Work Muse

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When I became a mom, I didn’t want to spend more time in my job than with my daughter… but I didn’t want to let go of the progression I’d made in my career either. I’d worked hard and had grown my client list and position at my company as a top producer. I didn’t want to stagnate my career, and quite frankly, I couldn’t afford to take a career break and leave my job altogether. Nor did I want to—I loved creating marketing solutions for my clients. I loved the creativity of campaign work and the relationships I had with my clients. I knew how precious the moments were, and I didn’t want to miss my baby’s firsts and being present with her to enjoy it all. For all of those reasons, I knew I had to find a third way. My husband was self-employed and aside from my income, my family depended on me for my benefits, especially health insurance. I’d worked alongside a job share team in my twenties and knew there was a faint possibility I could job share myself. It was ALWAYS in the back of my mind as an option. However, the middle managers at our company were all old school white men with stay at home wives. There were several job share teams, but it was clear they didn’t see the value in two minds in one fast-paced position, nor did they want more. Upon my parental leave, a new more forward thinking company bought us out and I came back to a new boss who was at the same stage of life and had worked with a high performing job share team in Seattle. I jumped at the chance when I saw the sliver of an opening and began job sharing when my daughter was just 6 months old. No more running and gunning, trying to keep up with my pumping schedule, and rushing home to make an evening feeding… No more feeling like an utter failure in a job I used to take so much pride in doing well… No more feeling like the worst mom on earth, unable to have a moment to myself to enjoy all of the magical moments with my baby girl. Whether you’re a parent or not, I’m here to tell you there IS another way—one that is an option and that your boss may never even have heard of— JOB SHARING. It’s bringing two minds and two skill sets to one full-time position, giving you the true work-life balance (yes, I said the dirty word!) you deserve and your company full-time continuity for our demanding jobs. I’m sharing my job share story with you because seeing IS believing. And when you believe you can do something, you’re inspired to take action which leads to the result you desire. Had I never sat a few desks down from an amazing job share team, it’s unlikely I would have ever job shared. What would you do with your time if you had 4 uninterrupted days off EVERY week? ----------------------------------- ✅ Follow Work Muse to learn about job sharing 📖 Grab my FREE guide @ the link in my bio 🔔 Follow me for more work-life tips 🔄 Repost to share with your network #jobshare #worklifebalance #flexibleworking

I've never been more scared at work, but I also never wanted anything more. I never had a fire in my belly or the motivating force of my tiny baby or the burnout I was suffering mightily trying to keep up with nursing, mothering, pumping, and bringing my A-game to my clients (which by this point was my C- game, to be fair). Honestly, I'd pitched job sharing unsuccessfully twice before... Once before kids to "slash careers" and run my production company while returning to corporate (for the female energy I'd been missing working with three guys and the benefits). The hiring manager applauded my gusto but was clear her boss would never OK a job share for a new hire who wasn't a mother. She wasn't willing to go to the mat for a brand-new employee. The second time, I was preggos and had a good relationship with my old school boss. When I broached job sharing, I got "Nope, we don't want more of those." Then, a 4-day workweek, "Well, if you don't want benefits. You should try something like nursing if you want to work part-time." Shortly after, the stars aligned with a company buyout during my parental leave. The new company cleaned house and I returned to a new boss, a dad with twins due soon, who'd previously managed a job share (though I didn't know it then). Then, the unimaginable happened... My boss came to me with a rare chance to job share in another job under another manager, for the one job sharer in our market whose partner resigned. I turned to my boss and passionately made my case for staying in my job in a new job share. I acted "as if" I had the job share already... I moved through my fear to negotiate my job share like any job—benefits and all—and gained approval! By the end of my first year of job sharing, I'd made 90% of my previous year's income, thanks to negotiating it and how productively we worked. I'm telling you all of this to say that I 100% get it. The worry about what your boss will think of you, your commitment, or that they'll poo-poo your job share right off the bat. 😩 I want to remind you that you are doing a huge favor for your boss BY proposing a job share. YES, that's right, the increased productivity, engagement, and retention your job share will bring will make your boss a superstar at your organization! 🌟 The last thing you want is to let limiting beliefs, self-doubt, or imposter syndrome paralyze you and keep you from ever taking the most important step to sharing your role: ASKING to job share. This is me sending you the vibes you need to face down limiting beliefs, self-doubt, and imposter syndrome to ask for what you want at work. ------------------------------ 👋 I’m Melissa, founder of Work Muse. Our job share coaching, training, and programs support caregiver employees from parental leave through eldercare and help you retain & recruit diverse talent. 🔔 Follow me for more tips to live life + slay work #negotiation #jobshare #flexibleworking

