Advantages of Cross Functional Roles in Organizations

In this highly competitive market when individuals want to surpass one another in all aspects to stand out of the crowd, being a jack of all trades is an added advantage. Companies now days look out for cost effective options. They are always on the lookout for multitasking people who can add value to different verticals and have a clear vision in aligning their efforts.

When an employee performs cross-functional roles within a department, it leads to a lot of advantages like giving greater flexibility for scheduling and the assignment of duties. In industries that engage in production or manufacturing environment, a cross-trained workforce leads to increased productivity by allowing the company to place workers in positions to meet diversified customer requirements. Organizations form teams to complete special projects that require multidimensional expertise. The team develops and implements a customized process to accomplish the company's goals. Cross-functional role is an amalgamation of responsibilities pertaining to diversified skill sets to perform either one specific task or a series of tasks related to a particular project.

Talking about the advantages of a cross functional role.

Saves Time: When a person is hired for a cross functional role he has a clear understanding on how his various tasks are interrelated and have to be completed within the stipulated time. Loss of time is very minimal in this case as he is free to delegate his time based on the priority of different tasks involved. He is free to manage both his time and tasks involved to obtain the best results. The task itself becomes free from the burden of compiling, comprehending and coordinating the efforts of different people involved. In this case it becomes a one man show who would be fully accountable for its success or failure.

Perfection: When talking about a cross functional role it is very clear that the individual assigned would be involved independently at all levels in performing the task. When only one person is involved he knows his perfection level and is also aware of the impact of imperfection of one part of his role on to the other. So, by default he gives his best and his involvement towards perfection.

Saves Cost to Company: When a company hires a multitasking person for a cross functional role it saves the cost of hiring different individuals to perform the different tasks involved. Paying one person a little higher is a smart decision rather than hiring different people and managing their salaries for that portion of work.

Aligned Efforts: When a single person is performing multi faceted task he knows how all the different portions of the project are interrelated and manages it accordingly to reach the perfection level. There is no room for confusion and he knows and manages his tasks accordingly. He is clear in his goals and his efforts are aligned towards perfection and are in complete sync with the organizations goal.

Easy review and feedback on the projects: Reviewing ten different people with different roles for one particular project is a hectic task as they might not share the same intellect level to understand the importance of their roles and align their efforts accordingly. When there is one individual performing cross functional roles for a particular project he is very clear in his ideologies of prioritizing his efforts that are involved and reviewing him becomes easy.