Punch Line: Businesses are giving employees the opportunity to work in a different department or temporarily swap places with a coworkers overseas in order to improve collaboration and retention.
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Excerpt from WSJ: “Co-Workers Change Places”
Companies are discovering that short- to medium-term moves for rank-and-file employees help workers sharpen their skills, stay motivated and identify new roles. Moreover, they help address a challenge: how to better foster collaboration across different specialties and regions.
At Intel employees search an internal database with hundreds of job listings. These assignments allow workers “to test-drive a job or make connections in different departments.”
At Virgin America, a handful of flight attendants recently traded places with colleagues at Virgin Australia.
Skills-based rotations are more valuable than swaps that are purely geographic. While a program like Virgin’s offers employees some short-term benefits, it may have less impact on a company’s overall effectiveness.
Global exchanges can be a valuable retention tool for multinational companies.
Edited by ARK
The Homa Files 