Put employees into different task groups/cells
by training them to do more than one task.
Cross training employees gives them reason to talk to each other in collaborative ways for their own benefit and for the company’s benefit.
Successful Cross Training
Hopkins Printing trains about 95% of its employees in at least two jobs. “A large majority is trained in three.”
Plant workers know how to glue, shrink wrap, and stitch.
Human Resources employees know how to do payroll and accounting.
All this shared knowledge and experience keeps production moving when employees take vacations. Employees have opportunities for overtime.
Hopkins Perkins has employees write standard work documents, “a couple of pages” with steps for each task. The work documents use “the kinds of language and perspective familiar to colleagues who will train after them.” The employees who write the documents use “the language they would normally use.”
Hopkins Printing is still in business decades after Inc. Magazine profiled it in the article below.
Hopkins Printing believes in the survival of the smartest”
Inc. Magazine
June 2011, page 71.
© Paula M. Kramer, 2021 to the present
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