Job swapping is swapping roles with another person in another department for a specified period.
The idea of ‘job swapping’ is for employees to understand and appreciate the challenges other colleagues face on a day-to-day basis, to provide the employee with a clearer and wider understanding of the business and even suggest improvements or ideas to help operationally.
This week, the office and field-based staff had a fantastic opportunity to swap roles and see how each team manage their workload. From feedback, both teams felt it was very beneficial and commented that it had in fact changed their perspective on what hardships each team faced.
Jane, one of our finance assistants, recently had the opportunity to accompany Senior Technician David James on a full-day job. Due to the location, David informed her they would need to leave at around 6:00 a.m. to arrive on time. Jane was surprised to learn how early our technicians typically start their days.
After travelling for over an hour, Jane and the customer met David on site. Throughout the day, Jane was impressed by David’s skill and attention to detail. The finished repair was so well executed that it brought a tear to the customer’s eye. Deeply moved, she later sent a handwritten card to our Magicman HQ to personally thank David and express her appreciation.
Jane thoroughly enjoyed the experience and said it gave her a new perspective on the dedication and hard work that goes into every Magicman repair.
David then had the opportunity to spend a full day in the office with one of our schedulers. During the day, David was on the phone with customers, handling payment transactions, addressing technician queries, and scheduling work for his colleagues. David commented how insightful he found the whole experience, and commented, “It was good to see how the scheduling was done and how much goes into it. It isn’t as simple as give the nearest technician the job, there are so many other things to think about like skill level required, customer preference, stock/paint requirements, moving jobs to get as much work as possible in” David said that the scheduling is such a vital operation of the business and he can appreciate all the hard work that goes into this, he was more than happy to return!
Our second office team member out on the road was Anne-Marie, one of our enquiries Co-ordinators. Anne-Marie was out with Stuart Field, another Senior technician. Anne-Marie got to experience first hand one of the biggest gripes from field-based staff, dealing with customers face to face. Once their first job had finished, they were instructed to attend another job about an hour away, both Anne-Marie and Stuart waited over two hours for a client who never turned up. Anne-Marie expressed how frustrating it is sitting around doing nothing and could see how on a weekly basis, technicians who deal with this frequently could become agitated. Of course, this is not something controlled by the Office staff but a common occurrence and irritation of the technicians’ daily encounters.
Stuart then spent the day in the office with our schedulers and commented “I couldn’t do the job of the office staff, as technicians we get to travel around whilst on the job. The office work is intense, with so much to deal with at once, credit to you all”.
Overall, we think the ‘Job swap’ went very well and has given both teams a better understanding of the business and more sympathy to just how hard everyone works.
