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Do you have a proverbial golden goose within your company’s ranks? Or maybe someone who has cross-departmental skills that are wasted within one job role?
How do you utilize this person to their full potential? The answer might lie in secondment.
Wait, what?
Secondment allows you to build an employee’s skills outside of their natural or educational expertise and build a more robust, well-rounded staff in the process.
What is secondment?
Secondment is a concept that promotes skill-building by sending a certain employee or group of employees to other departments for a predetermined period of time. For example, you may send a strong editor or content writer to your UI or UX department to learn how to build visually appealing content.
In the digital workplace, this has become easier than ever. Communication lines are more open across departments than ever before. As a result, the secondment candidate doesn’t get lost in the fold or isolated from their main job role. They’re free to learn new skills while easily transitioning back to their post when you need them.
Secondment with other companies
Secondment may also refer to essentially “loaning out” your employee to other companies. Money may exchange hands, or you can simply use this as a stepping stone for networking, co-branding, or building business relationships.
If you opt for this route, you need a strong contract in place that states what happens regarding performance, industry secrets, and intellectual property.
Why you might consider secondment for certain employees
Since the onset of the Great Resignation, employee retention has become a major concern for employers around the country, even in the remote work realm. Retaining your best employees isn’t just smart for the productivity of your business; it’s smart business in general. When you consider the cost of hiring and training new employees, which often costs 30% to 40% of the hired employee’s salary, secondment is a superb way to keep employees interested in work and to avoid burnout.
One of the major tenets of employee retention is providing a path or forum for employee advancement. If you’re investing in them as a person and a worker, chances are you’ll see the return in terms of production.
How to choose the right employee for secondment candidacy
The ideal candidate for secondment isn’t as obvious as it may seem. Even if you believe an employee would excel in secondment, you don’t want to pull your linchpin from a place of responsibility and reliability.
Therefore, you’re going to have to use your insight and the abilities of supporting teams to decide which person is ideal for secondment. Sometimes, this isn’t going to be your first choice, or in some cases, you may have to wait to put your secondment plans into place for your prized employee. To this effect, patience is key. If you can’t afford to remove someone from their main job, don’t feel pressured to do so.
Despite the fact that they’re secondary to secondment, your supporting staff around your employee will have a drastic impact on whether you decide to implement a secondment policy.
Advantages of secondment
Many of the advantages of secondment are self-evident. You can cross-train an employee to learn the ins and outs of the company, as well as inject different skill sets that are ideal to a promotion or managerial positions in the future. However, secondment also provides a number of other benefits.
Fresh perspectives
Although unbeknownst to many employees, perspectives and habits can stagnate over time. It’s a sense of familiarity with a position and the same duties done in repetition that can breed a lack of creativity or outside-the-box thinking.
With secondment, you’re sending one of your best employees to fraternize and learn from the top people in another department. This can breathe fresh perspectives into the secondment candidate, especially with regard to critical thinking, problem solving, and analytics. By gaining an outside perspective, the employee inherits a new approach to their own job, which could prove advantageous.
Breaking the monotony of routine
Nothing leads to burnout faster than repetition. Even if you give your employee different contracts or projects, they can start to feel like they’re doing the same thing over and over again. Personally and professionally, they need something to provide a spark. With secondment, they get a sense of enlightenment and even an indulgence in adventure that can make them a better overall employee.
Building resiliency
Leaders of the future won’t be able to follow a predetermined route to success. The more paths and disciplines they are exposed to, the more likely they’ll be able to find their own innovative way. Having a team full of specialists with no cross-exposure is not the way to navigate uncharted waters.
The major disadvantage of secondment
The most alarming disadvantage of secondment is that it removes one of your most talented employees from what they do best. They can’t provide the insight, creativity, or expertise when they’re in another department or company.
Thus, employers should determine a specific time range or set schedule for secondment. And if emergencies arise, the employee’s return to their job should already be built into any agreement or arrangement you might have.
The dynamic approach of secondment: Is it right for your organization?
With the uncertainty of the prevalence or continuance of remote work as more companies transition to hybrid or fully onsite work arrangement, a fully remote workplace is the ideal place to select an employee for secondment. By staying in one location, they can learn the skills that can groom them for a future managerial position, or just learn the skills necessary to propel your company upward.
While secondment may not be the right move for small business, mid-size or larger businesses with more personnel may find a distinct advantage in the process. Consider your needs as a whole, and you can make the perfect decision for your organizational needs.
