Cross-training is a technique employed by some organizations in which an employee spends some time doing—or at least trains to do—work in a different business function. For example, a marketing employee might spend some time working in the operations group. A finance employee might spend time with the sales unit. The same process can be effective within the same function. The graphic designer might work on search engine optimization for a while, for example.
There are a number of very real benefits to cross-training employees:
Redundancy
Too many organizations don’t consider the impact of losing a key employee and having a key position unfilled while they scramble to hire and train a replacement. While having employees spend a week or a few hours over the course of 1 month in a different role certainly isn’t the same thing as having a clone of the departing resource, it can make a big difference to have a resource or multiple resources available who can step into that newly empty role temporarily, share the responsibility with other cross-trained employees, or support a new hire during the transition.
Mitigate Job Fatigue
Particularly when it comes to job roles that involve a lot of repetitive work, cross-training can be a nice break in the routine. The Balance, writing about employee cross-training, notes that “learning [a] new job can keep [employees] stimulated and reduce worker boredom.” For example, an airline employee working as a baggage handler could be given a stint at the check-in desk, followed by time as a gate agent. While any one of those positions could be seen as repetitive, not spending too much time in any one role can help mitigate the feeling of monotony.
Holistic Understanding of the Organization or Department
Many employees spend their entire tenure with an organization in a single business function or even a single position. By cross-training employees, staff members get a big-picture view of the organization and can better understand where their role fits in with the organization as a whole. This will influence their decision making if they can put their actions and choices in the context of the entire business instead of their individual unit.
Increased Collaboration
Relatedly, when different business functions don’t fully understand or appreciate the role other functions play in the organization, it can be easy for misunderstanding and resentment to set in. For example, the operations group might resent the burdens placed on it when the marketing group develops a new marketing plan that necessarily involves developing new products or services that aren’t entirely part of the current offering. Conversely, the marketing group might feel hamstrung by an operations department averse to change. Both departments are focused on the success of the company, but they don’t understand or appreciate the challenges of the other group. Cross-training creates opportunities for different business functions to work together more effectively through shared experiences and mutual understanding.
Cross-training employees is a great practice any organization can employ. It will certainly pay dividends when it comes to redundancy, group cohesion, organizational knowledge, and even employee morale.