Job Rotation

Job rotation refers to moving an employee from job to job through a variety of jobs to increase interest and motivation. Job rotation involves assigning employees to various jobs, so that they acquire a wide base of knowledge and skills. The purposes of job rotation are (1) to give employees experience with all organizational activities as a training process and (2) to offset boredom, which can occur when performing the same job over an extended period of time. Job rotation can improve multiskilling but involves the need for greater training.

Job rotation has several benefits or advantages. It determines the areas where improvement is required. Employees who have the potential and caliber for filling the position can be assessed. It provides the employees with opportunities to broaden the horizon of knowledge, skills, and abilities by working in different departments, business units, and functions. It leads to the identification of Knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs) of each employee required. Job rotation can lead directly to the accelerated development of new members of staff. Cross-functional job rotation can be a powerful way of developing organizational high-fliers.

For lower management levels job rotation normally has one of two purposes: promotion or skill enhancement. This approach allows the manager to operate in diverse roles and understand the different issues that crop up. For the executive, job rotation takes on different perspectives. The executive is usually not simply going to another department. In some vertically integrated organizations, for example, where the supplier is actually part of same organization or subsidiary, job rotation might be to the supplier to see how the business operates from the supplier point of view. Learning how the organization is perceived from the outside broadens the executive's outlook on the process of the organization. Or the rotation might be to a foreign office to provide a global perspective. For managers being developed for executive roles, rotation to different functions in the company is regular carried out.