Employee rotation allows companies to considerably decrease turnover rate, reduce the amount of time a position remains vacant, and help a company to identify talented individuals that they can nurture for particular job roles (Arya and Mittendorf 407). The technique entails rotating employees through a variety of jobs during their tenure in a company. Though beneficial to operations, employee rotation is not a panacea since some positions within a business require specialized skills that a worker cannot be easily trained to do.
Impact of a Flexible Workforce
Employee turnover is a regular aspect of operations since workers tend to resign or get fired from their positions for a wide variety of reasons. Unfortunately, when a person does leave the company, a gap in operations emerges that can impact the operational efficiency of that department.
The time it takes to hire a new employee as well as their training and transition period can result in an unacceptable performance loss based on the amount of time a position was left open. Using employee rotation strategies can help a company avert such a situation since it allows workers within the enterprise to gain experience and expertise in different positions in various departments of the company (Ortega 1361).
However, as explained above, there are noteworthy limitations to this practice, namely, there are always specialized jobs that cannot be readily filled in by an employee on rotation. Employee rotation practices are thus more suited towards managerial supervisory or other positions that do not require training periods exceeding one month (Ortega 1361). Despite this limitation, the use of employee rotation programs does reduce the amount of time that a particular position goes unoccupied thereby resulting in a lower rate of operational efficiency decline (Ortega 1361).
Identifying Skilled Employees
Assigning employees to different job roles over the course of their tenure in the company allows HR departments to identify the proficiency of a worker when it comes to accomplishing different tasks and projects that are outside of their original job description. For example, an employee that works as a minor managerial assistant may be very bright and talented in customer service or quality assurance (Kruse 3). Through the use of employee rotation, proficiency can be identified thereby allowing the company’s HR department to determine a proper path of career progression for that employee (An-Tien and Hui-Yu 1108).
Lowering Turnover Rates
One of the most common reasons why employees resign from their position at a company is a lack of sufficient fulfillment (Bhadury and Radovilsky 4432). What companies need to understand when it comes to their talent management practices is that employees suffer from a series of diminishing returns when it comes to the fulfillment they derive from their respective jobs. While in the beginning employees feel the greatest amount of interest and satisfaction with their job roles in the company, the longer they remained on their position the lower their work enthusiasm becomes, which contributes to the turnover rate increase at a company (Ayough, Zandieh and Farsijani 653).
Employee rotation programs are a necessary operational aspect that needs to be implemented where expediently since the variety of job roles given to a worker helps to sustain their interest in what they do resulting in lower turnover rate (Bhadury and Radovilsky 4432).
Conclusion
Overall, this article has shown that employee rotation is an essential practice that all companies should consider. It allows a company to develop the flexibility of its workforce, lowers instances of declined performance, as well as sustains the interest of employees which helps to curtail the number of individuals that leave due to dissatisfaction with his or her assigned tasks.
Works Cited
An-Tien, Hsieh, and Chao Hui-Yu. “A Reassessment Of The Relationship Between Job Specialization, Job Rotation And Job Burnout: Example Of Taiwan’s High- Technology Industry.” International Journal Of Human Resource Management 15.6 (2004): 1108-1123. Print.
Arya, Anil, and Brian Mittendorf. “Using Job Rotation To Extract Employee Information.” Journal Of Law, Economics & Organization 20.2 (2004): 400-414. Print.
Ayough, Ashkan, M. Zandieh, and H. Farsijani. “GA And ICA Approaches To Job Rotation Scheduling Problem: Considering Employee’s Boredom.” International Journal Of Advanced Manufacturing Technology 60.5-8 (2012): 651-666. Print.
Bhadury, J., and Z. Radovilsky. “Job Rotation Using The Multi-Period Assignment Model.” International Journal Of Production Research 44.20 (2006): 4431-4444. Print.
Kruse, Kevin. “12 Effective Ways To Engage Employees.” Health Care Registration: The Newsletter For Health Care Registration Professionals 21.11 (2012): 3. Print.
Ortega, Jaime. “Job Rotation As A Learning Mechanism.” Management Science 47.10 (2001): 1361-1370. Print.