Disrupting terrorist plots has to be one of the most important jobs in the country, so it may surprise you to know that this vital role at the helm of Britain’s signals and cyber intelligence agency is not held by one person, but by two part-time staff.
Vicky and Emily are GCHQ’s Deputy Counter-Terrorism Directors – one of the very first job-sharings in an operational intelligence position at such a high level. They spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity.
They use sophisticated analytics to support military operations and help the government respond to shifting geopolitics to reduce the threat of terrorism at home. GCHQ works with MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service on terrorism, cyber-attacks, serious crime and espionage.
The couple first met and bonded about a decade ago while being posted to the United States for part of his career. They made the decision to apply together for the current position as a promotion or not at all in May 2020 when the pandemic hit.
“Vicky’s baby was only a few weeks old, so at first we weren’t sure if the timing was working for us,” says Emily. “And of course she was sleep deprived and exhausted from caring for a newborn and toddler with minimal resources [Covid-dictated] support, so we practically knew it was going to be difficult,” she adds.
“Vicky was a soldier and vividly remembers writing a résumé at 3am after a late night feeding!”
As with many job shares, this work pattern was then negotiated while one half of the couple literally held the baby – babysitting the other child during an evaluation day for the role. Which might sound all too familiar.
Both working parents work 28 hours a week. Together they have more than 30 years of national security and intelligence gathering experience.
Monday is “crossover day” and they use one email address “in both our classified and unclassified inboxes,” which Vicky says means people never know which of the two is replying.
They use Monday to plan the coming week in the office and meetings allow them to address threats, discuss any issues that develop over the weekend and take stock of counter-terrorism strategy with the folks in Whitehall.
“This means we can discuss the full range of our top-secret workload, and we make sure we do it together in the office where we have access to classified systems,” they say.
They also meet with the Senior Leadership Team “where we take stock of changes brought on by the terror threat, operational issues, partnership opportunities and threats,” and they take time to discuss the well-being of their teams.
The fact that this GCHQ job share exists at all reflects how radically the pandemic is tipping the job market in favor of a few skilled professionals.
In 2021 there were 122,000 people on jobshare contracts in the UK, up slightly from 119,000 in 2020, according to official figures. The vast majority of job advertisements went to women working in education, health and social work.
But now workers’ demand for more flexibility is high. Home working has increased from one in 20 workers before the pandemic to one in five today, and there has been a spate of high-profile co-CEO appointments, partly in response to pandemic burnout.
However, according to a poll by consultancy Timewise, half of the UK public still thinks part-time work at the highest level simply isn’t possible, and almost the same proportion would not give a part-time colleague an ‘important or mission-critical role’.
Nonetheless, there are eight million part-time workers, accounting for around a quarter of the UK’s labor force. And of those, about 750,000 are now in senior positions with strategic responsibility and an average salary of £47,000, according to an April analysis by the Learning and Work Institute.
For the first time on record there are as many job vacancies in the UK as there are unemployed people looking for a job, meaning the ball is firmly in the court of UK jobseekers.
And according to Stephen Evans, executive director of the Learning and Work Institute, “they often push for an open door.” “Recruiters should be proactive in signaling that they’re open to flexible working, and job seekers shouldn’t be afraid to ask,” he says.
It’s not just about working mothers. There is a significant gap between the agreements that all workers have and what they want. According to a recent CIPD survey, flextime is only used by 21% of employees, but 39% want this benefit.
Another high profile couple, Zak Mensah and Sara Wajid are co-directors of the Birmingham Museums Trust.
Working three days a week each, they run one of the largest independent museum trusts in the country, which spans nine locations across the city.
Of the 45 institutions represented on the National Museums Council, it is the only organization led by people of color.
Like Vicky and Emily, they decided to apply for this high-pressure role as a team. Nobody would have done it alone.
The two say the fact that they come from vastly different backgrounds, skills and generations makes them better at their jobs. “So do visitors to our sites,” adds Mr. Mensah, father of two young children.
“2020 has caused us both to reevaluate what’s important in life,” he adds. “There’s a reason there are two pilots in the cockpit!”
While there are clear benefits to job sharing, Heejung Chung, a sociology professor at the University of Kent, urges caution, saying that British work culture still sees “those who ‘show their face’ as productive and engaged”.
This means job sharers not only have plenty of overlap time for handovers, but also work longer hours to have doubly sure stigmatized views are undone, she says.
This is more likely when these dividers are mothers or females. “When [mothers] working flexibly, they are more likely to be stigmatized than, for example, a heterosexual older man who shares the work. People will think he shares jobs as he has a different leadership position that is believed to have a positive impact on job performance.
The reality, however, is that many job shares work better for bosses than blue-collar workers—they get two brains for the price of one.
Professor Chung says that people who share jobs inevitably “work harder and make sure they’re more available than if only one person works to overcompensate.”
But for Emily and Vicky at GCHQ, the benefits come from sharing ideas with each other.
“With the added momentum that job sharing brings, things spin faster and the last hurdles of any problem are bridged,” says Vicky.
But they are strict with work-home limits. “We attend some events together – but we have set a very high limit for that. Non-working days are sacred,” says Emily. “We don’t want to be advocates [for job sharing]when in reality it is not possible to achieve it.”
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