Job shadowing promotes the exchange of experience and ideas between interested parties and experts. This creates an overarching exchange of information, knowledge and ideas from young employees for experienced employees or vice versa. For example, the younger employees show the older ones how the latest digital technologies can optimize the work processes and the workplace of the older employee. The experienced employees, in turn, share experiences and routines with the young employees. Of course, job shadowing can also be applied in different scenarios and tasks. Thus, a coach can also “shadow” his student:in.
Job shadowing is derived from the English word “shadow”, which means “shadow”. So in job shadowing, the observer follows his partner “like a shadow.” This is a method from the observation category. The goal is to leverage an innovation potential and further develop a product, a process or the capabilities of the counterpart.
Users are accompanied in their work. Observation by the “shadow” has some advantages over an otherwise standard interview – the specific course of action is often not precisely formulated in an interview, for a variety of reasons the truth is not told or the interviewee has a perception that does not correspond to reality. In short, the “doing” is not reproduced correctly. The shadow, on the other hand, has a greater distance from the work being done and less motivation to influence its analysis.
The manner in terms of duration, length of the respective time unit or frequency can vary as desired and should correspond to the objective. A person can also be observed over a shorter or a longer period of time, several persons can also be accompanied in order to exclude coincidences as far as possible. Finally, the observations and collected data are analyzed before recommendations for action can be derived.
Job shadowing is suitable for basic research as well as for the exploration of simple courses of action or process flows. Goals are to develop an understanding of the work and how to optimize it, discover needs, and to develop options, features, or innovative products. Especially in the context of the digital transformation of products, processes and platforms, job shadowing is very effective in digitizing analog approaches, optimizing workflows, improving collaboration and innovating the design of smart products or services. The application scenarios are particularly diverse in a Job Shadowing 2.0 and go as far as the integration of artificial intelligence.