Recently there was a professional discussion in which I got involved, about job rotation in organizations. This is a well evolved management subject and most large professional organizations believe in some form of job rotation. It indeed helps to groom leaders who get to know how different organs of the organization work so that when they reach the pinnacle of the pyramid they can mesh all these organs well for overall well-being. It also insulates the organizations from sudden emergencies in case few critical and functional links become dysfunctional for some time, either due separations or medical emergencies etc. Employees in turn gain by growing professionally, knowing various aspects of their organization and getting prepared for bigger roles.

 

This issue is well documented and researched in professional domain and I don’t need to contribute anything additional to what has already been written by professionals. Why I decided even then to write on this is for two reasons. One, while job rotation is good, it needs careful thought and planning. Square pegs have to be fitted in square holes, not the round ones. Two, just like our professional lives, there is an issue of competencies which is equally applicable in our personal lives.

 

I’m taking the second issue first – competencies that we see in our personal lives and the issue of square pegs in square holes.

 

In our normal lives we play many roles like that of father, mother, sibling, friend, cousin and many more. In all these roles we have some expectations from others, just like others have expectations from us. But while we have these expectations from others we rarely ever look at their competencies to know whether the person is capable of fulfilling them.

 

The best example that I can think of is of freshly minted engineers. I’m sure that I speak for almost all engineers – though I represent men here for this example. Once they complete their studies and return home from hostels first thing that their mothers would expect them to do is to repair household gadgets, they would be expected to do the job of electricians, plumbers and also auto mechanics just because they have finished their engineering. The problem exacerbates once they get married. It will become very difficult for them to explain to their wives why engineers can’t be very good mechanics or electricians. The competencies and training are very different for both the roles which often are not understood by mothers and wives. Can we ordinarily train engineers to be great workmen by giving them job rotations? Or vice – versa? There’s an obvious difference in understanding, skills, competencies which are not exchangeable. We just can’t put a square peg in the round hole.

 

Now continuing on the same lines I shall give examples of two of my friends. Both studied with me and both had their own ideas about life. One wanted a wife who is as qualified as him, professional, working woman, smart, confident etc. Second one was slightly traditional in his mind set. He wanted his life partner to be traditional, home maker like his mother, a good cook et al. It so happened that both had their wishes granted. Days passed and then months. We friends kept meeting each other. Slowly, the guy who wanted a traditional wife started getting influenced by the DINK family of other friend, more prosperity and pleasures of life, parties, smartly dressed wife who spoke well and felt something was missing in his life. On the other hand the guy who had a working wife started feeling the absence of good home cooked food, a wife who would wait for him when he returned home, well maintained household where guests were welcome and respected etc. So they both tried a sort of job rotation by trying that both the wives train each other in their skill sets. I’m sure all married men and women can well imagine the outcome. The effort itself was destined to failure. It could never start. On the contrary….well no more on this and I leave it to the imagination of people. But issue is the same, of square peg in square hole. Match expectations with competencies and skill sets. Give job rotation accordingly. For example, the housewife may have been more amenable in doing things that had something to do with children, different cuisines, handicrafts, home décor etc. and the working lady may have been more comfortable to try her hand at entrepreneurship. Giving job rotation in areas that don’t match the skill sets and long term life plans would create more problems than solving them.

 

Examples come to my mind easily. Children often boast, ‘my father strongest’. Imagine two friends going with their fathers. One’s father is a soldier and other’s is a trader. On the way there’s a skirmish with some rowdies. Can the trader match up with the soldier in dealing with the situation? After the skirmish they have lunch and go for shopping in a market where there’s a lot of haggling. In this situation can the soldier beat the trader? While the children may shout ‘may father strongest’, get angry at their fathers’ performance and try to give them job rotation, is it possible? Is it practical? Both fathers have their competencies, skill sets, strengths and future plans.

 

Limited point that I’m making here is that most people have their own competencies, likes and ability to think and act better than others in his chosen field. It is not always possible to give job rotation and train people in all or even most areas in our personal lives. It is like a father who expects his son to be a good sportsman, artist, singer, good in studies by doing little bit of all. Little bit of all may make him jack of all trades but not proficient in any one field.

