Our company has recently started an interdepartment secondment programme where various teams exchanged people. I work for an outsourcing firm, and we have different teams, these teams often have people who work for the same function but for different clients. So we gave them the opportunity to jump around.

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Off to the Boondocks I go!

This is a nice set up, it gives your employees a chance to learn something new. It might be in a similar function but perhaps in a different industry, or at least with a different company or client.

Do tell us how this turns out, how your employees like it or how your clients see it.

Yeah, you're lucky to have this kind of set up. We don't and we are not affiliated with any companies, so that makes it difficult for us to have internal secondment programmes.

Well you could try what we did. We had a "know my job" week, and in that, we placed engineers in management positions and managers in engineer positions. For a week. Of course for really technical things, they were free to consult each other, but most of the time, they acted as if they were the ones holding the position.

While I think that the reason behind it is a good one, I also think that a week is not enough. Is it?