For HR leaders who believe their organization’s hardest workers will stay regardless of conditions: Mary Kaye Stuart was one of them. Talented, committed, genuinely devoted to her role, and on a path toward a health crisis driven directly by the unsustainability of the workload. Without a structural flexibility option, her employer would have lost her. With job sharing, they retained a high performer, gained a succession-ready team, and built a coverage model that outlasted either individual. This episode is the business case in human form.
In this episode, Mary Kaye Stuart and Sommer Hruska share their job share journey with me.
Why This Matters:
What drove two high performers who loved their work to make a change: a cardiologist’s direct warning about longevity, a husband’s unexpected death, and a 67-acre farm with young daughters—the kind of life circumstances that show up in your workforce’s private calculus every day
How the job share arrangement Sommer Hruska and Mary Kaye created addressed the root cause of her burnout rather than treating the symptoms
The succession planning value that emerged unplanned from a cross-generational job share pairing
What their employer saw when Mary Kaye and Sommer hit the ground running—surpassing goals by 150% within the first six months—and why their manager said: “They have got a pep in their step. Look at them. They are rocking their business. What are they doing?”
Resources:
Explore job sharing: workmuse.com
Episode Website: workmuse.com/41
Transcript here.
