Job Share

SASI, Hockey Australia and Diving Australia

Job Share Enhances Teams and Outcomes

Less than 10% of Australia’s top funded High Performance sports are led by female head coaches. Job share arrangements play a critical role in enabling coaches to stay in sport and continue to produce performance results.

Australian Sailing and the Victorian Institute of Sport [VIS] have both created job share arrangements for head coaches that have had a positive impact on the entire organisation.

Job Share in Action 

When Carolijn Brouwer was first offered the role of a full-time coaching position with Australian Sailing she turned it down.

It was a difficult decision for Brouwer to make. The squad she would be coaching was strong, with a “good, passionate, motivated group of girls” Brouwer said. But the travel required for the role wasn’t sustainable for her family.

Brouwer’s partner, Darren Bundock is the Australian National Coach for the Nacra Class. So both Brouwer and Bundock would be travelling for many of the same events, spending significant time away from home and away from their son.

Brouwer’s story could have ended there, if Michael Blackburn, the Technical Director of Australian Sailing, hadn’t come back to Brouwer with a question. “Have you ever heard of a job sharing agreement?”

Brouwer, now National Head Coach for the ILCA6 Class, splits her coaching responsibilities with another coach, Ben Walkemeyer, Ilca who she refers to as her “other half.”

The job share arrangement with Walkemeyer, means they can split travel time, enabling Brouwer to take on the role.

The impact on Brouwer is significant. “It means that I can keep pursuing my goals and my dreams in the sport that I love,” she said.

A job share arrangement also offered Stacia Strain, head coach of the VIS Women’s Hockey Program and National Under 21 Program, the ability to return to her role after maternity leave.

Strain assumed she would be required to take on a full-time position after her maternity leave. Afterall, that’s how the position had always been filled. But instead, Strain was offered the flexibility she needed to come back, through a job share arrangement.

The arrangement has had a big impact on Strain. “It’s just allowed me to have a better balance in my life,” Strain said.

“You do spend a lot of time away,” Strain explained of the travel involved in high performance sport. “Three to four weeks at a time. So then when I come home, I’ve got a better balance in terms of being able to spend more time at home.”

“They made me feel valued. They included me because everyone’s different and everyone’s needs and wants are different.”

The job share arrangement has also given Strain the space to continue to invest in her own personal development. “I’ve done a lot of PD work in terms of leadership development and coaching.”

Job Share Benefits the Entire Team

Job share arrangements, like Strain and Brouwers’, benefits more than just the coaches. Job share allow coaches to collaborate and bring two sets of unique strengths and insights to the role.

Strain has observed that the shared coaching arrangement offers athletes the opportunity to “ask for feedback from different people and understand different communication styles.”

Strain also believes shared coaching fosters an environment that values learning and a growth mindset. It offers athletes the opportunity to see two people work together collaboratively. “I think it’s important, them seeing me be able to take on feedback and change and evolve as a person,” Strain said.

Brouwers has noticed similar benefits for the athletes she coaches. The athletes can learn from “different people that have different areas of expertise within the sport,” she said. Walkemeyer has more experience coaching the ILCA6 Class and Brouwer has more experience at the Olympic level, having been to three games.

“We complement each other, we learn from each other. You bounce ideas off each other. It’s a huge learning environment for everyone,” Brouwers said.

“It sounds really cheesy to say the team together achieves more. But that is really the case.”

The squad has also achieved great performance outcomes during the job share, with all four athletes in the squad making it into the top ten world rankings at different times.

Strain’s job share arrangement also enabled one of the coaches, who provided her maternity cover, to further his development and experience. “By stepping into that role with Stacia he made the transition to being a full-time coach and that’s allowed him to move onto another career opportunity in Australia,” Dave Crosbee, Director of High Performance at the VIS, said. “It’s helped develop other team members.”

Leadership Plays a Critical Role 

Leadership plays a crucial role in implementing job share arrangements and ensuring their success. Crosbee, for example, was a key advocate in offering Strain flexibility.

Strain says that Crosbee and the VIS never assumed what she needed, they asked. “There was a lot of curiosity as to ‘how can we make this work.’”

Key to the success of these job share arrangements is a collaborative approach. “I was really involved in finding someone to job share and creating the role,” Strain said.

“They were really curious to understand what I needed,” Strain said. “It wasn’t cut and dry.” Instead, they asked, “How we can make this work for your individually?”

For Crosbee, there was no question Strain would be provided flexibility.

“It’s a no brainer if you’ve got somebody you value, you put in place processes and environments to allow them to continue in their role,” Crosbee said.

“We value Stacia and the role she’s providing as a coach is really important. Her as a person is really important to us. So we need to find out how we can support her to go through this process.”

“The sport, not just the VIS, has retained a talented female coach and she’s been able to continue to develop her career. And the athletes in the VIS program have had minimal disruption to the support they’ve received coaching.”

Looking to the Future 

Strain was initially surprised at the level of flexibility and support the VIS were eager to provide upon her return to work. “I hadn’t seen it done before. I was the first job share in our network [both hockey and the VIS].” As Strain says, “If you don’t see it, you don’t believe it.”

But Strain notes an increase in these types of arrangements. “There’s a lot more females now job sharing, working part-time.” Strain was also able to share her experience when a female coach from another institute came to her with questions. “I spoke to her at length about how the process worked with me […] and about how to have the conversation and who to speak to.”

On advice to other organisations, Crosbee says, “Listen, ask questions and be open to what the possibilities are.”

Strain agrees that for these arrangements to work, they need to be collaborative, and encourages coaches to advocate through solutions. “Don’t go in with the question, go in with the answer, a solution.”

Crosbee sees creating inclusive environments for coaches to return to work as a critical issue.

“If we don’t address it, we’re essentially closing off the talent pool. We’re shutting the talent pool off by 50% because if there’s no option for females to have children and continue coaching, why would they even step into that coaching space? And that’s just a massive loss for the sporting world and the athletes,” said Crosbee.

Brouwers’ story is a testament to that. Without the ability to split travel time with a coaching partner, she would have had to turn down the role. “It [job share] gives me the opportunity to stay in the sport a lot longer than I maybe initially envisaged,” she said.

Job share arrangements offer coaches the flexibility needed to remain in sport. They play a critical role in addressing the underrepresentation of women in coaching roles and can benefit the entire organisation.

As Strain says, “If we want more females  involved in [HP coaching], then they’re going to have to do things differently. So have the courage to do it.”