If you want to create a job share arrangement, here is some advice I wish I’d had. Stop overthinking it. I mean it. When I created my first job share, I never imagined I’d be working this way for nearly a decade. I didn’t stress about my partner, my boss, or every detail of how it would work. I just wanted to have time to enjoy my newborn baby while providing for my family! Here’s the truth: If you put your energy into putting a plan into place, being thoughtful about your partner selection and the responsibilities of the role, the time freedom that follows (and the career growth) will be far above your wildest expectations. It’s not about the right timing/boss/job, it’s about taking a leap of faith. This is your sign to just get started—don’t wait for everything to be perfect, because it never will be. The sooner you take action, the sooner you’ll see results. And if you’re ready to take that next step, join me in my LIVE job share creation bootcamp where I’ll guide you through creating and launching your own job share arrangement. Comment “BOOTCAMP” below and I’ll DM you your official invite. 💌 Jobshare Jumpstart provides high-touch accountability with a global job sharing expert’s guidance to help you validate job sharing is right for you and how, when, and who you will job share with IN A MATTER OF DAYS. 🙌🙌 You don’t have to go it alone (ever again!). Lets make this happen together. 💪 #flexibleworking #jobshare #worklifebalance

Why live for longgg holiday weekends that come along just a few times a year to let the worries fall away and enjoy the people you love most… when you could work just 3 days a week, then hand over your work baton to a job share partner to go LIVE YOUR LIFE the other 4 days every. single. week? 👯 Especially if you didn’t have to give up half of your income or benefits to do it? 💸 The best-kept flexible work secret is out! 🤔🗣️ If you’ve never heard of job sharing, you are not alone. I stumbled onto it in my early twenties when a single mom and new mom two desks down job shared together, which was my proof it was genius and the seed to do it myself once my daughter was born years later.🧐🌱 It is exactly what it sounds like: a partnership between two people to share the responsibilities of one full-time position. Whether you’ve just learned about job sharing (like, this instant) or you’ve been thinking about creating a job share 🤔 but you’re overcome by what to do to find a partner or putting it out there, I’ve got just the thing to help you learn a whole lot more and get started…💡 Just comment “BOOTCAMP” and I’m happy to send a special invite straight to your DMs 💌 ----------------------------------- 👋 I’m Melissa, founder of Work Muse. Our job share coaching, training, and programs support caregiver employees from parental leave through eldercare and help you retain & recruit diverse talent. 🔔 Follow me for more tips to live life + slay work 📖 Ready to kickstart a job share? Join my Bootcamp @ the link in my bio 🔄 Repost to help me spread job sharing with your network #jobshare #worklifebalance #flexibleworking

