As professionals, we tend to stick to our titles: author, web designer, copywriter, illustrator, and recruiters. We often bound ourselves to those roles and forget to learn anything else that is not a part of our core duties. By not limiting ourselves to our roles, we open doors for endless possibilities. For this reason, the concept of creative cross training is developed.
What exactly is Creative Cross Training?
The point of this concept is involving yourselves in an art that is not your primary one for a shorter period of time. For instance, a writer can learn to design, a designer can learn to code, or a guitarist can learn to sing. It can be anything, anything that you don’t already know.
This has become a business trend that is adopted by many companies over time. This trend helps both companies and employees but it has its downsides too.
Let’s have a look at a list of pros and cons for the same:
Pros:
- If there is only one person in the office that knows how to code, what will you do if he is not present when you need to resolve some issue? Skip it until he will be available? Cross-trained employees can prove to be really beneficial in such cases. The company doesn’t need to rely on a particular person for its operations.
- Employees who are trained in other fields can come in handy when a role is vacated. Sometimes such employees can also eliminate the need of hiring a temporary employee.
- It also increases team bonding. Employees will be aware of others’ work and will know exactly their role and contribution in the overall goal of the company. Employees may come up with amazing business ideas if they have a better understanding of the whole business processes.
- Training employees in different areas will significantly help employees to learn new skills. Also, they will have a wider knowledge and will be able to see the bigger picture of company’s requirements.
- It allows employees a break from their usual work and keeps their work challenging.
Cons:
- Cross-trained employees may become unfocused or overworked as they need to finish their core responsibilities along with those extra tasks.
- Companies need to employ time and resources to provide cross training to the employees.
- Employees may get dissatisfied with their work as they end up calculating their productivity without considering those extra tasks.