Like foreign student exchange programs, a regular exchange program between the IT team and end user departments in which an IT business analyst spends six weeks in an end-user area doing end- user work, and a person from the end-user area spends six weeks in IT, can build bench strength and collaborative relationships between IT analysts and business users.
Yet many who have tried this idea have exited with mixed results. What are the pitfalls, and is there a way to run an employee exchange program that delivers quality outcomes for everyone?
First, Why Do it?
Cross-disciplinary team building and the development of empathy and understanding of the business and IT across departments are the driving forces behind user-IT employee exchanges. You can’t teach practical company business acumen to IT staff with textbooks and college courses. IT needs “boots on” experience in user departments, where business analysts directly experience the day-to-day process problems and pain points that users do.
End users who take a tour of duty in IT have a chance to see the “other side,” which must plan carefully about how to integrate and secure software, while users complain that application deployments are taking too long.
On paper, there is virtually no one in user departmental or IT management who thinks that employee exchange is a bad idea. So, why haven’t these exchanges been widely embraced?
Pitfalls
There are several reasons why employee exchanges between users and IT have faltered:
1. The time commitment
Whether you’re in IT or end-user management, exchanging an employee who is fully trained in your department for another employee who will be a trainee, at best, is not an easy sacrifice to make. There are projects and daily work to accomplish. Can your department afford an employee exchange that could compromise productivity when you might already be running lean?
2. Lack of management commitment
The user-IT employee exchange starts out strong, with both user and IT management highly enthusiastic about the idea. Then, an unexpected priority comes up on either the user or IT side, and the manager who is affected says, “I’m sorry. I’m going to have to pull back my employee from the exchange because we have this important project to get out.”
I’ve seen this scenario happen. Employees get pulled out of the exchange program, and in good faith their managers try to reengage them in the exchange once a crisis has been resolved, but the continuity of the exchange has been interrupted and much of the initial effort is lost.
3. Failure to set attainable goals
Often, users and IT will agree to an employee exchange with a loose goal of immersing employees in different departments so employees can gain a better understanding of the company. The employees, and those whom they work with in their new departments, aren’t really sure about what they should be focusing on. When the exchange period ends, no one is exactly sure about what knowledge has been gained, and they can’t explain it to upper management, either.
4. Lack of follow up
Did the employees in the exchange come back with value-added knowledge that is aiding them in new projects that they are doing? Most managers I speak with who have done these exchanges tell me that they’re not sure.
One way to be sure is to check in with employees after they complete exchanges to see what they’re learned, and how they’re applying this new knowledge to their work. For example, if an IT employee goes to accounting to learn about risk management and works six weeks with the risk group, does the employee come back with new knowledge that helps them develop more insightful analytics reports for that group?
5. Lack of practical know-how
Lack of know-how in running employee exchanges goes hand in hand with the failure to set attainable goals, or to follow up. The managers who are best in these areas are individuals who have backgrounds in teaching and education, but not everybody does.
When you exchange employees for purposes of knowledge transfer and growth of business understanding, setting goals and staying with and following up the process are fundamental to execution. Unfortunately, many managers who try exchanges lack skills in these areas.
6. Employee transfer requests
Many managers fear that the employees they send to other departments might like the work so well that they request a permanent transfer! This is a major fear.
Doing an Employee Exchange
Given the pitfalls, it’s small wonder that employee exchange programs aren’t aggressively pursued, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t work.
Where do they work?
1. Companies that want to improve their employee retention
Several years ago, a major appliance manufacturer offered an internal program where employees could sign up for projects outside of their regular business areas and get time to work on the projects. Other companies have followed suit. This “outside of the department” work unlocked employee creativity and career growth opportunities. It improved employee morale, which in turn reduced employee churn. In 2024, overall employee churn at US companies was at 20%, or one in five employees. With a tight job market, companies want to reduce churn, and expanding employee work experiences and knowledge is one way to do it.
2. Organizations that require cross-training
The military is a prime example of this. Recruits are trained in a variety of different functional areas to determine where they best excel.
3. Not-for-profit entities
Credit unions and other not-for-profit entities have historically been great proving grounds for employee exchange programs because of their people orientation. Upper and middle managers are genuinely committed to the idea of employee growth through cross-training. The not-for-profit culture also promotes resource sharing, so managers are less resistant to the idea that they could lose a valuable employee to another department because the employee likes working there.
4. When clear objectives are set, and follow-up is done
An employee exchange requires clear objectives to succeed at an optimal level. For example, you don’t send an IT staffer over to accounting to learn clerical processes of closing the month-end financials and reporting them to management. If it’s taking finance three days to do the month-end close, you send an IT employee over to learn the process and the process obstacles, and to determine why it’s taking finance three days instead of one day to do the close. The hope is that the employee returns to IT and works on the tech side of the process so the month-end closing can be done in one day. That’s a clear business win.
Summary
For managers who are uncomfortable with employee exchanges, it might be best not to attempt them. But for those who can see the benefits of these exchanges, and who can answer a solid “yes” to their commitment levels, employee exchanges can work extraordinarily well for everyone involved.