Keeping employees on board for longer than a year or two can be challenging in today’s distracting, fast-paced world. However, finding ways to retain employees is one of the most powerful actions you can take for your business to keep it afloat in the 2020s.
Growth and development are something that the Millennial-majority workforce highly values. Plus, it’s also a constructive way to breed talent within your pool and nurture a healthy, long-term relationship with dedicated employees.
Job rotation describes the systemic maneuvering of employees within an organization to promote healthy change, progression, and improvement of various human resource objectives.
Your company can maintain a constantly self-advancing system with the right attitude towards job rotation and training. This system will keep employees engaged and business operations at peak energy and vitality.
Take a look at this guide to job rotation and how to implement a system that sticks.
How Does Job Rotation Work – And What Makes It Effective?
Job rotation is a particular business strategy that involves rotating employees around different roles and tasks instead of one set position or set of functions for the duration of their career.
It’s a bold, modern, and highly dynamic approach to employee management and growth that values adaptability and innovation above rigidity and steadfastness. Within the structure of a job rotation strategy, employees can gain valuable experience in a more comprehensive range of skills than expected. This keeps them stimulated, motivated, and less likely to leave.
There is plenty of research to suggest that despite its somewhat chaotic exterior, a strong job rotation strategy can lead to significantly higher employee engagement levels, retention, and job satisfaction, along with promoting a generally more flexible and innovative workforce.
Tips For A Successful Job Rotation System
If you’re interested in starting a job rotation training program in your organization, there are a couple of steps you can follow to help you along your way.
1. Outline your objectives
Running a job rotation program can become messy and complicated without a clear understanding of your current situation and what you would like to improve upon. Outlining your objectives will provide necessary insight into how to go about implementing this change.
For example, your focus might be improving employee retention. Or it could be increasing engagement levels. Whatever your company is struggling with most, identifying it will set the tone for your program.
2. Determine which jobs are suitable for rotation
Not all jobs are suitable for getting rotated amongst employees. Many professional roles require years of specialized experience and skill acquisition in order to perform their job well – roles like these won’t work within an overarching job rotational system.
Some roles that tend to work best with job rotation include finance, operations, and information technology.
Remember, many job rotation systems look at the big picture. Instead of rapidly-changing tasks like admin or social media operations, many businesses look at year-long programs that require a few weeks of job rotation training before the actual rotation is set into motion.
The aim isn’t to have employees performing superficial, short-lived tasks. It’s about slowly but surely upskilling their business acumen and promoting a more diversified workforce.
3. Establish clear policies around eligibility
How is your organization going to propose a job rotation system to employees? Will it be mandatory or optional? How long must they commit to each segment of the rotation? Do they get to choose which roles to rotate between, or is the cycle already mapped out?
And then there is the matter of eligibility. Can anyone take part in the job rotation? What are the qualifications they need to participate? Policies around job rotation training will need to be addressed.
These questions will require prudent, sensible answers before a properly sustainable job rotation system can be introduced.
5. Involve managers in creating a specific job rotation program
For a job rotation system to work, there needs to be a mutual understanding of expectations between employees and supervisors. Involving managers and supervisors in your rotation program’s planning process will help clarify objectives and ensure consistency across all job roles.
5. Assess risks and track progress
As one does when implementing any new system in a workplace, obtaining a method for tracking progress is essential for good results – as is performing a risk assessment.
Fortunately, there is a wide range of business operations tracking tools available that can be adapted to a job rotation program. If that’s not an option you’re interested in, drawing up a spreadsheet outlining projections, expectations, and results over the course of a term or year will be a helpful way to understand whether the program is taking effect.
Risk assessment is also an essential part of job rotation strategy, whether for a big or small business job rotation system. Preemptively assessing the areas where you think challenges may occur will help you avoid them in the future, along with measuring their probability.
The Benefits Of A Strong Job Rotation System
If you can get a job rotation system right, there are loads of benefits for both employees and their employers.
Here are the most notable benefits of a good job rotation system:
- Keeps employees stimulated
According to a recent report from Gallup, only 36% of employees feel engaged at work. By regularly taking on new, challenging responsibilities and tasks, employees can enjoy a more dynamic and exciting work experience.
- Promotes career growth
Millennials make up the majority of the global workforce in 2022 and will continue to for some time. One of the things they prioritize most about work is opportunities for growth and development – which is exactly what a job rotation system provides.
- Boosts team spirit
In a traditional job system, roles have clear, static boundaries. While nothing is inherently wrong with that, it can lead to a sense of division amongst employees. Sharing a wide variety of roles and responsibilities between employees brings everyone onto a similar level, promoting a culture of unity and teamwork within the workplace.
- Helps you identify talent
Many people are hired for jobs that don’t represent their full spectrum of skills or limit them in the process. Keeping things shifting and moving allows managers to witness a broader range of abilities from employees. Once their true talents are uncovered, their potential can be unlocked.
- Improves retention rate
Employees provided with growth opportunities are more likely to stay in their current job than find a new one. If your company can satisfy the instinctive need for diversification and variety, it will have a much higher chance of upping its retention rate.
Job Rotation Can Change Your Business For The Better
When applied in the right way, job rotation has the ability to invigorate employees, keep them engaged, more productive, and more likely to remain loyal to their company.
If your company struggles to retain employees, keep them motivated, or regulate their sense of engagement, a job rotation training program could be the key to a better system. With the right strategy in place, any organization can adopt this innovative approach to skills diversification and help promote a better, more inspiring workplace for all.