When the first of my three daughters was born, I worked in account service four days a week at Melbourne creative agency Big Red. I was on the Coles account—yeah, it was big. And it was in 2015, when working four days a week was unusual in the industry. Actually, being a working mum at all was rare and I never saw job sharing.
Big Red was incredibly supportive of my status as a Return To Work Mum (and respected my Fridays at home making play doh and cupcakes.) But there were challenges. With a client-facing role, I was often the first point of contact for any urgently required Curtis Stone style TV or radio ads, something you can’t plan for at the start of the day.
I’d often be dashing out of the office at 5:45pm to get to childcare before it closed. My husband and I started leaving our car in front of the childcare centre before peeling off to work. We’d call each other at 5:30 to see who could leave their job first to pick up our little one.
It felt chaotic and dependent on clients’ whims and things out of my control. So last week when comms expert Lucy Bradlow and investment banker Bronwen Bock announced a plan to run for the inner-Melbourne federal parliamentary seat of Higgins as independent “job sharing candidates”, it was a lightbulb moment.
Could job sharing work in the ad industry?
Especially post-Covid, when we all know how to work from home remotely and have systems in place to do it.
I founded recruitment business Talent Run in January. What I’m seeing is most agencies require employees to be in the office four days a week, minimum. While flexibility is here to stay—I know from experience nobody will blink an eye if you duck off to a kinder parent/kid yoga class!—I believe our industry will eventually go back to the pre-Covid five days a week in the office.
What does this mean for mums, at a time the ABS tells us women spend four hours and 31 minutes a day doing unpaid work activities including childcare, and men spend an hour less doing the same things?
We already see many women over 30 leaving the industry because it’s challenging to manage both a career in advertising and a family. A 2023 study by US industry group She Runs It showed a sweeping global exodus by women from marketing, media and adtech.
Among the women who do stay and reach senior levels in advertising, the demand for roles with reduced working days is increasing. Right now, I’m speaking to many female candidates who want extra flexibility and to work three or four days a week, with a maximum of three in the office.
These are women with experience and expertise who want to maintain a foothold in the industry. Interestingly, in my four months of running Talent Run, only one man has asked for a four-day job, and he was seeking an operations/traffic role.
For mums, managing a career and pre-school children is actually the easiest time (minus the sickness). Childcare opens long hours and there’s no demands for theme days, school holidays and fundraisers. These years feel hard at the time—but wait until they start school.
Our girls’ school start time is 9am. Makes it impossible to make a 9am standup or client meeting. The last bell comes before you’ve stopped for lunch. Seeing how many tutors and extra-curriculars you can squash in—netball, violin, ballet—is a mug’s game many of us play.
So. Job sharing. Bradlow and Bock could turn out to be pioneers as well as politicians.
Firsthand, I’ve seen it work successfully in print production at CHEP Network Melbourne, where Loreta Zaruski and Connie Leone, both mothers, share their role 50/50. They’ve been job sharing for 17 years.
Yes, there are logistical challenges. What about the missed water cooler conversations or client meetings? And do you have separate or joint email addresses? But for women who pull off daily miracles with scheduling, cooking, shopping and keeping other humans alive while looking after paid roles, such challenges are probably child’s play.
Certainly, I’d welcome any like-minded/similar level candidates to apply for roles as a team in a job sharing capacity. What a statement this would make for our industry and the agencies like CHEP that supports it.
Amy Lee is the founder of Talent Run. She is passionate about the industry, in particular supporting mums returning to work.