Landfill Insights | The case for cross-training

Cross training is an important aspect of team development. When done properly, it ensures you have backup whenever key workers are out sick or on vacation.

Every manager knows the dilemma of having a key worker call in sick and the relief of knowing others on the team can readily fill the gap.

It’s also very important that workers have a good understanding of what other folks on the team do because it helps improve their performance.

The dozer operator will do a much better job of spreading waste for the landfill compactor if he or she also has spent time on the compactor. Similarly, a rear-loader driver will be much more efficient for having spent time on the ground as a helper.

Walking a mile in someone else’s shoes fosters empathy and understanding, making the team stronger and more cohesive. That’s the goal, up to a certain point.

However, sometimes the intent of cross-training gets confused with the idea of making work fun and fair. There’s a reason it’s called work.

Yes, every worker’s job should be fulfilling and gratifying. Every worker should be appreciated and respected. But it is not a practical scenario for managers to be required to rotate worker positions beyond what’s needed to provide basic cross-training.

Imagine how you’d feel if your favorite football team adopted that approach and every week players shifted positions. Sure, they’d understand each other’s job; but in terms of execution and efficiency, it would be a disaster. The players would be frustrated, and so would the fans.

As with every other organization, within your crew some workers naturally perform better in certain positions. Some operators are just better at compacting trash and building a daily cell. Someone else might have more aptitude for doing finish work on the dozer, loading trucks, digging a ditch or running a residential collections route.

As a manager, your goal is to put the best team on the ground every day while still providing enough cross-training to cover sick days, vacations and those other interruptions that are bound to happen from time to time.

In that regard, a limited amount of cross-training makes sense. Cross-training also allows an attentive manager to determine where individual workers perform best. This highlights another duty all managers share, which is to assign workers to tasks where they can excel.

Repeatedly, studies indicate that while workers can learn to do just about anything, they will naturally excel at some tasks. Albert Einstein was an amazing physicist and mathematician. Did he also have excellent penmanship? We don’t know, and we really don’t care.

Over the years, I’ve worked with hundreds of facilities, some of which rotate workers every month, every week or even every day. In too many cases, those policies were intended to make work fair for everyone and to prevent boredom. Often, those policies were negotiated by HR or a union rep who is more focused on “fairness” than effectiveness and efficiency.

I contend that excessive staff rotation is not only inefficient but is counterproductive. It often will be demoralizing for your crew. Your workers want to feel good about their jobs and about what they accomplish every day. Further, while most workers can be patient and understanding while helping new workers learn a specific task, they quickly become frustrated when it goes beyond training and becomes a recurring operational disruption.

Next time you fly, would you like the pilot to hand out pretzels while the stewardess flies the plane? I didn’t think so. We’d all prefer to have a pilot who has been developing his piloting skills for 30 years.

If you are not currently cross-training, I encourage you to integrate cross-training for the sake of building redundancy into your team. But if your folks are rotating simply for rotation’s sake, the result will be ongoing mediocrity. In that case, stop.

Instead, put your A team on the ground every day. In the process, you’ll increase efficiency and safety. You’ll also boost your team’s morale when your employees see the results of having an individual worker in his or her best position.

Neal Bolton is president of Blue Ridge Services Montana Inc. He has been providing safety support and improving solid waste operations for more than 47 years. You can contact him at neal@blueridgeservices.com.