Cross-Training: Get a Home Run with All Your Bases Covered
 In previous editions of Training Focus, we have shown you some methods of finding your ideal staff and keeping them on your team. So what's the next thing you can do to make the most of your employees and bring out the best in them – for the benefit of your center?
At ALLIANCE, we know that it’s important for your center’s employees to be cross-trained. When your employees are cross-trained on the many varying duties at your center, your operations will run smoothly, no matter what situation may arise. This practice is especially important at smaller operations, where the absence of one staff member can make a great difference.
Take a look at the guidelines we’ve created to help you cross-train your staff and keep your center running as effectively and efficiently as possble. |
 Why Should I Cross-Train My Staff?
Cross-training keeps your employees from getting bored. It lets both your employees and yourself find out what other talents and special abilities they have that might as yet be undiscovered. They’ll also appreciate your assistance in making them more marketable. Best and most importantly of all, it ensures that your bases are all covered at your center, should one of your employees call in sick or be unable to perform a duty normally assigned to him or her. By cross-training your staff, you create greater flexibility and make your job as manager that much easier. |
Method One: Job Enlargement
 Job enlargement is the horizontal expansion of a job. This entails the addition of tasks and that are on the employee's current level of skill and responsibility. If your center’s receptionist takes phone calls and operates a switchboard to put callers in touch with you and other managers at your center to make appointments, teach your receptionist to book the appointments. You’ll save your potential clients the hassle of speaking to yet another person as they set up an appointment to take a tour of your center or use your conference space or other amenities. Small companies may not have as many opportunities for promotions, so using job enlargement as an employee motivator is ideal.
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Method Two: Job Enrichment
 Job enrichment is the vertical expansion of a job. This entails the addition of tasks that give the employee more control and/or more responsibility. For example, you may teach your staff-client liaisons to enter data into your specific programs, rather than have them submit the data to other staff members who then have to enter the information.
Use job enrichment to make work more challenging and rewarding for your employees, and make it easier to keep them as part of your staff.
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How Do I Get Started?
Cross-training should be carefully planned and presented as a learning opportunity. It should be incorporated in a center’s master yearly training plan, covering all positions and departments. It should begin with supervisory levels and filter down to entry-level positions. Managers should train with staff members giving tours to potential clients and vice versa, front desk staff should cross-train in Marketing & Sales and vice versa, and so on.
 Sending people to work in another department at a moment's notice is not what cross-training is about. In order for cross-training to work, there must be an effective planned process. Employees must believe in the idea, be encouraged to give feedback and make suggestions for improvement. Your employees then become "partners." Departmental communications meetings can be used to share lessons learned. Employees who previously thought that "the grass is greener on the other side” soon realize their mistake after exposure to other departments. As a result of cross-training, employees return to their jobs with a better attitude.
Some centers may even opt for a more sophisticated level of cross-training, job rotation. In this methodology, employees rotate in job roles for extended periods of time (one to six months). Your employees will not just function as trainees, but will actually be responsible for certain job functions for which they must prove themselves.
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And now for ALLIANCE’s quotable quips on experience:
 Experience is:
...directly proportional to the amount of equipment ruined.
...something you do not get until just after you need it.
...what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old ones.
...what you get when you were expecting something else.
...knowledge acquired when it's too late.
...that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when you make it again.
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