Job Rotation

Job rotation is an approach to management development where an individual is moved

through a schedule of assignments designed to give him or her a breadth of exposure to
the entire operation.

Job rotation is also practiced to allow qualified employees to gain more insights into the
processes of a company, and to reduce boredom and increase job satisfaction through job
variation.

The term job rotation can also mean the scheduled exchange of persons in offices,
especially in public offices, prior to the end of incumbency or the legislative period. This
has been practiced by the German green party for some time but has been discontinued.

At the senior management levels, job rotation - frequently referred to as management

rotation, is tightly linked with succession planning - developing a pool of people capable
of stepping into an existing job. Here the goal is to provide learning experiences which
facilitate changes in thinking and perspective equivalent to the "horizon" of the level of
the succession planning.

For lower management levels job rotation has normally one of two purposes:
promotability or skill enhancement.

In many cases senior managers seem unwilling to risk instability in their units by moving
qualified people from jobs where the lower level manager is being successful and
reflecting positively on the actions of the senior manager.

Many military forces use the job rotation strategy to allow the soldiers to develop a wider
range of experiences, and an exposure to the different jobs of an occupation.

Whilst there is relatively little research undertaken in this area a prospective

emancipatory action research study has been on-going in north west London health
services for several years, the research papers can be found on - www.nurserotation.com.
The work has been undertaken by Patrick Coyne, Dr. Ricky Lucock, Prof. Buchan and
Jane Ball, with the local health communities. A meta-evaluation of the research and the
development of a global model of job rotation is being completed at this point by Patrick
Coyne.
 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.

This approach allows the manger to operate in diverse roles and understand the different issues
that crop up. If someone is to be a corporate leader, they must have this type of training. A
recent study indicated that the single most significant factor that leads to leader’s achievement
was the variety of experiences in different departments, business units, cities, and countries.

An organized and helpful way to develop talent for the management or executive level of the
organization is job rotation. It is the process of preparing employees at a lower level to replace
someone at the next higher level. It is generally done for the designations that are crucial for
the effective and efficient functioning of the organization.

Benefits of Job Rotation

Some of the major benefits of job rotation are:

• It provides the employees with opportunities to broaden the horizon of knowledge,

skills, and abilities by working in different departments, business units, functions, and
countries

• Identification of Knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs) required

• It determines the areas where improvement is required

• Assessment of the employees who have the potential and caliber for filling the position

Importance of job rotation

Job rotation is the surest way of keeping the employee away from
complacency and boredom of routine. It is difficult for an employee to
sustain his interest in a given job for any substantial length of time as
humans have the tendency of outgrowing their jobs through the
learning and experience that they gain over a period of time.
Stimulating human mind through diversity of challenges is a sure way
to bring to forefront its creative instincts and in taking the individual
and organizational performance to a higher plane. This is where job
rotation can prove to be a handy tool.

Potential of job rotation

A well planned job rotation programme in an organization has immense
potential of positive impact on job satisfaction, engagement of people
and finally on retention of people. Few of the outcomes of job rotation
with respect to the individual are:

• Job enrichment
• Overall development
• Intrinsic motivation to perform caused by newer challenges
• Career development

Where as for an organization, the benefits could include some or all of

the following:

• Leadership development
• Aligning competencies with organizational requirements
• Lower attrition rates

• Performance improvement driven by unique view points of new

people

The ritual of job rotation

Today, in the industry, job rotation is viewed “as just another transfer” rather than as
an important tool for implementing HR strategy of the company. Job rotation has
become a ritual at best, with out any focus on the outcomes that can be achieved
through a little planning and implementation effort. Today, job rotation is a means of
punishing poor performers, settling scores arising from organizational politics, or
going through percentage rotation scheme, where a certain percentage of employees
in a certain area are shifted to pre-designated areas every year.

Realizing the potential of job rotation

In order to realize the true potential of job rotation, there must be a planned system
in place with the policy taking into account,

• Organizational interest – employee commitment, attrition rates, specific

business issues etc.
• Eligibility of the employees – qualification, prior experience, aptitude,
competence etc.
• nature – mandatory or voluntary
• Duration
• Basis of selection etc.

In the absence of aspects brought out above, there is every possibility that the
seriousness with which the job rotation scheme is implemented in the company may
get diluted and become a cause of sagging employee motivation.

Job rotations at different levels of management

For job rotations at a slightly higher level, it is absolutely necessary that the business
problems in various areas are identified. This calls for the active involvement of top
management. Select most suitable people to be shifted from their current jobs to
tackle the challenges at hand by considering individual attributes already described
above. This will not only provide an insight for the future leaders in various aspects
of the business but also will enhance their confidence levels as they solve these
critical problems for the organization.

Job rotation at junior and middle level executives may be pivoted around their
strengths and attributes and the future roles expected of them. Focus must be on
exposure in all related areas of his domain of expertise, so that as they grow to
higher rungs of the management, they have an overall experience of their domain.

Job rotations for workers must include aspects related to work environment, also
along with other individual attributes already explained, so that it adds to his
satisfaction derived from balanced distribution of work load, working conditions and
learning opportunities.

Done this way job rotation gets aligned with career development, leadership
development and employee satisfaction which would finally result in higher levels of
intrinsic motivation among the employees and hence may contribute in retaining
talent.