Cunningham Cynthia R, Murray Shelley S
Harv Bus Rev. 2005 Feb;83(2):125-31, 150.
For six years, Cynthia Cunningham and Shelley Murray shared an executive job at Fleet Bank. One desk, one chair, one computer, one telephone, and one voice-mail account. To their clients and colleagues, they were effectively one person, though one person with the strengths and ideas of two, seamlessly handing projects back and forth. Although their department was dissolved after the bank merged with Bank of America, the two continue to consider themselves a package-they have one resume, and they are seeking their next opportunity together. Their choice to share a job was not only a quality-of-life decision but one intended to keep their careers on course: "Taking two separate part-time jobs would have thrown us completely off track" they write in this first-person account."We're both ambitious people, and neither of us wanted just a job. We wanted careers" In this article, the two highly motivated women reveal their determination to manage the demands of both family and career. Flextime,telecommuting, and compressed workweeks are just some of the options open to executives seeking greater work/ life balance, and the job share, as described by Cunningham and Murray, could well be the next solution for those wishing to avoid major trade-offs between their personal and professional lives. Cunningham and Murray describe in vivid detail how they structured their unusual arrangement, how they sold themselves to management, and the hurdles they faced along the way. Theirs is a win-win story, for the company and for them.
六年来，辛西娅·坎宁安和雪莱·默里在舰队银行共同担任一份高管工作。一张办公桌、一把椅子、一台电脑、一部电话和一个语音信箱账户。对他们的客户和同事来说，他们实际上就是一个人，不过是一个兼具两人优点和想法的人，能无缝地来回交接项目。尽管在该行与美国银行合并后他们所在的部门被解散了，但两人仍将自己视为一个组合——他们有一份简历，并且正在一起寻找下一个机会。她们选择共享一份工作不仅是为了提高生活质量，也是为了让自己的职业生涯步入正轨：“做两份单独的兼职工作会让我们完全偏离轨道，”她们在这篇第一人称叙述中写道，“我们俩都有抱负，我们想要的都不只是一份工作。我们想要的是职业生涯。”在本文中，这两位积极性很高的女性展现了她们平衡家庭和事业需求的决心。弹性工作时间、远程办公和压缩工作周只是寻求更好工作与生活平衡的高管们可以选择的部分方式，而如坎宁安和默里所描述的工作分担，很可能会成为那些希望避免在个人生活和职业生活之间做出重大权衡的人的下一个解决方案。坎宁安和默里生动详细地描述了她们是如何构建这种不同寻常的安排的，她们是如何向管理层推销自己的，以及她们在此过程中遇到的障碍。这对公司和她们来说都是一个双赢的故事。