 

But it becomes far more important in professional organizations. On one hand we need job rotation and on the other hand it can’t be just that. It is a serious exercise. I’ll share my thoughts on this issue in context of organizations. But before doing that I shall mention few basics which I believe are essential to be considered to make job rotation a success. These are:

• A culture of job rotation in the organization
• It would work best in environments where people are looking for long term career progression in the same organization
• Organization has a size that supports giving the employees exposure across different roles and geographies
• Organization also has a need for leaders who have those varied skill sets
• There’s a management thought behind the movement of certain people to the functions that they need to be exposed to
• All movements across geographies and functions are explained to effected personnel in terms of organizational requirement as well as their own career objectives

 

1. Culture: Most large organizations have a culture of movement across functions and geographies. For example in armed forces when people are moved no one even bats an eyelid. It is a part of their life. Not only this, people don’t even question the time period which they may have spent in a particular position. Similarly, in almost all government jobs, large banks and MNCs, relocations, different roles and functions are almost given. But the moment one looks at small and mid-size corporations the culture of relocations and job rotations are not so prominent. This may happen functionally even in some large corporations. A person in sales may spend his life time in sales, and likewise in production, accounts, legal, human resources etc. In these organizations if a person is suddenly moved to a different role, function or location, it is likely to have severe backlash since it is most likely be seen as a punishment, which may be also be the fact in some cases.
2. Long term career: When I was finishing my management school one word was frequently talked about – career job. This means, even then there was a difference between career jobs and other jobs. So in one type of organizations people grew by showing good performance, getting good annual ratings and rising in hierarchies over a period of time. These organizations would add immense value to the employee over a period of time and in couple of decades successful guys there would be ready to head the corporations. These type of organizations are not only best suited for job rotation but can’t do without it. Many such organizations discourage lateral hiring from other organizations at senior levels. There are other types of organizations where people come and go at regular intervals. Organization gains by getting fresh blood frequently and experience from many contemporary organizations, whereas the employees grow by renegotiating salaries and roles, working in different organization cultures and enriching themselves. Any attempt to enforce job rotation in these organizations is neither going to work for organizations nor for employees. Organizations because they are not capable or even looking at giving long term careers to most employees. So training employees by giving exposure in different functions knowing well that they may leave in few years will be money going down the drain. For employees too it won’t work since chances are that he joined the organization for a specific exposure, function and purpose. Job rotation may disturb that, triggering a thought of leaving the job itself in the mind of the employee.
3. Size of the organization: As I mentioned earlier, size plays an important role in determining the need as well as possibilities of job rotation. In larger organizations not only there’s a possibility but also a critical need to have a cadre of personnel who are proficient in multiple functions and have the ability to work in different geographies. The complexities of these large organizations and frequent challenges in working in diverse fields and environments make things quite dynamic which necessitates multiple-skill sets in few or more. But it has one flip side also. Due to their size, often people who work in one function get insulated from other functions. So a person in junior to mid-level in sales would have no clue of accounts, legal, production etc. as this coordination would be done by his seniors, who would be too distant from him. Same would apply to all other functions. So, to get an exposure in different functions and how they impact the organization it is essential to have a stint in those roles, which means job rotation. But in a smaller organization not only there aren’t enough opportunities, there may not be any need also. So in these organizations sales staff would be routinely interacting with production head or accounts head and would know their way of functioning, their mind sets, their subjects and above all, how the functions are inter-related to each other. In such organizations imagine a production head moving to sales, sales head moving to accounts and accounts head moving to production. Not one function will do well, not only because all these people carried lot of knowledge with them, but also because there’s not much of an institutional strength in their own functions owing to the small size and limited manpower of the organization.
