Job Swapping and Job Rotation Opportunities Abound:

How would you like to work all over the country without the hassle of changing jobs? At Abbott, the health care company, new graduates with appropriate majors from partner universities who are selected for the two- to three-year corporate development program are asked to rotate among different jobs at company offices around the country. The focus areas are finance, information technology, manufacturing, quality assurance, engineering, and environmental health.

Similarly, the Global Fellows Program at Edelman, a global communications marketing company, chooses strong employees with high potential to work at international locations like Shanghai, Moscow, and Abu Dhabi for as long as 18 months. HSBC Holdings, one of the world's largest banking companies, has comparable opportunities that range from 10 weeks to 2 years and places interns and entry-level employees in locations as wide-ranging as Argentina, the UK, Singapore, and France. There they work in relationship management, global trade, and receivables finance in the Commercial Banking Global Graduate Program, and in retail banking and wealth management in the Digital Global Graduate Program.

Emerson, a global technology and engineering company, runs an Engineers in Leadership Program that rotates as many as 18 candidates every year through a two-year program exposing them to one domestic and one international assignment. Benefits for the chosen employees include training, mentorship, and network building. Even the NFL runs a Junior Rotational Program that cycles employees through 6- to 12-month projects at different departments including Events, Communications and Public Affairs, Football Operations and Officiating, and International.

Job swapping, in which employees actually switch with one another for a time, can take place internally or externally. One good example of external swapping was forged by Travis York, CEO of a marketing firm called GYK Antler, who decided he could better understand how to work with his client, technology firm Dyn Industries, if he took CEO Jeremy Hitchcock's place for a typical day. "We thought it would be good to be in each other's shoes so we could understand each other better and gain a deeper perspective," York says. The experiment was so rewarding that York has repeated it three times with other clients, including the CEO of an art school, the founder of a men's fashion company, and a professional basketball player. Everything is "fair game" during the swap day except raises, hires, and firings. Several weeks later, York will follow up with the CEO and then make it a point to check in with the person on a regular basis thereafter.

Common features of many successful job swaps and rotations are planning, goal setting, the possibility of benefit for participants on both sides, mentors to offer direction and answers, and written (or posted) documentation about the job to lower the learning curve.

Questions:

1. What are the pros and cons of job swaps and rotations?
2. If you managed a business, would you offer this option to your employees? Why or why not?