Work-sharing

Work-sharing means that multiple people take partial charge of a task in order to reduce an individual’s workload.

Overview of Work-sharing
Work-sharing aims at continuous employment and job creation by reducing labor hours per worker and by making multiple workers share a certain volume of employment. The labor force is shrinking because of the falling birthrate and aging population, and also employment demand is decreasing because of economic recession; due to these circumstances, work-sharing aims to appropriately apportion employment.

Work-sharing as a Measure against the Falling Birthrate and Aging Population
To deal with issues caused by shrinking labor force, rather than increasing an individual’s workload, work-sharing aims to diversify working styles in order to secure work force by involving people with no or limited work opportunities despite their willingness to work.

Work-sharing as a Measure against Economic Recession
Upon the decrease of the absolute volume of work, rather than discharging employees to adjust excessive labor power, work-sharing makes it possible to coordinate quantity of work, particularly hours of work, among employees and to maintain employment. Measures against decreased work volume due to economic recession are as follows.


 * 1) The Government increases the amount of work to make it correspond to the amount of workforce.
 * 2) Companies reduce workforce to make it correspond to the amount of work.

Total Amount of work = number of workers * amount of work per worker

Based on the equation above, two solutions below are considered to reduce workforce according to an amount of work:


 * 2-1 Coordinate workforce by means of dismissal (Reduce workers)
 * 2-2 Coordinate workforce by means of work-sharing (Reduce workload per worker)

Some people are afraid that their salary will decrease, but research agencies report that most people “accept.”

Classification of Work-sharing
Techniques to carry out work-sharing can be classified into six types as follows:


 * 1) Creation of employment by reducing hours of work: Every worker reduces hours of work to secure employment.
 * 2) Job sharing: Several workers carry out a single task to secure employment. Evaluation and compensation are also done for groups of multiple workers.

Reducing predetermined hours of work of all employees makes it possible to create new employment for the decrease in hours of work; this is a kind of work-sharing.


 * 1) Part-timers for early retirement: Let middle-aged and older workers take early retirement, and so they can be hired as part-timers.
 * 2) Variety of work style: Introduce short-time work, such as part-time jobs, and thereby diversify work styles in order to provide more people including women with job opportunities.
 * 3) Temporary workers in place of regular workers on vacations with pay: Let regular workers take paid vacations to make it possible to hire new people to supplement the lack of workforce.
 * 4) Use of career break: Let workers take a career break of one or two years to hire new people to supplement the lack of workforce.

BPM as a Measures for Introduction of Work-Sharing

 * How to proceed the Process
 * Who carries out what Tasks
 * Who should have what resources and privileges.
 * How to grasp the execution situation of Tasks.

In BPM, the points above are clearly defined, and the business execution is controlled by software. If BPM satisfies these conditions, work-sharing can be smoothly introduced. Also slotting participants in charge into appropriate groups enables the allocation of appropriate Tasks and necessary resources. Moreover, access privileges can be strictly managed according to posts.

In addition, to enable us to grasp execution situations of the business, most BPMS software, which supports execution of BPM, is equipped with monitoring feature. Administration over work by teleworkers such as homeworkers, IT Application Control using software, such as BPMS, is indispensable. Besides, Business Process Diagram itself represents business in easy-to-understand manner, so it can be used as an instruction manual for employees.

Business Process That Goes Well With Work-sharing
Work-sharing can be easily implemented in case of well defined business processes. At the moment of introducing work-sharing, it is advisable to satisfy the following conditions;


 * Little implicit knowledge regarding business execution
 * Clear definition of accomplishment

Meeting these conditions leads “visualization” of business, and also such business processes are preferable in terms of management. Process design should aims at this type of processes.

Examples of business processes
 * Drafting [1]
 * Analysis of websites [2]

Related Articles

 * Business Process
 * IT Application Control
 * Teleworker
 * Homeworker