Cross-training employees helps businesses deal with key employees leaving or taking extended time off by ensuring that someone else can take over their responsibilities. It results in stronger, more productive teams as employees gain an understanding of each other's roles. Managers should implement cross-training programs by identifying essential job tasks, prioritizing them, and training multiple employees to share responsibilities for tasks rather than have just one backup for each role. Getting employee feedback during the process can help address any resistance.

1. The Best Backup
Idea – Cross-
Training Your
Employees
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2. Business goes off-track when a
key employee quits or takes a
long vacation.
O Most businesses operate with leaner
teams, making each employee a vital part
of the mix.
O In such a case, when one employee is
unavailable, there’s no one else who
could take over his responsibilities.
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3. What results? Lean
productivity. Really bad for
business, huh!
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4. There’s always a solution. If
managers cross-trained
employees so there’s always at
least one employee who could
take over the responsibilities of
another, it will be the best
backup for the business.
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5. Priorities shift quickly in a
constantly-changing business
environment. It is here that
cross-training will prove to be
absolutely useful.
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6. Really Helpful? Is It?
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7. Duh! Cross-training has immense
benefits for corporations, especially
those with smaller teams and
limited workforce.
It helps build stronger teams because
employees get to know the challenges
faced by their colleagues in their
respective job roles.
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8. This motivates them to be
supportive of one another,
increasing work efficiency.
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10. As Jerry Osteryoung, professor of Entrepreneurship and
Finance, Jim Moran Institute for Global
Entrepreneurship, points out,
“Benefits of cross-training include corporate
readiness when there is a need to fill the shoes of an
employee; providing more variety in employees’ work,
which typically results in happier and more productive
workers; and the interaction of employees, which
builds a sense of teamwork within and between
departments as each employee becomes more
aware of what other employees and departments do.”
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11. Despite its utility, cross-training is a magic
leadership tool that most managers and
supervisors, unfortunately, tend to overlook or
underestimate.
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12. In fact, what many fail to realise is that cross-training
outweighs the results of other
methods aimed at enhancing team
performance.
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13. Okay, Got It. So, How Do
I Get It Done?
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14. As a manager or an HR professional, that’s
exactly what you could be thinking.
Developing a cross-training program for an
enterprise isn’t that difficult if you get certain
nuances right.
A cross-training program cannot be designed and
implemented at short notice, that too during a period
of crisis.
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15. Managers need to be ready beforehand
and implement the program after
careful planning. Before initiating such
a program, there are a few decisions
that the organization needs to take.
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16. For instance, it will have to decide who is
eligible for training, whether the training is
to be restricted to specific job roles, whether
it will be voluntary or mandatory, the
protocols that need to be set in place for the
implementation of the program, etc.
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17. Step-Wise Please!
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18. O The first action that is
mission critical to the
implementation of a
cross-training
program is the
drawing up of a list of
tasks and functions
that are vital for the
business’ daily
operations.
O These tasks need to
be prioritized so that
essential tasks can
be included in the
training program.
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19. Once the tasks are decided and
prioritized, it will be possible to match
the tasks which require cross-training
coverage with the employees who are
to be trained.
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20. O Instead of simply
training one
employee to handle
another’s task, it is
better to train a
number of
employees for
various components
of a task so they
can pitch in
together and
responsibilities are
shared.
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21. Throughout this process, managers need to be
ready for some resistance and some employees
may give a less enthusiastic response,
especially employees who feel that the whole
process involves training their replacements.
In fact, employees shouldn’t be made to feel that the
company is developing their replacements, but rather
they should be made to feel that their jobs are highly
critical and therefore there is a need for backup in their
absence.
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22. Taking regular feedback
from team members on all
aspects of the cross-training
program will be of
immense benefit.
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