My WHY for job sharing (and the apple 🍎 of my eye) on the first day of daycare (I did not take her) and the first day of her senior year of high school. (On the right) Her dad took her because I worked a half hour across the city. She refused the bottle although I’d been working on it for weeks and weeks. So I found myself driving back and forth that first week just to feed my infant. When I got home that night, she was hugging a little frog stuffy, and I burst into tears. I’d never seen her hug a stuffed animal. The next months were a literal blur. I was running and gunning up and down the building to a far away office I’d been allowed to pump in, trying to keep up with 4-6 times a day to pump in between sales calls, meetings, and work. If you hear sarcasm in the word “allowed,” you’re right. I was downright miffed after my return when another manager told me I’d caused a real issue emailing to ask for a private area to pump in (versus my cubicle! 😬) before my return. Apparently, they had multiple meetings to figure out a solution. Today, much like those first months of her daycare, feels like a blur. It goes by SO fast. Senior year and then college. It will be here in a blink of an eye. But for her first 9 years, it was as if I waved a magic wand and actually slowed down time. One thing changed EVERYTHING. When my baby girl was 6 months old, I jumped on the opportunity to job share working half the week, then handing over my work baton to my partner every Wednesday for 4 days OFF every week to not miss any more moments. I retained my full-time benefits and we worked so productively that by the end of year one, I’d made 90% of my previous year’s income. 🤯 But even better, I could unplug to leave work at work 💯 knowing my partner was a total pro and had my back. I wanted TIME more than anything else with my sweet baby. I wanted to be present, joy filled, peaceful for her and with her. I didn’t want to take one minute for granted. I job shared nearly a decade with four talented job share partners before starting Work Muse to empower others to experience the true work-life balance I’d found with job sharing—without sacrificing a career they’ve put years into. So on this first day of my smart, kind, passionate daughter Iris’s senior year of high school, I have no regrets knowing I intentionally designed a professional life that valued ALL the roles I hold, including mother. She’s ready and I’m so very proud of her! 🦋 ----------------------------------- 👋 I’m Melissa, founder of Work Muse. Our job share coaching, training, and programs support caregiver employees from parental leave through eldercare and help you retain & recruit diverse talent. 🔔 Follow me for more tips to live life + slay work 📖 Grab my FREE guide "The Work Muse Guide to Job Sharing" @ the link in my bio 🔄 Repost to raise awareness of job sharing #jobshare #futureofwork #worklifebalance

Yes, men can #HypeWomen. Let’s celebrate allies in gender pay equity like (Yes!!) Flavor Flav 👏👏👏 H/T Female Quotient: In May, US polo team captain Maggie Steffens asked for financial help on Instagram. Flavor Flav – William Jonathan Drayton Jr – answered the call: “As a girl dad and supporter of all women’s sports, imma personally sponsor you, my girl, whatever you need. And imma sponsor the whole team.” Flav signed a five-year sponsorship deal to “elevate the visibility and excitement surrounding water polo in the United States.” The sponsorship includes personal appearances and financial contributions to help with equipment, facilities, and anything else they need. This is how it’s done 👏 #genderequity #payequity

Tell me your experience with job sharing—not part-time working—rather, two professionals leveraging two skill sets to super charge their careers in one full-time role. Have you job shared? Do you know someone doing it? Would you want to share your job if it meant you got high impact work with part-time hours? The peace of mind that full-time continuity when you’re not at work would bring you? Job sharers Paige Wilson & Heather Lonsdale break down HOW you work in a job share for the Work Muse Job Share Project. Their job share was a ‘pure’ job share where both partners were 💯 interchangeable, working 3 days each with 1 full day of overlap for handover. Here are a few things that may surprise you about how job sharers work differently… Job sharers: → Work an efficient, focused condensed workweek—typically 3 days a week → Don’t schedule doctors appointments or errands during their workweek → Cut out long lunches, the water cooler, and unnecessary meetings → Problem solve together and go to their bosses for help much less often than FTE → Cover one another when needed and take much less time off for sick, personal, or vacation → Lift the entire team with their enthusiasm for results. They have the time they need to rest, recharge, and return to work with brilliant ideas each week💡 On #WorkwivesWednesday, I’m sharing advice and examples of job share teams and their bosses to raise awareness for how job sharing benefits organizations. If you’d like to check out advice from more job share leaders and their employers, here’s a link to see our case studies: https://lnkd.in/gtx_ZhEv ----------------------------------- 👋 I’m Melissa, founder of Work Muse. Our job share coaching, training, and programs support caregiver employees from parental leave through eldercare and help you retain & recruit diverse talent. 🔔 Follow me for more tips to live life + slay work 📖 Grab my FREE guide "The Work Muse Guide to Job Sharing" @ the link in my bio 🔄 Repost to raise awareness of job sharing #jobshare #FutureOfWork

