Traditionally, it sticks closely to a schedule that usually does not allow any flexibility at all. Employees who change to part-time work because of changes in their personal circumstances used to be required to transfer to new workplaces.
But Audi has started a pilot project as part of its transformation and it is pioneering potential for flexible work in clocked car production.
An innovative work model in the paint shop at the Ingolstadt site allows shift workers to work part time as well.
Audi employees from every position in the hierarchy and all age levels developed it together with the Works Council and the Institute for Social Science Research Munich under the rubric of the Practical Workplace Laboratory: More Flexible on Shift Duty, which was supported by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.
Trained floaters fill in the gaps in time that arise due to the absence of part-time workers. Those floaters come from areas of the paint shop that are not on the clock, such as trainees, employees with limitations, or people who normally work in the office.
If, for example, a new mother just back from maternity leave is a shift worker who cannot make it to work at the usual start time for her shift because she has to take her child to daycare first, a qualified colleague from the pool subs for the new mother. That way, the floater makes a later – and therefore a flexible – start time possible for the new mother.
As far as experts are currently aware, no other employer in Germany allows employees to help shape the future of their work this way.
The innovative working-time model for flexible shift work is still a pilot project that 16 workers currently benefit from.
At the moment, 30 workers are in the pool. Audi plans to expand working-time models like the one used in the paint shop in other areas of production as well.
