Meaning, Need and features Job rotation

Job Rotation is a management approach where employees are shifted between two or more assignments or jobs at regular intervals of time in order to expose them to all verticals of an organization. It is a pre-planned approach with an objective to test the employee skills and competencies in order to place him or her at the right place. In addition to it, it reduces the monotony of the job and gives them a wider experience and helps them gain more insights.

Benefits of Job Rotation Policy

• It reduces the exposure to fulfilling the demands of only one job role.
• It minimizes the strain, physiological stress and fatigue associated to one particular job role.
• It reduces the fear of employee to be stuck on high risk job.
• It improves the work efficiency and productivity of employees.
• It increases work flexibility among employees and improve the skill base.
• It provides relief from boredom and complacency.
• It helps to decrease absenteeism and turnover in the organization.

Purpose of Job Rotation Policy

The purpose of job rotation policy is to create a talent pool for organization by cross-training the employees.

Need:

• To create a career path for employees in the organization by rotating their work profile from dead end job
• To provide the employee opportunity to gain new knowledge and job processes.
• To enhance the understanding of the employees about working of the company
• To keep employee motivated and productive, throughout their journey in the organization
• To create unity among employees by providing them a chance to work with each other on different projects

Features:

Succession Planning: The concept of succession planning is ‘Who will replace whom’. Its main function of job rotation is to develop a pool of employees who can be placed at a senior level when someone gets retired or leaves the organization. The idea is to create an immediate replacement of a high-worth employee from within the organization.

Reducing Monotony of the Job: The first and foremost objective of job rotation is to reduce the monotony and repetitiveness involved in a job. It allows employees to experience different type of jobs and motivates them to perform well at each stage of job replacement.

Creating Right-Employee Job Fit: The success of an organization depends on the on-job productivity of its employees. If they’re rightly placed, they will be able to give the maximum output. In case, they are not assigned the job that they are good at, it creates a real big problem for both employee as well as organization. Therefore, fitting a right person in right vacancy is one of the main objectives of job rotation.

Testing Employee Skills and Competencies: Testing and analyzing employee skills and competencies and then assigning them the work that they excel at is one of the major functions of job rotation process. It is done by moving them to different jobs and assignments and determining their proficiency and aptitude. Placing them what they are best at increases their on-job productivity.

Exposing Workers to All Verticals of the Company: Another main function of job rotation process is to exposing workers to all verticals or operations of the organization in order to make them aware how company operates and how tasks are performed. It gives them a chance to understand the working of the organization and different issues that crop up while working.

Developing a Wider Range of Work Experience: Employees, usually don’t want to change their area of operations. Once they start performing a specific task, they don’t want to shift from their comfort zone. Through job rotation, managers prepare them in advance to have a wider range of work experience and develop different skills and competencies. It is necessary for an overall development of an individual. Along with this, they understand the problems of various departments and try to adjust or adapt accordingly.

Advantages of job rotation

Avoids monopoly:

Job rotation helps to avoid monopoly of job and enable the employee to learn new things and therefore enjoy his job

Provides an opportunity to broaden one’s knowledge:

Due to job rotation the person is able to learn different job in the organization this broadens his knowledge.

Avoiding fraudulent practice:

In an organization like bank jobs rotation is undertaken to prevent employees from doing any kind of fraud i.e. if a person is handling a particular job for a very long time he will be able to find loopholes in the system and use them for his benefit and indulge ( participate ) in fraudulent practices job rotation avoids this.

Disadvantages of Job Rotation

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.