4. Need for leaders: It is very noble to have all-rounders in the organization by giving people job rotation. But for what? To create leaders for others or for ourselves? Large organizations necessarily need many leaders. They have complexities, larger operations, larger manpower, bigger geographies and an ability to fulfil the career aspirations of many leaders. They need to make a determined effort to groom and create leadership bench strength that also takes care of unavoidable attrition. Defence Forces are again the best examples. Right from unit commanders to brigades to core to division to command we need a plethora of leaders who are all well conversant with overall working of the forces. We therefore see many fighters in different arms like cavalry or artillery or supplies being sent to infantry battalions so that they all know what the real fight on ground looks like. The same is applicable to all large corporations. But even then the requirement and needs may vary. To give you an example, in a FMCG kind of environment state head may be a junior to middle level executive but in a telecom environment a state head becomes a mini-CEO. He runs all the operations of the organization in that state and is as good as a CEO of that state. Unless he has been exposed to many functions earlier he may find it tough to do justice to the role of a state head. Now think of a smaller organization which is pyramidical in structure. The real need to have a generalist leader is limited to few numbers, usually less than five. May be the CEO, his second in command and few of unit heads. In this situation if we have a robust system of job rotation it will create more number of leaders than what the system can absorb. So what should we expect in this scenario? These trained leaders will look out for opportunities that suit their new skills. Does having a good job rotation policy help the organization in this case?
5. Planning and Thought:  Like anything to do with human resources and strategic planning, job rotation is a sensitive issue which has its relevance only on a larger time span. This means that the benefits of job rotation shall accrue to the organization only over a longer time horizon and not in short or even medium term. Unless we have longer term organizational vision, plan and ability to enforce it, organized plan of job rotation will not yield results. When I say about human resources, I mean to say identifying key strengths and weaknesses of people, their competencies and skill sets, what skills need to be added over what time period and by adding these skills what roles do we expect these people fulfill. Unless we are clear about issues, we may try to add those skills to a person which he inherently dislikes and is not suited to. Imagine, an introvert accounts man, who is very good in his role, being given job rotation in sales where is supposed to interact with many people but has nothing to do with financials. Would he be happy in his new role? Is he likely to succeed? Answer is most likely ‘No’. As I’ve already said, square peg should go in square hole only. There are many specialized functions in each field where job rotations just won’t work In fact, they would be counterproductive. Imagine top notch criminal lawyer given exposure in company law, orthopaedic doctor being given exposure in gynaecology, legal head asked to head sales function and vice versa, pilot being asked to go to maintenance or vice versa, infantryman being given a job rotation in signals etc. This list is endless. But what it shows is that some functions are expertise based and are not open to job rotation. Which means every organization must identify the roles that are open to job rotation and if we can put these roles in some clusters. For example, an ortho or gynaec may be given some exposure in anaesthesia to handle emergencies and even vice versa. Similarly, this must necessarily enmesh with the organization plan over a period of longer time horizon. This is where many organizations flounder, particularly since the external environment is dynamic and no long term plan is fool proof. A prerequisite for this is also continuity of management and management thought. We can’t have a situation where the management changes after few years and changes long term vision plan of the organization which has a bearing on creating a bench of multi-skilled leaders. I know real life example of an organization that was building large bench strength of leaders anticipating enormous growth over a period of time. But suddenly there was change in management and external environment, plan shifted to consolidation rather than growth and they were stuck with a large team of leaders whose expectations and aspirations had been raised sky high. After several years, they are still struggling to come out of this problem.
6. Discussions: Just like the organization may have some requirement and plan for an individual,  employee may also have a plan for his own career based on his preferences. Job rotation will have maximum success when there is a proper matching of individual career plans and organizational requirements. Even though as an organization  organizational interest supersedes the individual likes and interests, the same must be discussed and argued out. Whenever we try to thrust job rotation against the wishes of the employee chances are we will not only have failed exercise but may lose the employee itself. I know of many people who want to stay in a similar role, but in different environments. Let’s say a person wants to be an ace salesman. He wants to know FMCG, consumer durables, auto, organized retail etc. But one of his employers gives him two year stint in logistics. What do you expect this employee to do? I know of a chartered accountant who wanted to specialize in his function by working in audit firms, consultancies, manufacturing and services to understand his function from various industries perspective. But somewhere in his manufacturing stint he was asked to move to sales for some time. Within a month the person resigned. Both the person and the employer lost out. This means that not only we need to discuss, but we need to align the organizational goals and the personal goals. Where ever we can’t do that, forcing our way through will still not work out. Talking it out and finding a via media is the only solution.

 

My Little Thought Of Life in this context is that just like we ourselves, everybody around us is also a package of competencies, likes and dislikes, aspirations and goals. We must know what kind of ‘package’ are we and what kind of package are the people around us – both in personal and professional environments. In every case our effort should be to identify the right alignment, square and round pegs, square and round holes and do a proper matching. Square pegs in square holes. Anything contrary will not only won’t work out but will create avoidable heat, friction and attrition.

 

To my friends and readers, I wish an ability to know themselves, their competencies, their likes, goals as well as of the people around them and find a winning combination of job rotation, re-skilling and growth with happiness.