But these benefits should be balanced with a possible downside: a lack of specialization and ownership. At the Good Jobs Institute, our work with a variety of small food businesses has shown us how they can make the best use of cross-training to improve service and job quality. Any industry can learn from these approaches to design flexibility into their job design and operations.Employees don’t have to be cross-trained to do everything, but a little bit of cross-training can go a long way.
Operations leader Jose De La Campa noticed that scheduling these specialists was very complex and created service issues when someone called out sick. The work wasn’t evenly distributed over time; at any given moment, the prep cooks might have nothing to do while the dish washers were swamped. But they were neither trained nor expected to help each other.
Cross-training helped make the work more meaningful. At Moe’s Original BBQ, cross-training contributed to better communication and a sense of belonging: The staff started insisting that they be referred to as “one team,” not “front-of-house” and “back-of-house.”