capacity between them. But I do recognise that job sharing isn’t perfect, isn’t for every individual, and requires a big organisational shift to adopt.
That’s why I think it’s time to start celebrating, elevating and respecting part-time roles, and why I wanted to feature in ‘Your Best Work Life’ some like-minded voices who also believe this will be a crucial leap forward in propelling women past that middle rung of the career ladder.
And if you look at the numbers of women in executive positions in the UK, it’s actually decreasing, down to 13.5% in 2021 from 14.2% in 2020, according to the FTSE 100 Women Leaders report published this week. Clearly all the hot air around eliminating bias and discrimination, and creating more equal inclusive workplaces, is exactly that, without actually embracing different ways of working (I’m bracing myself for an onslaught of platitudes around how companies are supporting women with International Women’s Day just around the corner, without committing to any actual change. The inbox deluge is already starting.)
As Verena Hefti, CEO and founder of the Leaders Plus fellowship programme for business leaders with young families, and host of the Big Careers, Small Children podcast (well worth a listen) tells me: “Unless there is a major change, unfortunately, there is not going to be a quick fix. The WEF says it will take more than 200 years to achieve gender equality, so unless we're changing speed now, ASAP, we are going to end up not really changing gender equality in senior roles in a structural way.”
There are two types of organisations, Verena (pictured below) says: those who understand that, in order to achieve true gender equality, making sure you can do senior leadership roles part-time is crucial. Then there are those whose leadership don’t understand why it's important to have senior leaders working part time.
“Those organisations who are taking it seriously and allowing senior leaders to work part-time, will be able to attract the best talent, and in the long run will show that they're doing the right thing.”
If we can get to a critical mass of senior leaders in a part-time capacity, Verena concludes, then we can normalise this.
And to do that, it’s important to share stories about successful part-time leaders. That’s why in this edition we have two mini Q&As. The first is with Hollye Kirkcaldy, who worked part-time as a director at creative marketing agency Sparro House after having her children. The second is with Eileen Donoghue, co-founder of skincare brand Sönd, who leads the company’s brand and marketing activity two days a week alongside family commitments.
Being a successful part-time leader is possible, they concur, but both companies and individuals need to create the right framework for this to happen. Hearing firsthand how they’ve managed it is truly refreshing (and hopefully I’ll get more practical, tangible stories like this in my inbox for International Women’s Day).
Don’t forget to read beyond the Q&As for more from me on senior part-time roles. If you’d like to share your experience of carving out a successful part-time career, I’m all ears!
“It’s an approach that needs to come from the top down”: Q&A with Hollye Kirkcaldy, director of communications at Zipabout
Tell us about your experience working part-time at a senior level.
Hollye Kirkcaldy (HK): I attempted to go back to work full-time after having my first child but was thoroughly miserable so went part-time (and freelance at times) at a senior leadership level and truly believe it's possible if done right!
I worked part-time as director at creative marketing agency Sparro House from March 2020. At that time, with young children, I wanted to work for a company with an ethos of only working with senior professionals at leadership level who chose a way of working that suits their life (such as working around the school run or indeed homeschooling), with the basic message that the delivery of the project in hand is the most important thing – the when and where come second.
What was that like?
HK: It was enormously liberating, but I would emphasise that it’s an approach that needs to come from the top down, and many businesses are perhaps unwilling to give their team quite such freedom.
As of the end of last year, I now have a full-time role as communications director at tech scale-up Zipabout, but made sure that I was moving to a business which very much values flexibility and output in a similar way, rather than enforcing a rigid 9-6pm approach. My role isn’t part-time, but I am able to work partly in the office, partly from home and that hybrid approach suits me perfectly. I’m actually doing a part-time Masters alongside work, and the company is fantastic in enabling me to juggle that while still maintaining a senior leadership role.
So how can you be a successful part-time leader?
HK: You need to work in an environment which has the structure and value system set up to support this properly. If not, my experience is that part-time working, particularly at a senior level, actually just ends up equaling full-time work and stress on part-time pay and benefits. We’ve all been in that situation where we’re trying to field an irate client phone call while in the middle of the school run or child’s tantrum when we’re not even supposed to be working in the first place.
The problem, though, can lie both with the employee (I find that many part-time leaders, particularly women, feel the need to be constantly ‘on’ to justify their role or prove their worth so they struggle to set any clear boundaries) as well as with the employer, who can be guilty of overstepping any boundaries that ARE in place.
So, how can part-time work be successful? Well, I think that the answer is to ditch these traditional ways of working entirely and instead adopt an output-based approach, which doesn’t rigidly adhere to hours on a timesheet or bums on a (virtual) office seat.
“It’s about working smart rather than hard”: Q&A with Eileen Donoghue, co-founder, Sönd
How do you perceive the narrative around part-time work at the moment?
Eileen Donoghue (ED): There is a feeling in less senior roles that part-time and flexible working should be available, but these opportunities tend to decrease the further one gets up the career ladder. Part-time working can often be unfairly frowned upon when in reality there is a huge pool of talent out there who have chosen to focus their efforts elsewhere or simply enjoy the flexibility of a part-time leadership role.
What do you feel are the downsides of part-time work?
ED: While working part time can work great for people returning back to work from parental leave, it can also be handled very poorly. Expecting someone part-time to do more than what is feasible in the hours they have available can lead to a multitude of problems - poor performance, mismanaged expectations and dissatisfied employees. It’s important to ensure a clear scope of projects and ownership - trust me when I say a working parent knows the importance of maximising every minute of the day!
How do you make part-time leadership work?
ED: Leadership isn’t about overseeing every minute detail of every day - it’s about guidance, organisation and working smart rather than hard.
More from me on part-time careers:
‘It’s possible if done right’: Pandemic accelerates demand for flexible senior roles: In the wake of the pandemic, it’s even more vital businesses continue to offer flexible working options to employees if they’re to attract and retain the best, most diverse talent.
How the Great Resignation is affecting the C-suite: Reshaping the parameters of the leadership position – from normalising part-time roles and job-sharing at senior levels to embracing the ‘side hustle’ phenomenon – could enable more firms to retain talented leaders by offering them the best of both worlds.
‘If I can’t deliver, I’ll say I can’t’: How employees are learning to say no: Part-time events manager Renee knew she’d reached a tipping point when she spent most of her day off on the phone resolving a last minute work issue. Not wanting to burden colleagues by pushing workload onto them, she’s now made the call to go from three working days back up to five as the only viable solution.