On International Women’s Day, Louise Laban, Interim Senior Director of International Marketing for Omnicell International, reflects on the market challenges and what it has been like to progress to a senior leadership role within the organization.

In most of my senior leadership roles I have been either the only female on the senior leadership team or at best one of two. So why do so few women make it to senior roles when compared to their male counterparts? Of course, there are many reasons – the history of time tells us the story - but there is a surprisingly obvious way to help kick start a change and make a difference.

Twelve years ago, I was on a strong career path and knew exactly what I wanted to do.  At the time I was a single parent who wanted (needed) to work at a senior level but also wanted to experience being a parent. I saw a great new role advertised and decided to go for it.  I was successful and was offered the role on a full-time basis.  No matter how much I wanted it, I just couldn’t make it work without resorting to putting my children in childcare for crazy hours.  I was a single parent, with no nearby family support, who wanted to succeed at work and at home.  I took a chance and went back to them with a whole new proposition which meant they only got to hire me if they took on my other half (a brilliant colleague who I had worked with for many years).  That was the deal.  It was a risky strategy but it paid off thanks to an open-minded female senior director who bought into our pitch, could see the benefits and took a gamble.

This opportunity gave us both the chance to grow in senior leadership positions with no break in our careers, experience or CVs.  Importantly this enabled us both to stay on track and not lose mileage as male colleagues drove past at full speed!

The next role we applied for at Omnicell we applied together.  Having worked as a job share for a few years we knew exactly what we had to offer and we knew it was powerful.  Who could refuse two great candidates for the price of one?  Omnicell had never considered this as an option before but they were prepared to listen, be open minded and learn from our experience. 

After five years we were ready to go it alone again without having to work our way back up the ladder or having missed out on progression. We are both still working for the business today.

My situation was more than 10 years ago and astonishingly nothing has changed since then – job shares at a senior level are still not commonplace, why not? 

There is a whole population of brilliant female minds out there who are an untapped market for senior leadership roles. This is a group of gifted people have worked hard to get to where they are but are often overlooked because at one point in their career they were unable to conform to the norm of the archaic fetters of the workplace.  These are people who have chosen to have children but who don’t want to ‘put their careers on hold’.

I read a lot of appalling stories on social media about how women lose their jobs whilst on maternity leave, get overlooked in restructures or don’t get promoted when they return but I don’t hear much at all about people who want the right to apply for or keep their prized jobs but also need to work part time to provide childcare for their children.

Often just as women’s careers are set to fly they are presented with no other options but to either put their children in 12 hour per day childcare or choose a role that has less responsibility and accountability but more flexibility. Why should talented people have to make the choice between missing out on the early years of their children’s lives, pausing their careers for five years or taking a role they are over-qualified and underpaid for? These are all terrible options.

Businesses need to think like grown-ups and act strategically - the workplace needs to wake up to the benefits of job sharing at a senior level. This was a game changer for me and my own career when I became a parent - a short term solution where everyone won but this isn’t just about women who choose to have children.  Everyone at some point in their lives may not be able to commit to a 40-hour week for a whole host of reasons but still have a lot to offer the workplace.

If a recruitment agency could offer any business a candidate that had ‘double’ the talent, brain power, perspective, experience and empathy than any other candidate in the market they would bite their hands off.  Instead employers too often think about themselves – ‘We’d have to update two people so it will be double the work for us’ or ‘I’d never be able to keep a track of what each person was working on’ or ‘who would have accountability’.  A great job share takes the responsibility for all the logistical stuff and makes it work for the benefit of the business.  For employers they get two minds who can bring much more than any one person can.  It seems like a no brainer so why do we rarely see this arrangement in senior roles?

Personally, I’d like to challenge some of our big employers to take a leaf out of Omnicell’s book and learn from my experiences to see the full potential out there - they’re missing out!  Senior leadership job share opportunities should be open to both women (and men) who have a lot to offer, don’t want to make the decision to pause their careers but do need to find balance at certain times in their lives. Covid has taught us we can all work in different ways, let’s take a fresh look and change the narrative what flexible working could really mean.