When I was pregnant for the first time, I requested that my boss sign a contract promising my clients wouldn’t be siphoned off during my maternity leave. He laughed in a good-natured way while deflecting by saying, “Oh Melissa, you have nothing to be worried about, you’re a very good employee.” But ultimately, he went along with it. I was a media marketing and sales professional and my clients’ marketing expenditures made up 100% of my income. Even one client taken and given to a new hire or to retain a disgruntled employee could have made a significant difference to my income. It may seem cynical, but I’d seen account shifts happen many times in my industry, and maternity leave was the perfect time to do it—when the employee is absent and focused on their infant and all their demands and less likely to fight back. They might even be banking on the idea that you’re going to quit because you’ve become a parent. In fact, my boss (whom I adored BTW) would often say to me while pregnant, “You’ll just leave (when the baby gets here), they all do.” I repeatedly and emphatically emphasized that I was the breadwinner and my income was very important to my family. What’s more, that I loved my job and had zero intentions of staying home. He was a middle-aged white man with a stay at home wife and this was his belief. The problem was in the power he yielded and actions he could have taken due to it. Aside from my specific industry, the Motherhood Penalty happens to women ALL the time. It’s so pervasive that every single woman starts thinking about it from the moment she finds out she is pregnant. We have to carefully maneuver how and when to tell and how to get through it all with our jobs and income intact. That’s right, every single one of us. Thankfully, I came back, my job intact, but sadly, my boss was no longer there… There’d been a company-wide buyout and I returned to a more diverse group of managers with a gay female Market VP. My new boss had twins on the way and had worked with a high-performing job share team in Seattle. He enthusiastically supported me as I negotiated my first job share working 3 days a week with a partner I could hand over my work baton to every week in our 24/7 radio world. We split our commission 50/50 and retained FT benefits with prorated sick and vacay. By the end of year one, we’d worked so productively and efficiently, I’d made 90% of my previous year’s income. By the time I was pregnant for the second time, I no longer had to worry about the Motherhood Penalty at all. I was about to begin my second job share, and my partner Ginny had my back 💯—working hands-on with all of my clients as if they were hers because very soon, they would be ours. I could finally breathe easy. ----------------------------------- ✅ Follow Work Muse to learn more about job sharing 📖 Grab my FREE guide @ link in my bio 🔔 Follow me for tips to live life + slay work 🔄 Repost to share this tip with your network

Did you know that the U.S. had a FULLY FUNDED CHILDCARE SYSTEM, set up in mere weeks during World War II? That’s right. When women had no choice but to work in place of their husbands, the U.S. government of the 1940s stepped in to fund childcare. When an even larger global crisis hit in March of 2020, and parents were given their biggest blow yet with a paper thin social safety net… I thought, “This is it. The dam is bursting. The government’s got to do something NOW.” Too little, too late. Remember the child care subsidy paid directly to parents that then vanished into thin air?! —At a time when upwards of 3 million mothers were forced out of the workforce. A gut punch for women everywhere when for the first time EVER, we outnumbered men in the workplace in December 2019. I thought, “Now things MUST change.” Now that the Biden funding to private childcare centers ended in September, millions of children lost childcare overnight with the childcare funding cliff. CARE CANNOT WAIT. Being a parent in America is a losing proposition. Without government funding for parental leave, childcare, and eldercare—working parents (especially mothers) will continue to be royally screwed. Both women and men are in the workforce, the school day is shorter than the workday, and childcare is prohibitively expensive (if you can even find it to begin with.) It’s time for change. I’m one of a sliver of women who discovered, self-advocated, and fought handily to work in a job share arrangement to advance my career with the time (and lower childcare costs) to raise my children. I held onto it tooth and nail, through top to middle management swinging door changes and through several partners in our churn and burn media industry. It wasn’t always easy, but I fought as if my life was on the line, to keep it. In many ways it was—my family’s livelihood, my sanity, my ability to raise healthy well-adjusted human beings. I knew it was all on me. Nobody was coming. But now, we are at the tipping point. I know as a sandwich generation dual caregiver, I will be voting in November with care as my #1 issue.🗳️ How would YOU like to see the childcare crisis addressed? Let me know! 👇🏻 ----------------------------------- 👋 I’m Melissa, founder of Work Muse. Our job share coaching, training, and programs support caregiver employees from parental leave through eldercare and help you retain & recruit diverse talent. 🔔 Follow me for more tips to live life + slay work 📖 Grab my FREE guide "The Work Muse Guide to Job Sharing" @ the link in my bio 🔄 Repost to amplify care with your network #childcarecrisis #workingmoms #workingparents