Cross training. I never see it anywhere and it’s so important.

It matters little how  large or small your business may be I see it occur all the time and it goes like this…Paul is out today so we cannot…..(you fill in he blanks) or another rendition of this theme is Phil is on vacation this week we cannot get to this until he returns next week.

Betty had to leave for the day, afternoon, early, whatever, we will get to it tomorrow.

We design our businesses so individuals perform specific jobs. Thus if that individual is unavailable for any reason, that job cannot be fulfilled and production stops at that point, be it manufacturing, service, or internal office paper flow. If Nancy is out bills do not get sent that day, or we cannot look that up.

In other words unless we have full attendance the operation cannot run smoothly. It bottle necks somewhere.

Think about the absurdity of this. If you have ten people working for you and each person has one week of vacation and five days of excused absence for whatever reason this amounts to 5 months of not having full employment and thus things do not flow smoothly, some task can not get done, completed, processed or even started. It waits, for the person to return so the business can do its job as designed. That’s nearly half a year of inefficiency, lower productivity, and making some one unhappy as the job will not proceed as planned, or the task will simply not get done until later, whenever that may be.

Is this a way to run a business smoothly and effectively? Of course not but this is how its done all the time everywhere I go.

Productivity and customer service seems to be a forgotten concept, when it comes to this issue or perhaps one never considered. It seems that busness owners accept this issue as part of the business dilemma. It must be so it is.

I guess no one ever considers of the concept cross training. Everyone seems to be a specialist doing one thing and that’s it. So here it is: if every job or specific task is learned by at least one additional person, when the primary person is out for whatever reason it may be, the secondary person cross trained to perform the task can leap in and save the day getting the job done, and through the bottle neck so work continues and productivity remains high despite the absence of a key player. Smoother production, greater productivity and happier customers. Also a better bottom line.

Every job in the business flow should have a trained back up so any job can be completed under any circumstance. A manager can make the decision when to call in the substitute and how to best allocate the human resources, but the key point is if the investment in cross training is made, the manager can then make the decision as to how to allocate the talent, at least there is a choice and alternatives.The business remains in the control of management and not the work force.

This will also apply to the occasional situation where a person must be fired. If someone else is cross trained to do the job there is more freedom for the manager to fire when necessary without fear of breaking down the work flow.

If an incentive based reward system has been installed this bit of management prerogative will go along way in maintaining high productivity and reaching ones goals.

It takes time and effort but is well worth the investment.  Cross train your employees so every critical task has a back up person capable of doing the job in a pinch when needed.