Catherine is a Communications Manager in the NHS. She is married to Paul with three children; Luke (8), Grace (4) and Titus (18 months). "When I first considered talking to my employer about setting up a job-share, I expected to have to do a lot of convincing. Even though I knew that the organisation (the NHS) was forward-thinking and recognised the benefits of flexible working, job-sharing was not common. Perhaps some of my nervousness was due to having been myself a bit sceptical about how the arrangement worked in reality. I worked in a busy communications/press department of a large hospital Trust and loved my job heading up the internal side of the work. Returning to work after the birth of my second child, I realised that fitting everything in was getting harder, but I could just about cope. My decision to job-share came quite out of the blue. It started with a discussion on "juggling" home and work with a colleague who'd also returned recently to work after her third child. We agreed that at least one extra day at home "to get things done" would make all the difference. We talked the same language and the job-share idea came to us almost simultaneously - it just made sense.

Knowing there was a job-share policy, we looked this up and familiarised ourselves with what it said. Before talking to anyone we discussed honestly whether or not we could work together effectively (and happily - very important!). I'd been doing the job we wanted to share full time, so I had to get over any territorial feelings - which in the end didn't take long!

Once we were happy that we wanted to go ahead, the next step was to get something down on paper, outlining how we envisaged the arrangement working so that we could present it to our manager. This gave us an opportunity to talk more about some of the nitty gritty things that can make or break a job-share. It would also demonstrate to our manager that we had considered every aspect, including possible pitfalls. The sort of things we looked at included how we would divide the work, reliable handover arrangements and what was expected of the other when one took leave/was off sick.

We felt quite excited about our project and pretty confident to make the first approach so set up a meeting to do this. Our manager was impressed that we had done so much work in advance and had shown that we had thought seriously about the benefits to the organisation as well as to us as individuals.

We recognised that we would be in the spotlight until we'd proved that the arrangement would work, but made it clear that we were prepared to "go the extra mile" to make it a success.

Our director suggested that we might like to go and meet two women NHS managers who had successfully job-shared in very senior positions over a number of years. This meeting was helpful and very encouraging, bringing up several things we hadn't considered including the importance of assessing our different styles of working and how they could complement each other in different situations. They were also able to give us advice on our new job descriptions - which we virtually wrote ourselves.

It seemed like a lot of talking and paperwork at the time, but I can honestly say that doing all this preparation was more than worth all the effort as our proposal was accepted without a hitch and we were given the go-ahead to get on with it. We were also able to use our documents to check how things were going weeks/months into the job, which saved time later.

We were really fortunate to have such encouragement, but I think our positive and up-front attitude towards the job-share really did help. We were determined to work hard to demonstrate to others from the beginning that the job-share could work and benefit all those involved.

Although I have moved on since then, the job-share still exists and is deemed successful. Hopefully, it will go from strength to strength and encourage others to take the same steps.

In my case the flexible working solution was a job-share, but the following tips are relevant for anyone wanting to talk to their employer about changing their working arrangements:

• Think carefully about what you really want and what will work for you
• Talk things over with your partner/family and friends, if appropriate
• Look at any relevant policies your organisation may already have and use these to guide you
• Do your homework before presenting your proposal eg talk at length with others who have taken the same steps
• Put your proposal down on paper, even if there are still gaps
• Arrange a proper time to see your manager, when they can concentrate on what you have to say - don't drop the idea into the conversation at the end of a long meeting or when you meet in the corridor.
• Be positive when presenting your ideas - don't apologise or make excuses for wanting to spend more time with your family /do other things outside work - your employer will respect you for this."