5.1 Versatility Charts

Coping with unexpected absence is a problem nearly every manager has to deal with from time to time. It may be caused by a temporary absence like sickness, but it may be of a more permanent nature, like an employee suddenly leaving.

A manager who can cope without too many difficulties in this kind of situation probably has a well-organized and well-trained workteam. Having the capacity to deal with absence depends upon:

• good communications and a good record-keeping system, so that the workteam and the manager are not too reliant on information that is only carried around in the head of the absentee;

• having people trained to do more than one job.

What about training? How can a manager be sure that there is enough crosstraining among workteam members so that absenteeism won't normally result in an unacceptable level of disruption?

The easy way to find out is to make a versatility chart that shows who's trained in what. In simple terms a versatility chart is an employee/job matrix which lists all the individuals from a workteam across the top of a grid and lists all the main departmental tasks down the side. Against each name the manager can mark the tasks that each individual is able to perform using a code such as the following: