Job sharing in the Human Resources (HR) team

I joined City Hall on 26 May 2010. I was recruited to job share with Jane, so I do three days each week and Jane does two. In my time here I’ve also covered Jane’s maternity, and have been seconded to two other HR roles.

I’m quite unusual in that while I job share, I don’t have caring responsibilities outside of work. Instead, I was looking for a really interesting job and a stimulating role. This job share fitted (and still fits) the bill.

I’d worked part time before and had really enjoyed it. However, job sharing is very different and takes getting used to. I think Jane and I work really well together. We like to think that we offer a seamless service as we are two people doing one job.

All our work is confidential. We can only talk about it with other members of the HR advice team, so it’s very useful to be able to discuss cases with each other. Jane’s my sounding board, and I’m hers. We also have our own projects in our own areas. I specialise in health, wellbeing and Benenden Healthcare.

The people here make it worthwhile for me. I really like the diverse nature of the organisation. You can forget when you work here how prestigious the GLA is. I really like the building, too. It’s like a Canaletto painting as you look up the river.

I started at City Hall in 2006 and have always worked two days a week as part of a job share. I was recruited as an HR Officer and am now an HR Adviser. I have two young children so I was attracted by the job share post as it offered me the right work life balance. I have the best of both worlds: I enjoy a stimulating work environment but can also manage my chaotic home life, do the school runs and help with homework!

Friends of mine have gone part time after maternity leave and often their organisations haven’t recruited anyone else to the post. This means they‘re doing a full time job in fewer hours. In a job share, the amount of work you do in a day feels right, and generally I don’t feel swamped by work. As long as you communicate well with your job share partner you know that what you don’t finish one day will be picked up by them the next.

Job sharing with Dawn has been great, as our skills and the areas of work we like and dislike complement each other. You have to find a way of working with your job share partner that suits you. We use a work tracker to log progress on our projects. It’s a really clever way of working as all our issues are shared openly and our manager can easily refer to it.

Day to day, we deal with employee relations issues across a range of allocated City Hall departments, so there’s a big variety in our work. What makes it really interesting is the political side of it. When there’s a change of Mayor, there’s also a change of priorities, programmes and policy change as well, which make it an interesting organisation to work in.

City Hall’s HR function is really forward thinking – particularly in terms of learning and development – and the organisation is very supportive of its employees. I also have some great colleagues. Oh, and the location’s fantastic too!