Advancing personal growth and collaboration through job rotation

Gaining broader business perspective and fostering personal growth

Metso’s Customer loyalty team needed to fill a crucial position for a certain period. The team lead, Maarit Kivinen, Director, Customer loyalty, decided to see if she could find a suitable internal candidate through job rotation. This proved to be a good choice, and two candidates were chosen to split the role, each keeping 50% of their existing responsibilities while taking on 50% of the new role.

Yolande Stapelberg joined the Customer loyalty team from Market Area Africa, where she continues to work in Commercial Analytics, while Trang Nguyen joined from a marketing team, where she continues as a Digital Marketing Specialist.

Job rotation is a practice that allows Metso’s employees to switch roles temporarily and experience different aspects of their organization. Both Yolande and Trang have found many benefits to job rotation, both for themselves and for the organization. Gaining cross-functional knowledge and experience is crucial for employees' development, as it offers a broader business perspective and fosters personal growth. Job rotation also acts as an intensive course for professional enhancement and provides opportunities for skill development and career progression.

Organizations benefit similarly, as individuals contribute fresh perspectives that can lead to innovative problem-solving methods. It also encourages cross-collaboration, diversity and inclusion within the company, resulting in greater innovation, employee engagement and retention.

Motivation to jump at new opportunities

Interest in learning new skills, expanding their perspectives, and stepping out of their comfort zones were some of the motivational aspects for Yolande and Trang. Support from their managers has been crucial.

“I am always interested in learning and growing. The possibility of gaining exposure to another area of the business while continuing to support in my current role felt like a win/win situation. Thankfully, I have a very open and supportive manager. His willingness to trust me to continue supporting the market area, while taking on this new responsibility has been vital,” says Yolande.

For Trang, it was a perfect match for her aspirations for learning new skills. “I was introduced to this opportunity by my current manager. She noticed my eagerness to expand my skill set, especially in project management and Power BI, therefore she encouraged me to apply. It felt like fate knocking at my door, offering me a chance to step out of my comfort zone and dive into something exciting.”

Expectations for the new opportunity were not just practical job-related skills. It was considered equally important to support the development of leadership skills, such as adaptability, collaboration, creative problem solving. 

Experience so far

Approximately one third of the job rotation done, Yolande, Trang and Maarit can analyze the experience so far.

“My managers allow me the flexibility to manage my own time, trust me to execute my duties and are open for a discussion when I need support. I am passionate about the work I do at Metso and I am quickly realizing that to be more effective, I need to be completely honest with myself and my managers about how much I can do,” says Yolande. “This has been hugely beneficial in terms of gaining exposure to how a global team operates, and how they connect with and support others. My new team members have been very open, and willing to share and collaborate, which has been key to supporting my ability to perform my new role. I remain passionate about the work I do at Metso and am very grateful for the opportunity the job rotation position has provided me," says Yolande.

For Trang, open dialogue and clarity for expectations have been crucial.

“Managing time effectively, especially during peak seasons for either team, has been a learning curve. I've had to prioritize tasks, learn to say no when necessary and continuously refine my organizational skills to ensure both roles receive the attention they require. Flexibility and transparent communication are needed. I have tried to maintain open dialogue with both teams to ensure clarity and effective prioritization of tasks.”

As the team lead, job rotation has been a new experience for Maarit: “This has been an exciting time for us all in the team. We were not sure how splitting one role into two areas would work in practice, but everything has gone smoothly, and both Yolande and Trang have taken good ownership of their respective areas. We permanent members of the team are also learning a lot from our new colleagues. It is nice to think that once the rotation is over, some new perspectives from our team will travel back to the original teams.”