JOB-SHARING

noun Also written jobsharing or job sharing (Business World) (People and Society) A working arrangement in which two or more people share the hours of work, duties, and pay of a single post. Etymology: Formed by compounding: the sharing of a job. History and Usage: The idea of job-sharing has been discussed since the early seventies, but was rarely put into practice before the early eighties. In the campaign to attract more women back into the job market, job-sharing offers greater flexibility than the traditional approach of one person, one job, but it requires considerable co-operation between the job-holders (or job-sharers). The verb job-share has been back-formed from job-sharing, and job-share is also used as a noun, for the post affected by job-sharing, in attributive phrases such as job-share scheme, or as a synonym for job-sharing itself. In the UK a programme of job-splitting (in which employers were given incentives for splitting full-time posts into two or more part-time ones) was tried in the mid eighties. John Lee...said at Jobshare's national launch in Manchester...the job-splitting scheme...had not been a big success. Independent 7 Apr. 1987, p. 5 Many are women who left teaching to have a family and have not returned. To attract them back there will need more flexible working hours (both job share and part-time), refresher courses and priority in the queue for nursery school places. Guardian 18 July 1989, p. 22