An Exercise to Eliminate Office Bickering & Bolster Your Bottom Line

If you’ve been in business for a while, and you have employees, you know it’s inevitable… One employee is going to complain about another employee. One insists he/she does more work than another. The real issue is one employee likely doesn’t know the other’s responsibilities! There’s a way to eliminate this problem…

A great way to improve productivity among your staff is to have each person ‘test drive’ another person’s job for a day. It is a great way for employees to learn the ins and outs of other positions within the company and gives everyone (usually) a greater respect for what each other does on a regular basis.

For example, swap jobs between people who work in the office with people who work in the field. It may seem like an awkward thing to do but you can accomplish it by having the workers shadow each other for a day, without losing productivity from both positions. This type of shadowing gives great insights into each job and increases the understanding of each person’s job.

The bickering and “jawing back and forth” often occurs between different employee groups—for example, the office and your technicians. They “think” they know what the other group does, but they truly don’t have a clue—until you insist the one job shadows the other. Then, they’ll gain appreciation.

At your next company meeting, have each person who shadowed stand up and share three things he/she learned about the job by following around the other person. Then have them share three things they learned about the person!

You’ll notice that friendships may develop that didn’t exist from this exercise, which is great because the more cohesive your team, the harder they’ll work for one another! Consider conducting shadowing during those slow weeks that always seem to hit. You will find a staff more knowledgeable about everyone else’s roles will be happier and more efficient, which can only help your bottom line.