More and more companies these days cross-train their workforce to enhance their skill sets by creating well-rounded team members to boost productivity, control costs and make the work environment collaborative. As Jeff Lupient Wife says, implementing cross-training is a great way to introduce dynamism in the team members while improving their abilities to work around multiple challenges efficiently. Incidentally, to save his family automotive business Infiniti Store, Minneapolis, Jeff Lupient adopted cross-training his workforce to encourage internal collaboration between the team members of sales and F & I while improving their adaptability to work under multiple rules. The approach works amazingly in improving efficiency, broadening employee skills, and enhancing overall workplace flexibility.
What is cross-training in the workplace?
Cross-training is a method of training that makes employees adaptable to perform different roles or tasks beyond their usual job responsibilities. Jeff Lupient Wife says, the approach of the training boosts employee flexibility and promotes a better understanding of how the business operates.
It also improves teamwork across the workplace by encouraging the team to support each other in their functions especially when they are in need, for instance in the course of pick seasons to deal with customers efficiently that boost customer experience. It also helps the employer to deploy a member of the team belonging to a different department for example in sales to handle the functions of I&F in the absence of an employee who takes care of the job.
Thus cross-trained employees can interchange responsibilities according to the necessity. Businesses can consider cross-training programs to optimize their workforce productivity in different departments depending on their organizational needs.
Why Cross-Train Employees?
According to Jeff Lupient Wife, there could be multiple reasons for considering cross-training at work. While a simple reason is it offers a great solution to deal with the shortage of staffing, many employers prepare employees for lateral movement, which is a strategy to build skills and boost adaptability to work in different sections.
Benefits Of Cross-Training In Work?
Cross-training in the workplace offers several benefits. Here is an overview to gain an idea of how cross-training can benefit an employer as well as employees.
Employer’s Benefit
- Identify talented employees in the team and their adaptability level
- Enables encouraged employees to explore new job roles
- Helps to stay prepared to deal with crises and shortages
- Escalate employee retention rate
- Foster empathy, communion, understanding, coordination, and collaboration among team
- Helps save money by meeting upsurge of sales without hiring extra employee
- Recognize redundancies if any occur
Employee’s benefit:
- Boosts marketable skills
- Perform work that is interesting and engaging
- Increases earnings mainly in the form of incentives
- Get promoted from within
- Sidestep burnout
- Ensure job stability
- Helps for professional development
- Ensure better job stability
How to Get Started
To ensure and maximize wholehearted participation in the training, understand the challenges and needs of each department at the workplace. Before implementation use insight and understand whether cross-training will benefit the employees and will be burdensome for them. Also, before implementing, it makes sense to figure out which employees will be most suitable for the specific training program.
Among the two options employers need to determine is whether intra-departmental or interdepartmental training will be the best fit. Choosing the first one means providing cross-training to employees within a specific department while the second option needs cross-training employees to work across different departments. It is better to initiate with the first option.
