Me And My Shadow

It often crops up in employee surveys that staff would like to get to know each other better and learn about other members roles within their organisation.  It will most certainly help with employee engagement if everyone has a better understanding of what other people actually do and how it relates to themselves and the strategy of the organisation.

So, how about arranging ‘shadow’ days?  This type of employee engagement activity brings many benefits which will not only serve to strengthen your workforce, but will assist with the personal and career development of the person shadowing.

Staff involved in this activity will learn new aspects relating to the job, new competencies and behaviours, and they will obtain business related experience resulting in a broader insight into how they themselves with their own job role fit within the organisation.

Job shadowing is a useful tool throughout transitional periods within the organisation too. For example during strategic reviews and restructures.  It can be used to help employees understand how things work elsewhere in the workplace whether in other departments or job roles and is a great mechanism for improving communication between all levels.

Overall, these sorts of sessions help to educate, include and sensitize your employees.  You will gain strong advocates amongst them and encourage and produce motivation for their personal development and better performance.  Crucially though, ‘shadow’ days work to overcome obstacles to employee engagement, which is key to getting your workforce ‘on board’.

Make sure that when you run your job shadowing sessions that you hold a short informal feedback meeting, write up the ‘shadows’ experiences and opinions of the day and communicate this across your business.

To find out more about employee engagement issues please contact us on +44 (0) 1255 850051