Return to search

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

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 and
to explain why Job-sharing would be an appropriate and feasible solution to unemployment,
massive retrenchments, poor quality ofwork life (QWL) and low worker productivity
Job-sharing has been used in many developed countries to address a variety of problems at the
individual, organisational and national level. These include allowing workers to have a balance
between their work and non-work life; to increase worker productivity and QWL and to increase
employment opportunities.
The literature survey affirms that these problems are prevalent in Africa as a whole and in South Africa
specifically. The survey results reveal that the environment in South is Africa is conducive to jobsharing
and that slightly over one third of the workers and organisations and two thirds of the jobseekers
are willing to job-share. The results of this study also reveals that QWL, productivity and
unemployment does influence the willingness to job-share and that approximately 80% of the
employees would rather either job-share, work-share or opt for some other alternative than to
have retrenchments. Thus by implication, job-sharing would address the problems relating to poor
QWL, low worker productivity, fewer employment opportunities, as well as massive retrenchments
in South Africa. The study has also explored possible reasons and obstacles to job-sharing and found that whether
these are perceived as significantly important or not, depends on whether one is an employer, employee
or job-seeker . The job-seekers feel more than others, that there is no reason insurmountable or
obstacle preventing the introduction of job-sharing by which to avert their unemployed status. There
are also differences in willingness to job-share among subgroups with regard to the industry, area
of work, position held in the organisation and the availability of job-sharing positions in the
organisation. This thesis reports that there is potential for job-sharing in the South African labour
market, to address a variety of problems pertaining to workers, organisations, job-seekers and,
therefore, the whole nation at large. / Business Management / D.B.L.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:unisa/oai:uir.unisa.ac.za:10500/17565
Date02 1900
CreatorsNgambi, Hellicy Chakosamoto
ContributorsRall, P. J.
Source SetsSouth African National ETD Portal
LanguageEnglish, English
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
Format1 online resource (xvii, 358 leaves)

Page generated in 0.0027 seconds