Everything is going well for you as the IT manager of your organization.
Then a critical member of your IT team leaves the company or is out of the office for several weeks, and you realize that too much of the knowledge or skills required to run your department smoothly is tied to one person.
The good news is that cross-training can prevent you from continuing this cycle and ease the burden on you and your senior IT managers.
It won’t be easy, but cross-training is attainable with enough subject matter experts (and time).
Cross-training is something The KR Group is continually working at. As new technology emerges and engineers join our team, there is always more work to be done.
We’ve learned a few best practices over time, so here’s our advice on how to start:
- First steps for cross-training
- Overcoming common obstacles
- Benefits of a cross-trained IT department
- How to know if you’re successful
Of course, you know your IT department best, so you’ll want to remember what management style works best for your employees as you implement the following strategies.
First Steps toward Cross-Training
Before you start assigning disciplines for your engineers to cross-train in, you’ll need to establish a baseline for individual knowledge.
You’ll want to assess everyone on their proficiency in the various skill sets your department requires (switching/routing, wireless, storage, etc.).
One of the most straightforward ways to do this is to rank those various disciplines on a scale of 1 to 5. When you’ve reviewed each employee’s baseline knowledge, you can then plan to implement cross-training.
You’ll want to address the most obvious gaps first. For example, if only one person is an expert in switching, prioritize that knowledge transfer.
(Pro tip: Don’t forget about culture during this step. Your users shouldn’t feel like their job is on the line but instead understand this is an opportunity for purposely planning growth.)
Overcoming Common Obstacles
The challenges you’ll face on your quest toward a cross-trained IT department have to do with how many highly-skilled engineers you
have on your team.
The fewer experts within your department, the more difficult it will be to cross-train your IT department simply because there isn’t a large pool of resources to pull from.
A good rule of thumb is that specialized knowledge should be shared with more than 50% of your department.
For example, if you have five IT employees, three of them should be proficient in each discipline.
However, even if you have enough of these extremely knowledgeable employees, they still need to be approachable and relatable to even the least experienced or knowledgeable member of your IT department.
Keep in mind that cross-training is not a quick process. It’ll take time for your engineers to learn new skills and be proficient enough in them to confidently help your users.
Benefits of a Cross-Trained IT Department
There are many advantages of cross-training employees in any department.
When it comes to your IT team, the most significant benefit of cross-training is that it increases resilience against absences.
For example, if one of your engineers takes a two-week vacation and they’re the only expert in routing and switching, any problems within that area will go unresolved while that engineer is gone.
Additionally, when that engineer returns to work, all those unresolved issues are waiting for them. Sticking to this siloed approach to IT will undoubtedly burn out your employees, and then, you’re left with the problem of juggling a knowledge gap while looking for a replacement.
How to Know Cross-Training Is Working
Once implemented, it won’t take long to see if cross-training is going well.
The biggest indicator will be the perception of the non-IT users in your organization. For example, if a user is working with one engineer and another has to take over but doesn’t know what they’re doing, you’ll hear about it.
The other side of that is the company-wide attitude toward the IT department will quickly shift for the better once they realize there are fewer knowledge gaps and quicker resolution to their problems.
If you want to track how you’re progressing toward cross-training, take a page out of technology service providers’ books and survey your users. This way, you can quantitatively track how cross-training relates to better performance.
Cross Training in Your IT Department
As you’re looking for ways to improve the productivity and function of your IT department, implementing cross-training among all of your employees is imperative.
You’ll want to start by identifying your most significant knowledge gaps and strategically plan how to address them. Relying on your most knowledgeable team members is essential for this process.
Once they’ve helped train other employees in your IT department, you should start seeing the perception of your department improve for the better.
Cross-training your team isn’t an easy or quick task, and it’s only one of the objectives you need to accomplish as an IT manager. For help prioritizing everything on your to-do list, check out our free IT manager checklist.
