The objective of cross-training employees is to boost their versatility by upskilling and spreading their knowledge, making them perform a diversity of jobs. For example, upskilling the ability and knowledge of a cashier to deal with customers as a counter salesperson. Similarly, the salesperson should be trained to deal with the cash department.
Apart from avoiding departmental soils, cross-training makes employees flexible, smarter, and faster and thereby increases the productivity of a business. Although there are certain limitations of cross-training, however when administered strategically, effectively, and with insight, it is beneficial for employers, and employees while enhancing customers’ experience. Being in the chair interim GM of his money-losing family automobile business Infinity Stores, in 2007, Jeffrey Lupient successfully implemented cross-training for sales and I&F team and thereby overhauled the company and made it profitably running.
According to Lupient, the idea of cross-training employees is to ensure that they can perform job roles outside their regular tasks whenever required. Doing so benefits the company in effectively handling a shortage of staff due to sickness or being on leave and also enhancing customer’s experience by providing them with faster services, especially during the peak seasons. Precisely it is the secret key to boosting the effectiveness, efficiency, and flexibility of employees working in different departments. Lupient also says that almost all businesses can adopt cross-training programs for their employees and leverage the benefits of the practice through insightful planning and execution. Following are 6 tips to implement employee cross-training.
- Set the objective of the program
Establishing the objective of a cross-training program for a team of an organization is the primary task. Identifying the goal will help to define the program clearly and enable businesses to customize it suiting to its needs. Managers should share the subject with the employees involved in the task or team. To accomplish the goal, employees need to have a clear understanding and the right attitude to be cross-trained.
- Identify employees for cross-training
First of all, an employer needs to identify the areas or departments that need cross-training the most. The reasons might be under-staffing or scalability depending on the ups and downs of sales or lack of skilled employees. All these problems can be effectively handled by properly implementing cross-training and enjoying improved productivity. Participants need to be selected depending on their knowledge, ability, and interest in upskilling.
- Motivate employees to participate
In general, most employees tend to perceive the training as an escalation of their work, so, make sure to let them understand how participating in the training can benefit the company as well as them. For example, this will help them in career advancement, professional development, or increase their earning level. Instead of employing new employees launching special incentive schemes is a great idea to motivate employees to join cross-training, which not only enhances their skill sets but also makes the company profitable.
- Use only experienced staff to train
When it comes to choosing the trainer, make sure to pick an individual who is well-familiar with how the functioning of the company. Also, the individual needs to understand the core purpose of cross-training for specific departments. According to Jeffrey Lupient, for small or medium companies, the employers can play the role of coach as they can address the issues much better.
- Implement a job rotation program
Job rotation refers to the practice of regularly moving employees between different departments within the establishment to ensure they gain knowledge and exposure to the role played by other employees. Lupient considers that instead of transitioning employees between departments which means setting the job rotation program across the organization, it is the best practice to keep it limited within a specific department.
- Review the progress
Once implemented, employers and relevant managers need to review the success of the rotational program and evaluate the performance of every employee involved in the training.
To conclude, depending on the necessity, an intra-organization job rotation program can be implemented. Cross-training throughout the organization is not only elaborate but extremely complex as well. So, it makes sense to try intra-departmental job rotation for upskilling employees to make them more versatile, productive, and agile.
