Is Job Shadowing Ignored in Your Organization?

Written by Mark Vickers from i4cp

Mark Vickers

Maybe it's the name. "Job shadowing" has a slightly ominous, film noir ring to it, as if Sam Spade is lurking in the corners of the workplace, digging for secrets and casting a cynical eye on pernicious personalities.

How else to explain why such a useful tactic is employed by less than a third of organizations?

Welcome to our continuing TrendWatcher podcast series here on Total Picture Radio, with Peter Clayton reporting. Total Picture Radio has formed a strategic alliance with The Institute for Corporate Productivity i4cp, allowing us to publish on our site the compete weekly research report in their TrendWatcher initiative, as well as record a weekly interview with the lead author of the article. Joining us today from St Petersburg, FL, is Mark Vickers, VP of Research at i4cp.

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Is Job Shadowing Ignored in Your Organization?

Of course, the real explanation is probably much more prosaic; that is, it's a valuable practice that a lot of companies just haven't adopted yet, or are using only on an informal basis.

In essence, job shadowing occurs when an employee or prospective hire watches an experienced worker as she or he performs a specific job. A recent study i4cp conducted on behalf of a major global organization found that just 31% of respondents said their firms use job shadowing.

But there are several reasons why its use may be an up-and-coming trend.

First, if the economy continues to improve, many employers will cautiously hire new personnel. When used with prospects, job shadowing can help determine whether there's a good fit with the organization, potentially lowering attrition costs and boosting quality of hire.
Second, among companies that have had hiring freezes or have recently gone through downsizings, workers must often take over new job duties without losing their old ones. Job shadowing is a way of helping employees develop new skills, according to about three-quarters of study participants.
Third, there's a great deal of interest in leadership and high- potential employee development today. Job shadowing is seen as a way to facilitate succession planning by about two-thirds of study respondents, while nearly nine out of 10 respondents from large companies say it's a way to provide others with a better understanding of the organization. * Fourth, as the economy improves, organizations will place a greater emphasis on retention, and over half of respondents to the i4cp study view job shadowing as useful for this purpose.

It turns out that about 14% of respondents said that, although their firms don't have a job shadowing program, they have plans to implement one over the course of the next two years.

"There are a number of reasons why job shadowing will probably become more common," says i4cp senior research analyst Carol Morrison. "But, like any emerging best practice, there's not yet a consensus about who owns the process or even how to use or implement it."

Indeed, among respondents whose companies use job shadowing, 35% said individual business units are responsible for the programs, 28% said the learning function is, another 28% said HR is, 1% said corporate is, and the rest are in the "other" category. Higher market performers, based on self-reports, are less likely to say that individual business units are responsible for these programs and more likely to make training or HR responsible.

Morrison, the author of an upcoming i4cp report on the subject, believes there are some good reasons for a lack of standardization in regard to job shadowing. "A crucial starting place for implementation of a job shadowing program is a complete understanding of the program's objectives," she notes. Is its main purpose onboarding, recruitment, development, succession planning, engagement? Function largely determines form.

And even if it's being used for a single purpose, such as new-employee orientation, there are several ways to approach it. Morrison notes,"Some firms choose to have new workers shadow existing employees as a part of their first-day-on-the-job experience. In other cases, new hires undergo orientation before job shadowing starts. In that case, new hires build on company or job information they've already been given with subsequent observation in the shadowing portion of training."

Higher-performing organizations tend to be more organized about how they structure job shadowing programs. For example, while half of higher performers said they followed up with new employees to see if they benefited from such programs, only 23% of lower performers did. Higher performers are also much more likely to introduce the program to new hires during the onboarding process. But the most striking difference is that while 41% of respondents from high-performing organizations said they allow employees to shadow only their strongest employees, just 9% of low-performing organizations said they do the same.

Some organizations have had extensive practice in job shadowing, with one study participant noting, "This has been a tradition and in practice for 100 years" and another calling it "a historical process in operations" that is integrated into the overall training and qualification process.

i4cp's 4-Part Recommendation:

1. Don't implement a job shadowing program until you know what your organization wants to get out of it.
2. If your organization decides to use it, add some structure without making it bureaucratic. For example, follow up with those who have engaged in job shadowing to see how effective it's been.
3. Consider allowing participants to follow only your best performers. Learning from the best usually pays dividends in terms of productivity.
4. Consider using job shadowing as part of both your onboarding and mentoring programs.

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