During recession, businesses have to be smart about their workforce. Companies are terminating some of their employees since they can’t pay for their salaries and benefits. Although their skills can help, they can be replaced by someone more affordable (temp or outsourced) or their job can be done by another employee.

This is often a tough decision since they want their employees to be as productive as possible. They can easily do that if the job description is enough to be handled during office hours. Recession can easily remove that privilege which makes everyone really busy in business.

Because there is limited workforce in the office, business managers and owners are opting to train their employees for more responsibilities. This is often referred to as "cross training" wherein the employee will practically learn a new skill. Before recession, this type of training is often done by companies so that their employees will be ready for anything.

For example, the can have additional tasks for the day if the employee assigned for the task is not at work. In recession, cross training means you’ll have additional assignments for now until the company has the funds to pay for additional help.

Opportunity Provided

At first glance, getting cross-trained could be hard for you since you’ll end up with additional responsibilities that could take up even your breaks. This is true since you’ll have to do additional tasks with little to no additional salary from your employer. But if you take a look at the situation closely, you’ll realize that you are actually in a perfect opportunity to excel in the industry. You’ll learn more about the business and even have access to information that can help you set up a separate business without their assistance.

Anticipating Change

If you’re asked to undergo cross training, you have to anticipate that change will come. After you training, you’ll mostly have additional responsibility which will lead to department transfers if the new responsibility is bigger than what you do now.

The exact change can’t be identified until you’re told what will happen but you can prepare. While on cross training, research well on your new responsibilities. It’s not guaranteed that you’ll be given extra responsibilities but it pays to be prepared for the new responsibilities.

A Stepping Stone

There is a good reason why your employer or boss chose you for cross training. Among them is that you’re dependable (they don’t want to spill secrets to rivals) and you have the quick learning abilities (they don’t have much time). These two reasons combined means that you are a good employee with great chances of success in the company.

Even though cross training means additional work with minimal to no increase in salary, you need to treat this as a great opportunity for your career. When recession is over, you can ask your employer to promote you or at least a raise because of what you have done for the company during recession. Just be sure you have done your job well to get the raise and promotion you want.