Personnel Files By Alex Baylon
CROSS-TRAINING Lessons Learned From The COVID Crisis
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e have all learned some tough lessons during the past year. Traditional roles and responsibilities were among the first COVID casualties as dealers had to learn to do more with less than ever before. Throw in the counter-intuitive sales surge in dirtbikes, UTVs and even scooters and you have many employees forced out of the areas of expertise. Now that we can finally catch our collective breath, what lessons were learned during the pandemic? How about cross-training? Assembly lines do it all the time to prevent repetitive motion syndrome and to actually increase worker engagement and productivity over the long haul. In fact, employee cross-training is a great way of helping an employee expand his/her skills outside of their immediate role or department. So why aren’t most companies in the motorcycle industry doing this? What about dealerships? In my opinion, dealerships should be at the forefront of cross training. Let’s just stay within the dealership departments as these examples will apply to the majority of the readers, but honestly the concept is applicable to most companies, big or small. Let’s cover the advantages of cross training your employees first.
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New Blood = New Perspective & Fresh Ideas When you have a person from a different department helping and cross training it can become a great collaboration of ideas. Einstein suggested that ‘If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself…” so can you demonstrate how to do your job to a co-worker in a manner that they can understand it? Getting another perspective is also a great way to get another set of eyes on how the process can improve. Encourage them to ask questions and to give feedback! Maybe a parts guy working with the sales department can suggest some highly requested add-ons to be installed on the unit. If the sales department is working with parts, it might work vice versa and they get to take away processes and ideas back to their department. Service writers, and mechanics on a slow day may also be able to go help in parts or sales. I know a mechanic not busy is unheard of these days… but why couldn’t the Parts Dept. or Sales Dept. lend a helping hand to the Service Department? Make It Voluntary This is a great way to see which employees have some drive to learn new things. When something is voluntary there is a different feeling about working a task than when its mandatory. However, if cross training is mandatory with the employees turning this into a positive, it is always the better way to go. The biggest takeaway is you could have an employee that shines a whole lot brighter in a different position. Cross training is also rewarding in the fact that they learn something new and it breaks up the monotony of doing the same old thing day after day… which is exactly why workers are cross-trained on an assembly line. More importantly the line doesn’t come to a screeching halt if the lead widget installer gets sick one day. Workflow / Vacation / Sick Leave Coverage When a department is overwhelmed or busy with customers, other employees can step in and help customers — after all, customer service is more important now than ever. Have you been in a situation when a valuable employee takes time off or sick leave, and all their tasks pile up while they’re gone? Not only does this disrupt workflow, it discourages employees from taking much-needed vacations because they’re faced with a mountain of work when they return. Cross-training allows you to get others to pitch in and get some, if not most, of the absent employee’s work done while they’re out. And face it, some of you have been working overtime since the sales surge began and are going to need a break when the vaccines are delivered and “normal” work flow resumes. Job Sharing With work-life balance becoming a critical factor among job seekers, cross-training allows dealers to offer some flexibility in schedules to attract more qualified
