Job Rotation

The job rotation model was mainly developed and implemented as a labour market instrument in the Scandinavian countries. Its principle consists in substituting an employed person who is participating in temporary qualification by a person who is seeking employment. For the enterprises, the advantage lies in a reduction of lost work time. For the persons seeking employment, the advantage lies in the opportunity of expanding their professional experience and increasing their chances of being taken on by the enterprise following their substitution period.

However, due to its high administrative and financial costs, the job rotation model should not be regarded as a panacea but as a specific answer to concrete needs. It needs to be accompanied by adequate measures such as regulations concerning leave for further education, fiscal privileges and direct financial support for all participants. A further problem lies in the fact that the instrument only makes sense if the substitutes already have corresponding professional experience since their preparation for the vacant job is cost and time intensive. Therefore, orientating and coaching those substitutes during their time of employment as well as payment matters are issues.

Firms that have gathered experience with this instrument have begun to develop more extended training programmes for their staff and to increase the number of their regular staff, with the objective of substituting their absent staff that participates in longer term training by this excess number of staff. The advantage of this is that those substitutes know the enterprise better and do not have to be trained each time they are employed.

In general, job rotation models are suited as a temporary measure for larger enterprises, for mergers and in individual cases to facilitate a new start for persons seeking employment. The challenge is to develop this model further and to ensure that it will not only be applied in public and subsidized areas but will also be acknowledged as a helpful instrument by the enterprises.

See here for experiences from the German Land Northrine-Westphalia. 

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