Job-sharing in the South African labour market : its potential, feasibility and impact on unemployment, productivity and quality of work life

摘要

The primary aim of this survey is to:* explore whether there is potential for job-sharing in the South African labour market;**describe the characteristics of potential job-sharers andto explain why Job-sharing would be an appropriate and feasible solution to unemployment,massive retrenchments, poor quality ofwork life (QWL) and low worker productivityJob-sharing has been used in many developed countries to address a variety of problems at theindividual, organisational and national level. These include allowing workers to have a balancebetween their work and non-work life; to increase worker productivity and QWL and to increaseemployment opportunities.The literature survey affirms that these problems are prevalent in Africa as a whole and in South Africaspecifically. The survey results reveal that the environment in South is Africa is conducive to jobsharingand that slightly over one third of the workers and organisations and two thirds of the jobseekersare willing to job-share. The results of this study also reveals that QWL, productivity andunemployment does influence the willingness to job-share and that approximately 80% of theemployees would rather either job-share, work-share or opt for some other alternative than tohave retrenchments. Thus by implication, job-sharing would address the problems relating to poorQWL, low worker productivity, fewer employment opportunities, as well as massive retrenchmentsin South Africa. The study has also explored possible reasons and obstacles to job-sharing and found that whetherthese are perceived as significantly important or not, depends on whether one is an employer, employeeor job-seeker . The job-seekers feel more than others, that there is no reason insurmountable orobstacle preventing the introduction of job-sharing by which to avert their unemployed status. Thereare also differences in willingness to job-share among subgroups with regard to the industry, areaof work, position held in the organisation and the availability of job-sharing positions in theorganisation. This thesis reports that there is potential for job-sharing in the South African labourmarket, to address a variety of problems pertaining to workers, organisations, job-seekers and,therefore, the whole nation at large.