Daniel Muggeridge, Executive Director of Blue Bike Solutions places cross-skilling at its forefront.

Focused on fuelling vision and delivering meaningful outcomes in the community sector, the organisation utilises the team’s broad and diverse experience across varying industries to apply best practice knowledge for their client.

“We see it all the time in our clients’ workplaces especially in organisations that have merged – they struggle to align different people, processes and systems with a common purpose and clarity which is vital in driving engagement and productivity,” said Mr Muggeridge.

 “Our passion and purpose is to serve organisations that create a dividend in the community rather than only on the Stock Exchange”. 

Blue Bike Solutions provides leadership through our clients’ difficult transformation journeys to realise new opportunities or resolve complex issues. The organisation holds in tension the key skills of Strategy, Organisation and Technology to ensure organisational and community outcomes are met.

A similar holistic approach is taken within Blue Bike Solutions’ workplace – investing time and effort to lift the whole team’s capability through organisation-wide workshops in which various roles can teach their individual skills and different approaches can be synergised.

The Blue Bike Solutions team brings experience from community services, IT, education, charities, consulting, logistics, manufacturing, telecommunications, public sector, project management, leadership coaching and governance.

In one case, the sales department led a workshop on effective message delivery as the organisation believes consultants across the organisation should all be able to articulate key organisational messages clearly and concisely. 

2017 will see the organisation advance this cross-skilling culture - “as we are a small team, we have an opportunity to gain deeper insight in different roles, have greater transparency and look to the future, which will call for a more diverse set of skills.”

However there is a balance – there needs to be a high level of autonomy given to workers.

“Effective skill development is not learning the skill and then telling that department how to operate effectively. While there should be opportunities to practice and develops these new skills, workplaces must ensure that expertise of a given department is not overlooked in the process”.

DID YOU KNOW?

About a third of workers (34%) say they receive the coaching and development they need to advance in their job. (2016 Snapshot of the Australian Workplace)