2 Bank Executives Break Ground by Becoming Job-Sharing Vice Presidents
“We are two dynamic professionals at BankBoston with 35 years of combined experience in the areas of team management, customer service, sales, operations and financial management,” their unblushing letter to the bank’s top executives began.
The Sept. 26, 1997, letter explained that the two experienced branch managers sought “a combined position” that could enable them to “add significant value to the corporation” and added politely, “We are currently exploring various options within the bank.”
Nobody would miss the significance of that last phrase and, as co-author Cindy Cunningham acknowledged in a recent phone interview, “We were prepared to leave if it wasn’t going to work out.”
No ranking BankBoston executives had ever attempted job sharing, they said, but Cunningham and Shelley Murray gambled that the times were changing. And they were right.
The two vice presidents, both married with children, each had been putting in workweeks of more than 50 hours. As Murray put it: “I was having to budget time to buy a gallon of milk. We didn’t want to leave our personal lives behind. We wanted to fight for balance.”
The initial reaction to their letter was mixed. “Some people were incredibly supportive, but others couldn’t understand,” Murray recalled.
Within a few months, though, the two executives were promoted to vice president for global foreign exchange, a key post that generates about one-third of the bank’s foreign exchange revenue.
They split the 50-hour-per-week job, taking turns in the office--except for Tuesday mornings, when they both attend meetings and “strategize for the coming week,” Cunningham said.
However, the partner who is at home is available by phone, fax and e-mail and will come in if there’s an emergency. “But we respect each other’s time off,” Cunningham said.
People who job-share must bond closely with their partner. “Cindy and I trust each other implicitly with the other one’s decision,” Murray said. “We are a seamless team and we have created a seamless vision.
“We are showing that ‘seat time’ is not needed,” Murray added. “You don’t necessarily need to be here working from 6 in the morning to 6 at night [every day] to get the job done.”
Even if they put in fewer hours, the job sharers say that when they are in the office, they are “on the ball” at all times. “We get in between 6:30 and 7 o’clock in the morning and we’re on from the minute we get in there. We don’t do anything personal and you have us 100%,” Murray said.
As their new job is more challenging, she said, “we are very passionate about it.” What’s more, since it involved a promotion, both women are jointly earning more money today than they made as branch managers. And the job came with full benefits.
One advantage of the shared post is that it eliminates battling traffic two days a week between their suburban homes and Boston--giving each extra hours of family time.
“The impact at home has been tremendous,” Cunningham said. “My children are at the ages when they are involved in sports after school and homework. That’s difficult to manage when you’re working full time.” What’s more, Cunningham said, she now has time to “give back to my community.”
As for Murray, she now attends her son’s soccer and baseball games, and her husband “sees me as more relaxed.”
Reflecting on job sharing, Cunningham said, “It’s more acceptable for women to do it, usually for raising children.
“But our thought is that anyone should be able to do this for any reason, like studying art history,” she added. “If it works for the individual and it works for the business, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be available to anyone.”
Murray and Cunningham are so convinced about the benefits of job sharing, they are writing a book about it.
