Are Employers Abusing Crossing-Training?


Highlights:

  • Cross-training is an agile tactic used by employers to prevent gaps in performance and productivity
  • Cross-training is beneficial because it allows employees to learn new skills
  • Cross-training can be detrimental if used as a long-term fix causing employee burnout

Cross-training employees is a tactic used by employers for the past decade. In the ideal world, cross-trained employees can be agile enough to fill in the gaps whenever an employee is sick, on leave, or during a hiring process. It has shown to be incredibly beneficial to the employer and, if done correctly, the employee.

However, there has been an unsettling trend where employers who cross-train employees do it to avoid hiring for a new position. It has put more work on the employee unrelated to their job description but somehow falls into the “all other duties as assigned.”

It is yet another factor that burns employees out. Employers are asking employees to perform at all levels of the organization at any given moment, and it’s literally sucking all the energy out of their best employees.

Stop abusing cross-training to avoid your employees leaving. If 50% of an employee’s job is unrelated to their job description, it requires a reassessment of organization/department needs, the employee’s job description, and potentially arguing for a new position.


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