Job Rotation: Advantages and Disadvantages

1. Helps Managers Explore the Hidden Talent: Job Rotation is designed to expose employees to a wider range of operations in order to assist managers in exploring their hidden talent. In the process, they are moved through a variety of assignments so that they can gain awareness about the actual working style of the organization and understand the problems that crop up at every stage. Through this process, managers identify what a particular employee is good at and accordingly he or she is assigned a specific task. 2. Helps Individuals Explore Their Interests: Sometimes, employees are not aware of what would like to do until they have their hands on some specific job. If their job is rotated or they are exposed to different operations, they can identify what they are good at and what they enjoy doing. They get a chance to explore their interests and hidden potential. 3. Identifies Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes: Job Rotation helps managers as well as individuals identify their KSA (K nowledge, Skills and Attitudes). It can be used in determining who needs to improve or upgrade his or skills in order to perform better. This helps in analyzing training and development needs of employees so that they can produce more output. 4. Motivates Employees to Deal with New Challenges: When employees are exposed to different jobs or assigned new tasks, they try to give their best while effectively dealing with the challenges coming their way. It encourages them to perform better at every stage and prove that they are no less than others. This gives rise to a healthy competition within the organization where everyone wants to perform better than others. . Increases Satisfaction and Decreases Attrition Rate: Exposing employees to different tasks and functions increase their satisfaction level. Job variation reduces the boredom of doing same task everyday. Moreover, it decreases attrition rate of the organization. Employees develop a sense of belongingness towards the organization and stick to it till long. 6. Helps Align Competencies with Requirements: Alignment of competencies with requirements means directing the resources when and where they are required. It assesses the employees and places them at a place where their skills, competencies and caliber are used to the highest possible extent. Advantages(http://smallbusiness. chron. com/advantages-disadvantages-employee-r otation-18994. html) 1. Depth In its â€Å"Job Rotation Makes You a More Valuable Employee† article, temporary staffing industry founder Kelly Services points out that job rotation provides the employer greater depth at positions across the company. By moving employees around, the company develops more workers with skills in each area. If an employee requires a leave of absence, goes on vacation or needs a day off, it's good to have several capable replacements to step in and take on the work. 2. Employee Development With job rotation in place, employees can move around and avoid falling into a rut in one position. Over time, employees develop more skills in a wider array of positions. This provides job stability and equips them for better opportunities to earn promotions. All of these advantages, and better overall development, makes employees more valuable to their employers. 3. Employee Resistance. Job rotation is sometimes met with resistance from employees in certain situations. Experienced employees who are comfortable in their positions are often reluctant to rotate into other spots. Dan MacLeod and Eric Kennedy also noted in their publication, â€Å"Job Rotation System Report to XYZ Co. ,† that employees who use equipment and materials in their daily work have a hard time giving up their materials to others rotating in. 4. Training A job rotation strategy comes with costs. When you move employees into multiple positions, you must invest time and money into training the workers in all those positions. This not only includes costs for the employees who are rotating, but also the time of the managers and others who must train the employees in each area. A related concern is that some employees aren't good fits in certain positions within the company, regardless of the training program's effectiveness. Disadvantages Frequent interruption Job rotation results in frequent interruption of work. A person who is doing a particular job and get it comfortable suddenly finds himself shifted to another job or department. This interrupts the work in both the departments Reduces uniformity in quality. Quality of work done by a trained worker is different from that of a new worker . when a new worker I shifted or rotated in the department, he takes time to learn the new job, makes mistakes in the process and affects the quality of the job. Misunderstanding with the union member Sometimes job rotation may lead to misunderstanding with members of the union. The union might think that employees are being harassed and more work is being taken from them. In reality this is not the case. Experienced workers not wanting to learn new types of work.