Cross-Training and Job Sharing
What is Cross-training?
Cross-training in business operations involves training employees to engage in quality control measures. Employees are trained in tangent job functions to increase oversight in ways that are impossible through management interactions with workers alone .
Workers working together on an assembly line
Workers on an assembly line, who normally do a single task, benefit from cross-training to develop their skills and be able to work on a variety of areas.
Advantages
The advantages of cross-training employees include the following:
- Helps customers and clients by empowering employees to answer questions about the entire organization
- Illuminates inefficient methods, outdated techniques, and bureaucratic drift, which allows staff to re-evaluate the work methods
- Raises awareness of how other departments operate
- Enhances routine scheduling and enables staff to move around the tasks of the operation
- Better coverage, increased flexibility, and the ability to cope with unexpected absences, emergencies, and illnesses
- Increases the employability of staff who have the opportunity to train in areas outside of their original responsibilities
There are other, more general advantages as well:
- Increased flexibility and versatility
- Appreciated intellectual capital
- Improved individual efficiency
- Increased standardization of jobs
- Heightened morale
Job Sharing
Job sharing is an employment arrangement where typically two people are retained on a part time or reduced time basis to perform a job normally fulfilled by one person working full time. Compensation is apportioned between the workers, thus leading to a net reduction in per employee income. Job sharing should not be confused with the more pejorative term featherbedding, which describes the deliberate retention of excess workers on a payroll. For employees seeking more free time, job sharing may be a way to take back more control of their personal lives. Employees who job share frequently attribute their decision to quality of life issues. Studies have shown that net productivity increases when two people share the same 40-hour job.
However, there is an inherent challenge in making job sharing work for the rest of the company's stakeholders. The hand-off or handover communication between those sharing the job is essential, and co workers must adapt to working with each other. For example, one person is responsible for a task on Monday, but another performs it on Tuesday.