First Experiences in the USA: Does Jobsharing Really Work?

First Experiences in the USA: Does Jobsharing Really Work?

Once I had discovered the roots of jobsharing in California, an obvious question arose during my research: did the idea merely sound good — or did it actually work in practice? After all, this was not some minor detail of work organisation. Jobsharing meant something quite radical: two people voluntarily sharing a qualified position — with shared responsibility, shared coordination, shared knowledge. Would that work in everyday working life — or was it bound to fail? As I worked my way through American research reports, it quickly became clear to me: in the USA, people had long since begun to investigate this question. And the results surprised me.

Who Were the First Jobsharers?

In 1978, the research and consultancy team “New Ways to Work” in San Francisco conducted a study in the private sector. As I read the findings, a picture of those early pioneers slowly formed in my mind. Most teams consisted of women — around 77 per cent, predominantly between 30 and 40 years old, frequently married and well qualified. Almost 90 per cent held a university degree. I found that alone remarkable. Because even then, something was becoming apparent that is still underestimated today: jobsharing was by no means only a model for simple tasks. Those involved worked as teachers, administrators, consultants, social workers, researchers, technicians — and even in management positions. More than a third had staff responsibility. As early as the late 1970s, jobsharing was reaching qualified roles and management levels — long before the prejudices I would later hear again and again in Germany. Jobsharing found its partners — sometimes with the help of a card index One detail fascinated me in particular. Teams did not come about by chance — those involved first had to find a suitable counterpart. Today we would speak of matching platforms. Back then there were already institutions doing exactly that: organisations such as “New Ways to Work” in San Francisco or the Lansing Women’s Bureau in Michigan maintained dedicated partner-search card indexes. Reading that made me smile. Because many years later, this very subject was to occupy me intensively myself — the question of how people find suitable jobsharing partners. At the time, I had no idea that partner matching would one day become a central part of my own work.

Levi Strauss — an Exceptional Company

In the American private sector, jobsharing initially remained the exception. Levi Strauss in San Francisco was one of the few large firms that actively promoted it: With its own internal matching programme, the company specifically supported employees in finding suitable sharing partners — rather than leaving it to chance. In most other companies, by contrast, such arrangements arose purely from the initiative of individual employees. In its early days, jobsharing lived above all from people who wanted to take new paths — not from established corporate structures. The public sector as a large practical laboratory My research became even more interesting when I came across the experiences of the public sector. Since 1978, jobsharing had been officially permitted in the American federal administration on the basis of the “Part-Time Career Employment Act”. It was practised in 24 of the 50 states. California documented its results in particular detail: an official report from 1980 showed that 198 people were already working in a jobsharing model — at different levels of the hierarchy. The results: higher performance, fewer absences, greater job satisfaction. As I read, it became clear to me how different the American debate was. In Germany at that time, jobsharing was viewed primarily as a labour market policy instrument. In the USA, the discussion was about productivity, motivation, recruitment — and about what an organisation stands to gain from it.

Why Did Jobsharing Work?

One finding came up again and again in many of the studies: the positive results did not come about automatically. Successful jobsharing had prerequisites — a strong commitment to performance, flexibility, the ability to work as partners. And: the attitude of managers played a decisive role. Jobsharing needed trust, coordination and openness. Perhaps that was precisely why this subject fascinated me more and more. The more I read, the clearer it became: jobsharing is far more than a working-time arrangement. It is a particular form of collaboration — with its own rules, its own culture, its own potential.

In the next part: how did these experiences reach Europe — a Robert Schuman fellowship gave me the answer.