Job Rotation – Pros and Cons

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JOB ROTATION – Pros and Cons

In recent times when demand for highly skilled labour has increased manifold and all the leading companies are trying their best to retain their star performers, Job Rotation is a lucrative approach. It has become a very usual practice and over the times has established itself as one of the most common strategy for administrative control and job engagement. One of the prime assumptions of Job rotation is that it will either eradicate or significantly reduce the fatigue and emotional stress associated with the work by rotating employees thereby reducing the exposure to risk. However, we have seen that more often than not such strategies do not result in success due to absence of a well thought of and systematic approach of effective handling of schedule of rotation. A failure to showcase expected results leads to further exposure and this in turn result in the reduction of credibility and trust by the firm’s employee and management. Another downside is the wastage of resources.

Job rotation can broadly be classified in two categories

Task Rotation: Such rotation is helpful in jobs that carry a high level of physical demand on the body or some of its parts or tasks that have a high degree of repetition and can get extremely tiring and monotonous. This is carried out by removing the employee temporarily from these emotionally stressful and physically demanding tasks and shifting to tasks where the relative magnitude is slightly lower.

Let us take the example of a welder working in an oil refinery. Such a worker works in 10 hr shift 6 days a week and most of his work involves working in an enclosed space and with controlled high intensity flames. The amount of protective clothing which needs to be worn in very high and the worker is constantly exposed hot and sweaty conditions. To reduce the physical and emotional hazards associated with such a job such a worker must be transferred to less demanding area such as the warehouse where main task is sorting and arranging of tools and maintaining the inventory. In such a case the worker can spend a major portion of the day sitting as well. An arrangement can be made where in a month two weeks can be spent in welding related activities and the remaining two weeks at the warehouse

Position rotation: While the main purpose of the above mentioned Job rotation is to reduce the physical fatigue and emotional stress the prime objective of position rotation is the professional development of the employee. This can be attained by opening a wide avenue for the employee by introducing him to new knowledge, skills, abilities and perspectives. Often it happens, that in any job within the same designation there are multiple roles in terms of positions, departments or geographic location. Such a rotation can be further subdivided into: