How the Food Industry Is Using Cross-Training to Boost Service

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Cross-training employees on a variety of tasks can be a powerful tool for improving operations, as well as for attracting and retaining workers. When employees are cross-trained to perform a variety of both customer-facing and non-customer-facing tasks, they can adjust their work depending on demand and business needs. Of course, that’s good for the business, but it also makes the job better for workers. For one thing, when employees are more productive and contribute more, companies can pay them more. Cross-training helps employees build capabilities that they can leverage in their career growth. It also enables more stable schedules. This article shows how several small food companies were able to use cross-training to improve service and job quality. Any industry can learn from these approaches to improve operations, customer experience, and employee experience.

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.”

 

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