Manufacturers continue to struggle to find qualified workers, so any strategies for improving employee retention are welcome. One such strategy is cross-training. Done right, it can enhance productivity, facilitate process and product improvements, improve customer service and increase profitability.

Employee benefits

Cross-training simply means training employees to perform tasks outside their normal responsibilities. The potential benefits for production and customer service team members include:

More Engaged Workers
Helping workers develop new skills can make them feel more valued and create opportunities for them to progress within the company. In addition, implementing a job rotation program as part of the cross-training process can help avoid worker burnout and improve job satisfaction, which can enhance employee retention rates.

Greater Productivity
Cross-training allows your business to do more with fewer people. And if certain work is delayed or dries up, you can shift multi-skilled workers to other positions rather than having them sit idle or letting them go. Cross-training also ensures that production will not grind to a halt if certain workers are unavailable or absent.

Flexible Scheduling
By ensuring that multiple people are available to perform various tasks at any given time, cross-training provides manufacturers with greater flexibility when it comes to scheduling.

Better Collaboration
Cross-training provides workers with a deeper understanding of their coworkers’ roles within the company and how their own roles fit into the company’s overall operations. This encourages workers to share knowledge and suggest ideas about how to eliminate waste, increase efficiency and improve products.

Improved Customer Service
Having multi-skilled workers on hand can enhance customer service and minimize disruptions in service when one employee leaves.

Management benefits

Cross-training is not just for workers on the factory floor. It can also help you build a productive, engaged and flexible management team. You will be able to do more with a leaner management team, and team members can fill in when others are on vacation or out sick. Plus, it prepares your team to help train new managers when someone leaves the company, smoothing the transition and reducing your costs.

Plus, just as it does with shop-floor workers, cross-training your management team helps them better understand their roles in the company. It can encourage the sharing of knowledge and ideas, as well as promote a unified vision of your company’s future success.

How to start

Begin your cross-training program by creating a list of the various positions within your company, together with detailed job descriptions. This documentation will provide some structure for your cross-training program while preserving “institutional knowledge” that can help guide your workforce in the future.

For more information, contact Harry Fox at [email protected] or 312.670.7444. Visit ORBA.com to learn more about our Manufacturing and Distribution Group.