Faced with skills shortages and little room in the budget to hire new employees, many IT managers are turning to a different strategy to fill those gaps: increasing the skills of the IT employees they already have.
A common method for increasing staff skills is allowing employees to rotate jobs. That lets them get hands-on experience in a new area, which will give departments more flexibility and can help improve the morale of burnt-out IT employees.
Here are some tips that can help IT staff members get the most out of job rotation programs, according to IT managers quoted in a recent CIO.com article:
- Consider permanent switches – A job rotation shouldn’t be thought of strictly as a temporary arrangement. IT managers may find that an employee is better suited to the new role than what he or she was previously doing, so everyone involved should at least be open to the possibility of making a permanent change.
- Think beyond IT – Business skills are becoming increasingly important for tech employees, so IT staffers should also be given the opportunity to work in roles outside of the IT department. In many companies, that could also help improve the relationship between IT and the rest of the organization.
- Tie rotation to performance incentives – It may not be a good idea to punish IT employees if their stint in a new job doesn’t work out, but employees who willingly try to expand their skill sets should be rewarded in some way.
Does your IT department do any job rotation? Do you have any advice to share? Discuss your experiences in the comments section below.