Photo: Angela Nelissen (left) and Christiane Haasis (right) have been in a job share partnership for 15 years.
The way Haasis and Nelissen came together is a story familiar to many in the corporate world. Working full-time in a global role with regular travel, while raising three young children and attempting to care for her unwell father, Nelissen felt she became “the worst version” of herself — in her own words, “a monster.” “I felt like I was awful and didn’t like myself too much,” she acknowledges.
Haasis, meanwhile, had been on maternity leave, and after six months away from work, was starting to field calls inquiring not just about her return date, but whether she was ready to make the jump from mid-management to senior management.
“I had that crucial moment of, ‘This doesn’t feel right, I need to find a new balance between family and work,’” Haasis recalls.
The pair had already worked together peripherally in sales and marketing at Unilever for a number of years, but after they ran into each other at a party and compared notes on their individual situations, they came up with a new idea: a job share. This immediately felt more appealing than asking to go part-time, which they both felt would almost be a demotion.
At the time, says Haasis, it felt “daring and daunting,” as job shares were not yet common in the wider Unilever business. They created a proposal covering the benefits to the company and team, as well as downsides for their bosses, stakeholders, and themselves, and how they would overcome these.
“Unilever was interested in increasing diversity, especially female diversity at a higher level, so they certainly didn’t want to lose any of us,” says Nelissen. “We both had a good reputation in the company individually, so when they saw our vision, they asked us to make it happen.”
Fifteen years later, “Chan,” as the partnership is officially known internally, is now the most senior job share in the Unilever DACHBNX (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg) business, running the ice cream division. They’ve paved the way for 62 other job share couples, consisting mainly of working moms with young children, but also a growing number of dads. The company currently includes 18 job share pairs. All jobs at Unilever DACH are now advertised as “shareable,” and people returning from parental leave are proactively offered job sharing as an option.
“In terms of diversity, job sharing allows us to recruit people externally that are looking for part-time roles — that could be moms, they could also be people, who, for whatever reason, can only work or only want to work part-time. So it allows you to scan a much wider range of people,” says Nelissen.
“You get access to very diverse talent, because you can move beyond the classic nine-to-five career person. Since this started, it’s brought a different breed of people into the business.”