How to Cross-Train Your Employees

By Maria Valdez Haubrich

You may have heard of cross-training in regard to fitness, but do you know what cross-training can do for your business? When it comes to employees, cross-training simply means training your team to do more than one job. Cross-training has many benefits, both for you and your employees. Here are a few:

• Employees gain new skills and feel a sense of accomplishment
• Employees get better at their jobs when they have to train others to do them
• You have better coverage when employees are absent or ill
• Your workforce becomes nimbler and more flexible
• Your company can provide better service to clients and customers

All of these sound like pretty good things, right? So how do you effectively cross-train employees and where do you start?

Begin by choosing the proper time to implement cross-training. This isn’t something you’ll want to throw at your team during their busy season or most frantic time of the day. Choose an opportunity when there is some downtime so the team can focus on cross-training without worrying about their regular duties. Depending on your business, this might mean cross-training for an hour a day, or doing an intensive cross-training week during the slow season.

Decide who learns what. Employees in the same departments are naturals to learn each others’ jobs. Or you may want employees in different departments, but with related duties, to learn each others’ jobs.

Explain the concept and its value. Some employees may be less than enthusiastic about cross-training because they’ll feel like you’re giving them more work without commensurate pay. Others will feel like it’s an excuse to slack off because someone else will be able to handle their jobs. Explain that this is an opportunity to learn new skills and become more valuable to the company. You want employees to be excited about the concept, so explain how it will benefit them.

Put systems in place and oversee the process. Not all employees are naturals at training, so give everyone a basic system to follow, such as showing them how to create a written “cheat sheet” for key tasks. You’ll also want to observe the training and step in where necessary. Make sure employees get plenty of time to practice their new roles, and give lots of feedback.

Make it ongoing. Hold regular refreshers so employees keep their skills up to date. Also do new cross-trainings when procedures change. Emphasize that learning is continuous and you’ll get more from your staff.

Image by Flickr user aflcio (Creative Commons)

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 10th, 2012 at 6:00 am and is filed under Small Business, small business, Workforce. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.


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