Job Rotation in Practice

Job Rotation in Practice

The job rotation applications are significant not only for production workers but also for employees considered as manager candidates. In firms, qualified workers who are expected to be promoted as managers are required to have a broad view of the entire firm. The workers have experienced various production segments by rotating through different jobs, effectively learning many aspects of the company as a manager point of view. Rotation influences motivation and the direction of career development

Working with many people at different time periods, develop human relations and support internal and external communication among departments. Rotation gives several cues about how to establish communication with people with different behavioural characteristics. Employees who are closer to each other in a social context will be able to resolve any problems which may arise during technical processes more easily. This makes it feasible for the workplace to be more peaceful and work to be carried out with high motivation.

Despite this, when rotation necessitates a geographic change there can be unwanted will effect employee’s social and family life negatively. Many international firms deploy their employees to various countries where they have factories in the same way that rotation might be applied in different regions of the same country. In order to learn and be successful for the period of the rotation, greater effort is required for work as it is new and different. The workload increases as the employee needs to apply more time to new and more complex work, which means that social life suffers.

Employer and employee perspectives on job rotation

Traditionally, job rotation is usually addressed at an organizational level. From the employers’ point of view, organizational theorists have advocated frequent rotation as a means of reducing fatigue and boredom on jobs so as to maintain productivity and fairly frequent rotation after the initial hiring as a means of orientation and placement. Job rotation enables the training of workers to be backups for other workers so that managers have a more flexible work force and a ready supply of trained workers. When rotation occurs at longer intervals, it has been thought as a practice of progressive human resource development or a means of enhancing the value of work experience for career development.

Also from the employers’ standpoint, however, the practice of job rotation may be very costly. While job rotation may encourage generalization, it prevents job specialization so that the optimal level of performance cannot be reached. Although this problem may be negligible for many jobs, it can be very serious for those jobs where high specialization is needed so that the costs in terms of training and supervision are prohibitive.