Cross Training Benefits Employee and Employer

When the American Kennel Club (AKC) looked at its staffing patterns, it saw what many companies see: segmented groups of employees with distinct skills and tasks. And then it took the next step, and asked: Does this make sense?

By Mary Bresnahan
the Bresnahan Group

The AKC runs dog shows, which means planning the events (one group) and calculating and tracking results (the other group). While hypothetically this division did seem to make sense, in reality, it didn't.

Many dog shows take place in the fall, and that's when there's a crunch for results. Why not take some of the planning people and put them on results? That, explains Chuck Musciano, vice president for operations at the Raleigh, N.C. office of the AKC, where about 400 employees conduct both planning and results processes, was the impetus behind the AKC's decision to implement a formal cross training program.

"We're currently working on redesigning the floor layout, so planning and results people work next to each other, instead of having planning people on one side of the room and results people on the other," says Musciano. "We've set up times for people to get together during the day for training."

People Skills vs. Numbers Skills

Planning and results involve different types of skills. The planning process, says Musciano, is people-based. "Someone may be planning an event, and find out the week before that they lost their site and need to find a new one," he says. They call planning people and say "Help!" Planning people need to be able to work one-on-one, handling problems by human interaction (which can sometimes be messy).

By contrast, results is "a numbers game," says Musciano. Instead of talking with people, results workers check data very carefully. For example, if a dog was entered in a puppy class, and it turns out the dog was really 13 months old, the results need to be altered. While there is a human effect to this, the results worker doesn't need to deal with it.

These stylistic differences - people vs. numbers - don't need to present a problem. "We expect people to rise above these differences," says Musciano. And in fact, a numbers person frequently finds he or she has excellent innate people skills - and vice versa. Without cross training, these resources might never be tapped.

New Knowledge

But there is another layer of cross-training going on at the AKC as well, at the sport level. This involves more than style - it involves learning a new rule book for a new sport.

If you're not in the dog world, you probably think of dog shows as those that take place in a ring. Those are called conformation shows. However, there are also competitions involving performance (such as hunting and herding), and companion (such as obedience, agility, and tracking). The AKC formerly had three teams - one for conformation, one for performance, and one for companion. Each team had planning and results experts. Now, everyone will do - well, everything. "We're beginning to train our people so a retriever trial staffer can also do agility," says Musciano.

Cross training at the sport level takes more time because the sports are so different, says Musciano. Each competition type has its own specific and lengthy set of rules. For exampling, herding can occur on different courses with different animals - ducks on course A, sheep on course B, and cattle on course C.

Career Development

Staffers love the cross-training, says Musciano. "They know it's a career development opportunity," he says. "As they learn more, their value to their organization increases, and their career can advance." Cross-training opens up additional responsibilities, including supervisory positions. And the most knowledgeable employees can be mentors, helping and supporting new employees. (Mentoring, an informal process at the AKC, is essential because the knowledge is so arcane; the only people who know the answers are the people who work there.)

Contact Musciano by e-mail: cjm @ akc.org or visit the AKC at www.akc.org

Skills Training

For cross-training to work, it's not necessary to train person in Job A to do Job B and vice versa. That's the traditional model, and one espoused by the AKC. But if you really look at many jobs, overlap exists. By parsing the job into its different elements-for example, technical skills, people skills, the role of the person as a team member - you can cross-train for each element separately. This enables you to focus on those aspects of a job that are needed most, without actually forcing someone to learn an entirely new position.

A worker may have highly developed skills in marketing and process consulting, and less interest in project management. But if project management - with all the hours tracking and budget supervision that job entails - is what the company needs, it benefits both the employer and employee to cross train with project management.

The bottom line: Employees who can't be flexible may find themselves out of a job.

Being Prepared

Don't just institute cross-training in response to a demand for different skills in employees. If you make sure the flexibility is there from the beginning, you will be prepared for anything. Consider the companies that had to function without staff, telephones, and more for days and weeks after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Those with cross-training programs already under way would have been better able to cope with routine business needs.

Good cross-training preparation also enables you to be prepared for a strike. The massive telephone employee walkout that took place several years ago when NYNEX became Verizon meant managers in the Northeast not only had to work almost around the clock, but they had to answer phones, filling in for striking operators. Those who had at least seen that part of the business before had an easier time doing the job.

Getting Started

Some employers don't want to institute cross training because they're afraid it will take up too much time. An even more common fear is that employees, once trained in multiple tasks, will take these skills and go elsewhere - perhaps to a competitor.

"That's myopic," says Mary Bresnahan of the Bresnahan Group (a Chicago-based consulting company that provides strategic human resource and performance improvement solutions). "The question is, can you afford not to train?" she says. "If your workers don't have the skill set you need, you'll have to go out and look for it."

Commitment

Cross-training does take time -- don't expect to fit it into your regular schedule. It requires a structure and a commitment from management, says Bresnahan. "If something is just on-the-job training, whether it's called job shadowing, mentoring, or cross-training, it's still just on-the-job training. It's seat-of-the-pants, haphazard, and not thought through." Basically, all this kind of cross-training does is to tell someone to do someone else's job. Instead, you need commitment and a plan, like the AKC's.

Hire for Future Cross Training

Also, a lot of companies make the mistake of hiring for technical skills, says Bresnahan. If you don't hire right in the first place, you can't cross train. Non-technical skills - interpersonal skills, value systems, the way people operate, the role they play on the team, how well they get along with others, their ethics, what kind of leaders they are - these assets tend to get ignored in favor of technical skills. That leads to a cadre of highly specialized employees who are impossible to cross-train.

So when you hire, don't just look at technical skills. Check whether the person has the personality to be curious to learn more, to be open to feedback, to be open to cross training.

Contact Bresnahan at bresgroup @ 4u.net, and visit the company web site www.bresnahangroup.com.

This article is provided to you complements of:

the Bresnahan Group
6620 Country Knoll Ct. NW, Suite 302,
Albuquerque, NM 87114
505-922-1973
bresgroup @ 4u.net
www.bresnahangroup.com

Should you have questions, wish to set up your own training program or explore other services contact the Bresnahan Group.

Top of Page