Cross-training (business)

Cross-training in business operations involves training employees to engage in quality control measures. Employees are trained in tangent job functions to participate in oversight in ways that are impossible through management interactions with workers alone.

Advantages

• Helps patrons/customers/clients in the long run, as employees are empowered to answer questions about the entire organization.
• Requires staff to re-evaluate the reasons and methods for accomplishing their work; inefficient methods, outdated techniques and bureaucratic drift are challenged, if not eliminated.
• Raises an awareness of what other departments do.
• Routine scheduling is enhanced with the ability to move staff about the "Operation".
• Better coverage, increased flexibility and ability to cope with unexpected absences, emergencies, illness, etc.
• Can increase the "employability" of staff who have the opportunity to train in areas they were not originally hired for.

Other advantages include:

• Increased flexibility and versatility,
• Appreciated intellectual capital
• Improved individual efficiency,
• Increased standardization of jobs,
• Heightened morale.

See also

• Interdisciplinarity
• Bus factor

External links

• Cross Training article at restaurantowner.com by John Richardson