Why and how should cross-assignment be introduced in 2023?

If the global Covid-19 pandemic has changed the way we behave in society, it has also had a brutal impact on the organisation of work in companies. The massive use of teleworking has shown that it is possible to go beyond a company organisation built on a geographical logic (departments, offices, branches).

With projects being carried out mainly (and increasingly) remotely, the Nantes office must be able to position an employee from the Toulouse office on one of its projects, for example, rather than refusing him or her due to a lack of resources, which would degrade the company's performance: this is the emergence of cross-assignment.

This does, however, imply a process of assignment and a sophisticated organization: knowledge of employee availability at the macro level (and no longer just by department or office), a dynamic mapping of skills and competencies, and the ability to adapt to new situations. dynamic skills mapping shared throughout the company, complete and up-to-date, as well as a clear and established validation process for managing requests for assignment.

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Here's how to set up a smooth and efficient cross-assignment system:

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STEP 1: Centralize all information about ongoing projects and employee availability at the macro level of the company

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To be able to practice cross-assignment in a company, the first step is to pool all resources, all departments combined. Indeed, managers no longer capitalize only on the skills of their department's employees but on all those of the company. To succeed in this first step, there are two actions to implement:

Centralise all project and team information on a software package at assignment. Abandon the Excel files used locally, which prevent a good transmission of data and a global visibility of the activity.

🔀 Integrate perfectly the assignment software with your existing tools (HRIS, CRM, ERP, ...) to avoid double entry, keep the information updated in real time and have a vision of the availability of all the company's resources at all levels.

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STEP 2: Know all the skills that are available in the company

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If a department manager could pride himself on knowing all the skills of his employees, he is completely overwhelmed when the pooling of resources becomes widespread and the number of employees involved explodes. Three solutions to this problem:

📄 Create and maintain a dynamic skills map of all teams. This map provides visibility on all the skills available within the company at a given moment. It must be exhaustive and kept up to date through regular feedback: during or after each project and during annual evaluations.

💭 Give employees the opportunity to fill in the skills they have acquired and those they wish to develop to identify the most motivated and relevant profiles for a project.

💻 Benefit from a search engine to find out if a specific skill is available in the company and be able to find the associated profile easily and quickly before calling on external service providers.

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STEP 3: Set up a clear validation system to avoid assignment

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The key to effective cross-assignment is a clear process for managing resource requests and their approval. This process must be widely shared among all stakeholders to ensure that they are aligned:

✅ Use a assignmentsoftware that allows fine editing rights management that can be customized to each company, so that your department managers can validate in fine the assignment of their employees.

🙋 Designate a assignment cross-departmental manager whose objective is to promote synergies between them, generally the operations manager.

📣 Communicate regularly on the assignment issues of the moment and related topics (prospecting, recruitment, training, internal projects ...).

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The cross-assignment allows you to use all of your company's skills to their fullest potential, without restricting them to their location. This way, you can compensate for a lack of resources in an office or a department, which gives you the possibility to lead more projects: you improve the performance of your company while valuing the experience and skills of your employees.

Defining a clear and universally understood workflow for assignment at the macro level of the company will unify, bring transparency and facilitate processes.

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Would you like to find out more? We've got plenty of resources to help you go further.

To complement this topic, read our template "The perfect load plan for successful deployment".

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See also our guides, templates and checklists in the Resources tab.

See you soon at Napta!

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Napta supports you in setting up a real cross-assignment process. To find out how, ask to speak to an expert.