A job shadowing program can engage employees in significant work experiences and accelerate their learning curve in a job position.
People love to learn and the lack of opportunities to learn and grow is the top reason why people quit their jobs.
Most people also love to teach, share knowledge and talk about their expertise, which creates the perfect atmosphere to have job shadowing programs in place for your organization.
What is job shadowing?
Job shadowing is a form of on-the-job learning. It occurs when employees learn from each other through observing another person do his or her job.
It has similarities with mentoring, although mentoring usually occurs over a more extended period than can last many years.
Mentoring also often has a broader focus, while job shadowing focuses on observing a specific task or job.
Examples of job shadowing initiatives
Job shadowing can take several forms. The most traditional occurs when the learner follows the host all day, observing every task, but with the landscape changing fast to remote and hybrid environments, job shadowing programs can be divided into any format that makes more sense to the organization.
Some examples of job shadowing initiatives:
- A new salesperson joins the sales team and spends the first three weeks shadowing other sales, sales development and customer service professionals
- A software developer takes on a project manager role in a internal recruitment initiative and tags along a project manager from another product
What are the benefits of job shadowing?
Job shadowing has many benefits for the host, the trainee and the organization.
Host employees
Benefits to the employees who are hosting the job shadow experience include:
- While shadowing is often used to help new hires learn their jobs, it is also an effective tool to upskill experienced employees, advancing on their professional development plans
- Opportunity to share knowledge and gain a fresh perspective on their job
- Get continuously better at power skills like communication
Trainee
Benefits to the person following the shadow (the trainee) include:
- Opportunity to ask questions and get real-time answers (important to manage the many questions that come up when someone starts in a position), accelerating the ramp-up process and leaving the onboarding less overwhelming.
- A space to start networking with new colleagues (very important for remote and hybrid environments)
- Have a better understanding of the challenges the person will face doing the job
- A feeling that the company cares about their professional development
Organization
Benefits to the organization include:
- More engagement, collaboration and knowledge sharing between employees
- Fostering a company culture of lifelong learning in the workplace
- Faster upskilling process
- Faster and more welcoming onboarding process
How can an organization start a job shadowing program?
#1 Set goals
The first step in setting up a job shadowing program is to set goals for the program. You decide what you’d like to achieve; for example, do you want to use it to help newly promoted managers or to provide a better onboarding experience for new hires?
Once you’ve determined your goals connected to the business vision, start to define a framework and determine how you’ll measure success.
#2 Create a framework
During this phase you must take some important decisions, like listing potential hosts, duration, frequency and ways to measure success.
If the organization works in a hybrid or remote environment, remember also to set up a framework for online job shadowing.
Remote job shadowing might not allow for the casual conversation over coffee, but gives the opportunity for more variety of people to shadow, including workers from other geographies and divisions that can add a lot to the program.
Questions to ask when creating the framework for your on the job learning program
- What are the departments that can benefit from the program?
- Who are the people in the organization that can host a job shadowing program?
- How much time can they allocate to the initiative?
- When does the process start and how long will it last?
- What is the frequency of sessions?
- What are the metrics that will measure the success of the program?
- What are the documents and other material you will need to establish and communicate the program?
- What is going to be the role of the leadership in the process?
#3 Get leadership buy-in
Having leaders on board is crucial for every aspect of your training and development plan, and this holds true for the job shadowing program as well.
In many organizations, job shadowing initiatives are organized within specific departments.
Leaders within these departments possess the knowledge and expertise needed to structure and guide the program throughout its duration. They can also facilitate connections between trainees and the relevant individuals or teams.
The onboarding process is a pivotal moment in an employee’s experience, and it’s essential to incorporate job shadowing into the onboarding process for departments like customer service and sales. This ensures that new employees receive a well-rounded introduction to their roles and responsibilities.
#4 Develop the documents and communication you will need
To have hosts, trainees and leaders engaged in the process, you will need to provide them with clear instructions and best practices on how to conduct the process.
- Asana (or other similar tool) project/task template for the job shadowing program, to be included with the other onboarding tasks
- A survey about the program or questions included in the onboarding feedback survey.
- Guide for the person who’s being trained, with instructions on how to be a good shadow, suggesting questions to conduct the sessions
- Write a template for the emails/messages you’re going to send for the people involved
Some questions might include:
- What is the best part of the work you do?
- What is the main challenge you are facing right now?
- What would you change in the job role/department?
- Do you recommend that I read any specific piece of content (blog posts, meeting recordings etc)?
- What power skills do you think I’ll need more to excel in this role?
#5 Start
Begin to incorporate job shadowing into your corporate training programs. You might start with one department (customer service, sales and manufacturing are some examples) or one type of employee, such as new hires.
Provide other types of complementary corporate training initiatives to reinforce the lessons of the job shadow program.
Carefully match learners and hosts based on individual career and organizational goals. Consider factors such as compatibility, language skills and the likelihood of developing cross-department relationships.
#6 Spread the word
Once your program is designed, you have the leadership onboard and your communications ready, it’s time to let people know.
Engagement will be greater if employees understand the program’s benefits to them and the company. Launch an education process for potential hosts, learners, and their managers. Communicate benefits through messaging tools and open meetings.
Prepare your first participants for the program before it begins. A good way to kickstart the program is an ice-breaking and preparation call with the trainee, the leader and the person hosting the training.
Discover their expectations and desires to see how the program can meet them. Also, provide them with information on logistics and guidelines for professional behavior – the information you’ll gather in the participant’s guide.
Also, coach the learner and host on building relationships with each other. Help the learner develop good questions and encourage them to take notes while shadowing. Thank the hosts for their time.
#7 Gather feedback to keep the program relevant
The program won’t be perfect the first time you try it. Run an ongoing feedback survey from all the stakeholders and make adjustments as necessary before launching the program more widely.
Also, check to see whether the program meets the goals you established initially. Continue to refine the program with each iteration.
Decide what next steps to take to ensure the learner and company continue to capitalize on the training. Ask the learner what else they want to learn about the skill or job and the most convenient way you could provide that learning.
Ask them if they would feel comfortable becoming hosts themselves in the future (it’s always good to keep track of those in the team that loves teaching!).
Also, ask the hosts about their own development needs. Even though they are senior employees, they may want to shadow someone themselves as part of their leadership training plan.
Final thoughts
An excellent job shadowing program can help you retain employees and fill skill gaps faster and help to nurture a continuous learning culture in the workplace.
To gain the most from the job shadowing program, plan it carefully and continue improving it based on participant feedback and metrics. Also, reinforce the lessons employees learned through the job shadowing program through other training opportunities.
Voxy offers a variety of courses that could complement your job shadowing program, life Effective Comunication, Diversity in the Workplace and many many other skills-based business courses.
Voxy’s personalized learning platform uses artificial intelligence to adapt programs to individual needs automatically. Contact Voxy for a 15-minutes assessment of your demands.
