Multi tasking: Good or no good!
In today’s competitive scenario companies are opting for staff downsizing, eliminating non productive/saleable products, subcontracting, reducing office spaces, etc. This ultimately calls for people to perform multiple activities within the company. It is no longer the job of marketer only to sell product or even seminar participation. The editorial person in a publication tries to push ads while an engineer propagates new equipment…while a person with R&D responsibility persuades prospects to try their new product/service, thereby pushing concept sales…and so on. But, the question remains – is multi-tasking actually giving the desired results? While we all may agree that every job requires a different skillset, we are also aware that there are exceptional people who excel in more than one skill. But, an average person may be good at one thing and may possess some other qualities but not upto the mark. We can train that person to work on the different skillset but when the same person multi-tasks, his brain works differently. He actually switches tasks – doing one thing, then another and then coming back to another. This way his mind gets diverted and he is not able to give 100 percent to any one task. This may affect the overall quality of his tasks, though the productivity would definitely increase.
We do not want to profess that multi-tasking is inefficient…infact in some situations, it is very successful. A person has more control over deadlines and quality as he is responsible for a particular job. Similarly, a person sitting at a management position needs to multi-task. When the whole industry is reeling into the cost-reduction mode, it makes sense to employ multi-tasking people. But, don’t let it affect the quality of your product/service. Work equally on the skills of your employees to make them star performers even if they are placed as multi-taskers.
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