Job rotation is a central element to the Social Democrat-led Danish
government’s fight against unemployment. Experience has shown it to be
one of the most effective tools for securing work experience for
unemployed and newly educated people, and job rotation is highly
praised by trade unions, job centres and experts alike.
One of the latter is Henning Jørgensen, Professor at the Centre for
Labour Market Research, CARMA, at Aalborg
University:
“Job rotation is a splendid instrument which targets young and old
and kills two birds with one stone. It combines the efforts to get
people employed with efforts to increase employment,” says Henning
Jørgensen.
Paid temp
Job rotation allows a business to send its workers on courses for
skills development while taking on someone without a job to cover for
them. That person is provided by the local job centre, which will also
covers some of the cost. As a result there are few or no real costs to
employers when they send workers on courses and get a temp to cover.
Job rotation has also proven to be one of the most effective measures
to get unemployed people back into the labour market.
“There is real evidence that job rotation works. It is a Danish
invention which was being used a lot in the 1990s, when the rest of the
Nordic region and the EU was inspired by our actions. We unfortunately
almost allowed the system to be forgotten, even though it proved to be
very effective,” the Professor says.
He is happy that job rotation is again becoming a political
priority, and would like to see a more systematic gathering of evidence
of how effective job rotation can be. The only recent major research
was done by the Nordjylland employment region in 2012, which turned out
some impressive results: more than six in ten long term unemployed
people became self sufficient after taking part in job rotation.
Tricky start
The government has granted several hundred million kroner to job
rotation schemes several times in recent years. In May of this year the
Danish parliament granted an extra 120 million kroner (€16m) to job
rotation work. More than 300 million kroner (€40m) has been set aside
for job rotation in later years‘ budgets, in the emergency package and
the youth package.
Despite all the economic support, businesses have been slower than
expected to adopt the job rotation scheme. Private companies are
particularly cautious. Some fear too much red tape.
Henning Jørgensen says the scheme is a slow starter also because
businesses have been making cuts to further training during the crisis,
and many job centres have had very little contact with businesses.
“Municipal job centres have had next to no contact with businesses
in later years, and that is a major problem. Job rotation is dependent
on close cooperation between a business and the job centre in order to
find unemployed people with the right skills to fit in as job rotation
temps.”
The Professor is happy that the Minister for Employment, Mette
Frederiksen, has launched a thorough investigation of job centres and
told them to spend more time cooperating with businesses.
