It's been said that "Idle hands are the devil's playground". Allowing your staff to become bored with their work encourages all sorts of impish behavior. These workplace indiscretions can be minor, like playing solitaire on the computer, or major, like sitting around and scheming up ways to rip off you or your customers. That's why we recommend providing your people with opportunities to grow, to learn, and to experience new challenges as often as possible.

It wasn't long ago that amusement parks would have one person assigned to the same ride all day long. This employee was the expert on everything about that ride. But studies found that accidents occurred because employees would become numb to the routines. They also were extremely dissatisfied with their jobs because there was nothing new to inspire them. That's why today you see park employees trained on many different rides. They rotate from ride to ride about every hour. This changes the scenery, the environment, and refreshes their minds, even though it's for just a short time.

Every business faces similar challenges. So what can you do at the dealership to allow for a variety of experiences and to minimize the boredom? It's really pretty simple. Share job duties of a similar nature. Everyone should be trained in proper phone skills and general filing so office staff can be easily rotated to handle a variety of duties. Managers spend far too much time on adminstrative matters, so why not train some of your staff to handle inventory, marketing, and wholesale responsibilities?

Regular and consistent training also boosts morale and keeps your company one step ahead of the competition. It also tells your people that you care about them and want them to be constantly improving. This is important if you want to retain high quality people on your team. A pool of stagnant water soon becomes rancid and smelly and undrinkable because no new water flows into it. But a lake being fed by a stream of fresh water that continues to flow on past the lake is clean and teeming with life.

Do you rotate responsibilities at your workplace? Tell us about it.