In the US, New Ways to Work was founded in California by three mothers, who invented jobsharing and promoted other types of flexible working.
NWW was set up in California by Barney Olmsted, Suzanne Smith and Sydney Brown, who saw the need for alternatives to the 40-hour week, especially for women who were just entering the workforce.
NWW was a non-profit – their work began “with the invention, promotion, and definition of job sharing as a way to help women and others balance work with the rest of their lives”.
“The solutions promoted by New Ways to address these social and economic realities would literally revolutionize the workplace, and change forever the concept of ‘putting in a full day’s work’. Strategies such as job sharing, work sharing, flextime, phased retirement, compressed workweeks, and various types of leaves have benefited employee and employer alike – win-win arrangements now all common practice in workplaces around the world.”
New Ways to Work still exists today, and is now focused on youth employment.