Photo by Arlington Research on Unsplash
Do you have a proverbial golden goose within your company’s ranks? Or maybe someone who has cross-departmental skills that are wasted within one job role?
How do you utilize this person to their full potential? The answer might lie in secondment.
Wait, what?
Secondment allows you to build an employee’s skills outside of their natural or educational expertise and build a more robust, well-rounded staff in the process.
What is secondment?
Secondment is a concept that promotes skill-building by sending a certain employee or group of employees to other departments for a predetermined period of time. For example, you may send a strong editor or content writer to your UI or UX department to learn how to build visually appealing content.
In the digital workplace, this has become easier than ever. Communication lines are more open across departments than ever before. As a result, the secondment candidate doesn’t get lost in the fold or isolated from their main job role. They’re free to learn new skills while easily transitioning back to their post when you need them.
Secondment with other companies
Secondment may also refer to essentially “loaning out” your employee to other companies. Money may exchange hands, or you can simply use this as a stepping stone for networking, co-branding, or building business relationships.
If you opt for this route, you need a strong contract in place that states what happens regarding performance, industry secrets, and intellectual property.
Why you might consider secondment for certain employees
Since the onset of the Great Resignation, employee retention has become a major concern for employers around the country, even in the remote work realm. Retaining your best employees isn’t just smart for the productivity of your business; it’s smart business in general. When you consider the cost of hiring and training new employees, which often costs 30% to 40% of the hired employee’s salary, secondment is a superb way to keep employees interested in work and to avoid burnout.
One of the major tenets of employee retention is providing a path or forum for employee advancement. If you’re investing in them as a person and a worker, chances are you’ll see the return in terms of production.
How to choose the right employee for secondment candidacy
The ideal candidate for secondment isn’t as obvious as it may seem. Even if you believe an employee would excel in secondment, you don’t want to pull your linchpin from a place of responsibility and reliability.
Therefore, you’re going to have to use your insight and the abilities of supporting teams to decide which person is ideal for secondment. Sometimes, this isn’t going to be your first choice, or in some cases, you may have to wait to put your secondment plans into place for your prized employee. To this effect, patience is key. If you can’t afford to remove someone from their main job, don’t feel pressured to do so.
Despite the fact that they’re secondary to secondment, your supporting staff around your employee will have a drastic impact on whether you decide to implement a secondment policy.
Advantages of secondment
Many of the advantages of secondment are self-evident. You can cross-train an employee to learn the ins and outs of the company, as well as inject different skill sets that are ideal to a promotion or managerial positions in the future. However, secondment also provides a number of other benefits.
Fresh perspectives
Although unbeknownst to many employees, perspectives and habits can stagnate over time. It’s a sense of familiarity with a position and the same duties done in repetition that can breed a lack of creativity or outside-the-box thinking.
With secondment, you’re sending one of your best employees to fraternize and learn from the top people in another department. This can breathe fresh perspectives into the secondment candidate, especially with regard to critical thinking, problem solving, and analytics. By gaining an outside perspective, the employee inherits a new approach to their own job, which could prove advantageous.
Breaking the monotony of routine
Nothing leads to burnout faster than repetition. Even if you give your employee different contracts or projects, they can start to feel like they’re doing the same thing over and over again. Personally and professionally, they need something to provide a spark. With secondment, they get a sense of enlightenment and even an indulgence in adventure that can make them a better overall employee.
Building resiliency
Leaders of the future won’t be able to follow a predetermined route to success. The more paths and disciplines they are exposed to, the more likely they’ll be able to find their own innovative way. Having a team full of specialists with no cross-exposure is not the way to navigate uncharted waters.
The major disadvantage of secondment
The most alarming disadvantage of secondment is that it removes one of your most talented employees from what they do best. They can’t provide the insight, creativity, or expertise when they’re in another department or company.
Thus, employers should determine a specific time range or set schedule for secondment. And if emergencies arise, the employee’s return to their job should already be built into any agreement or arrangement you might have.
The dynamic approach of secondment: Is it right for your organization?
With the uncertainty of the prevalence or continuance of remote work as more companies transition to hybrid or fully onsite work arrangement, a fully remote workplace is the ideal place to select an employee for secondment. By staying in one location, they can learn the skills that can groom them for a future managerial position, or just learn the skills necessary to propel your company upward.
While secondment may not be the right move for small business, mid-size or larger businesses with more personnel may find a distinct advantage in the process. Consider your needs as a whole, and you can make the perfect decision for your organizational needs.
Photo by Arlington Research on Unsplash
