Why should you implement a job rotation program? What results will you have? Perhaps you’re trying to implement a job rotation program and need management buy-in—how does such a program fit into your overall HR strategy?
Job rotation programs can impact an organization in a number of ways. Some of the biggest benefits come from increased customer loyalty, decreased costs of turnover, and a stronger talent pipeline.
- Increased customer loyalty. “Most organizations have goals for repeat customer business . . . Repeat customers of course stem from having consistent and great experiences within your organization.” Dr. B. Lynn Ware explained in a recent BLR webinar.
“It’s really about the customer experience and user experience (etc.) all around that leads to engaged customers and people coming back to do business with you . . . What job rotation does – the way that it connects to the repeat customer goal or success of that goal in your company – is that it makes sure that people who are in a job are trained properly.” - Decreased costs of turnover. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show that employee mobility is greatly increased in younger generations. Employees in the US aged 18-35 change employers on average after less than 2 years in any given job. This ties into job rotation because employers need a plan to handle absences and turnover.
“You need strategies to get people up to speed quickly in their roles, and productive quickly because you don’t have a large amount of time to get a return on that investment of recruiting the person [and] training the person. You want them [to be] 100 percent productive as quickly as possible in the role. So, this could actually be done as part of an onboarding experience for employees.” Ware advised. Job rotation programs also improve employee engagement, which could drive down the amount of turnover overall. - Stronger talent pipeline. Great leaders need great people to lead. Exclusively focusing on the top of the house may not encourage the promotion and development at other critical levels of the organization. If succession work – including the use of job rotation to plan for an individual’s next role – reaches down to high-potentials lower in the organization, you create a stronger talent pipeline. It is healthy to breed talent management into lower levels of the organization and create a targeted updraft of talent.
For more information on implementing a job rotation program, order the webinar recording of “Job Rotation Programs: Lighten Workloads and Lessen the Impact of Turnover.” To register for a future webinar, visit http://catalog.blr.com/audio.
Dr. B. Lynn Ware is an industrial/organizational psychologist with experience in the talent management field. She currently leads Integral Talent Systems, and her focus is on how to leverage the company’s investment in people to generate stronger financial outcomes.