Retraining junior staff to prevent layoffs

There are jobs in every office — such as document controller, front desk, messenger — that are small jobs. When COVID kicked in, everyone was working from home, and these people had no activities to perform. But we quickly realized our client service department was helping clients day and night, and we needed more hands. So rather than hiring more skilled people, why not retrain our junior staff who are about to get fired because we had no jobs for them?

We actually started training them online every single day because it was so easy to train. When we are communicating with the client on Zoom, I can always have a silent staff member there to understand what we are doing. Junior team members like admin assistant and document controller were given much more skills; they are now multi-skilled and can perform other duties as well. It was a great success for us, and some of them have really shown extraordinary interest in terms of client servicing. When we resumed work in the office, we not only got them back on the same salary, we also gave them another 13% promotion because they are now multi-skilled.

They can replace somebody else if they are on leave or something like that. So I can actually use them, and they’re happy too because of their progress. They could approach me to learn something new. So this was something great for us.

Leena Parwani, MBA, Cert CII, is a seven-year MDRT member from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Hear more in the MDRT Podcast: