Gain real-life insight into different roles and other career paths
Job shadowing is a form of career development, observing a staff members daily work duties for up to a day, which overall increases your knowledge, skills and understanding of their position. You can also consider this experience as a remote Job shadowing option (See tips sheet for Hosts on Remote Jobshadowing experiences)
Job shadowing can be particularly useful if you:
- need to learn new skills or enabling internal mobility across teams and improving productivity,
- preparing for future leadership opportunities in learning from your manager or other managers at Griffith,
- are considering exploring a career change and want more information on a particular area, or
- are exploring capability gaps to transition into another position.
Before you consider this type of development activity, discuss with your supervisor:
- What specifically would you like to learn about from others ie mindsets, techniques, process?
- What skills, experience and activities would you find valuable to observe?
- What objectives or goal/s do you hope to achieve from this shadowing experience?
- How could this add value to your current role?
Shadowing can be an effective strategy for new staff to gain insights into processes, build networks within teams or across teams and learn tips and tricks on how to navigate the organisation, systems and structures.
Job Shadowing process
Learning Outcomes
Staff should discuss their individual learning outcomes with their supervisor. Shadowing can help you:
- Gain insight into how another section operates through observing daily operations (collaborative & inclusive capability)
- Broaden your knowledge and understanding of other roles, practices or systems in the University (collaborative & inclusive capability)
- Build skills in working collaboratively across teams and Elements (collaborative & inclusive capability)
- Build networks across the University (collaborative & inclusive capability)
- Identify next steps in your career development and planning.
Suitable for
A Job shadowing experience is suitable for:
- Staff who can invest up to a day (timing negotiated with area of employment)
- Have their manager/supervisor’s support.
Benefits, tasks and responsibilities
Preparing and next steps to organise a Shadowing Experience
1. Talk with your team leader or supervisor.
Job shadowing placements are negotiated with your team leader in the first instance. Therefore, consider how long you want to shadow, and gain their approval and support in identifying a suitable area or role that would best match with the outcomes you have discussed. In most instances, job shadowing is up to one day, which can be split into two half a day options by negotiation with the host Element. Job shadowing can be within teams or with other teams across the organisation and also be done remotely as smaller online meeting sessions. Once there is agreement and clarify on the type of shadowing experience you can consider the potential Host Area.
2. Identify the Host Area
As part of the discussion with your supervisor you can use the following data sources to help identifying potential individual experts, particular roles and the Manager of the Host area that you wish to reach out too.
- My Networks: Do I or my Manager already know colleagues that work in this role/area of work ?
- Griffith Phone Book: Search for roles or individual using search functions
- Griffith Experts database: academic and research expertise
- Role types: Position Description Library - what type of roles exist around this organisation
- Identify the Manager of a Host area: If you have identified an individual expert and wish to contact their manager to negotiate support for this experience - Using the MS Teams search for the individual expert in the MS Teams site.
In the Overview page of any staff member, you will be able to identify who the individual reports to, the Job Tile of the individual and Department they work in. Under Organisation you will also be able to see the Organisation reports structure.
3. Reaching out to a potential Host
Contact the Manager of the Host area that you have identified (phone, email or MS Teams chat or in person if it is someone that you or your manager already have connections with). Explain this request is part of your agreed development goal with your manager and why you've identified their team/and individual in the team and how they can support you (skills, understanding, decision making etc). If the Shadowing experience can be supported by the area discuss a mutually suitable time and any relevant logistics that need to be considered.
What type of shadowing process will take place?
Observation - The shadow only looks at what is being done. A great way to establish the "day in the life of" experience. This is an exploratory job shadowing approach to understanding what a job consists of. The Shadow should ask many questions to fully understand what is happening.
Regular briefings - This shadowing involves regular tasks being demonstrated over an agreed schedule. It might include the various activities needed to do a job, specific task and help a shadow learn specific skills.
Hands-on - This type of shadowing is a watch one and do one approach. The host coaches the shadow on the process initially, then there is an opportunity for the shadow to practice and the host to assess the activity and provide feedback on the performance to continue to improve and build confidence in the approach.
4. During placement
- Dress appropriately for the work area (eg if there any special requirements from a health and safety perspective such as working in lab areas).
- Meet your work area contact at the designated time, date and location or if working remotely connect via Teams meeting
- Clarify what you would like to learn and the boundaries.
- Observe and ask any questions that can assist you to learn.
5. After the placement
- Discuss your shadowing experience with the host area (i.e. what you learnt, what went well and what you might do differently next time)
- Reflect on your learning and analyse whether or not you achieved your learning outcomes and goal/s?
- Record these reflections in your Job Shadowing Workbook (PebblePad) as a way of capturing your experience to refer to for interviews or career opportunities.
- Explore any follow-up actions, such as:
- further work shadowing, or job shadowing in another area
- mentoring
- structured training or online training (LinkedIn Learning - Develop a Career Plan)
- record your experience in your resume.
- Talk with your Supervisor about this experience.
- How has the experience help you think about your next career steps?
- Is there any new practices or different ways of working that can be shared with your team?
- Is there any potential ongoing collaborations with the Host Team?
Benefits of job shadowing
- Contributes to the professional development of a fellow colleague
- Encourages you to reflect on why you do what you do and challenges you to think about your reactions and approaches to variety of situations
- Encourages you to reflect on your leadership style (improving self-awareness) and improves self-reflection
- Develops coaching skills
- Useful in transferring knowledge
Preparing for a placement
Learning needs
Consider how you can assist the employee’s learning needs, including the best times and days to ensure the best learning experience. Determine the maximum time you can commit (job shadowing is usually performed for one day and can be accommodated remotely in smaller time blocks if the learning goals work with this format - see Remote Tips sheet in the Hosts Guides and Tools section below).
Boundaries
Think about what your boundaries will be as a host and be upfront about these with the visiting colleague (e.g. what they will and won’t be able to observe due to confidentiality).
Health and safety
Ensure they are aware of all workplace health and safety (WHS) considerations for the work area. Will you need to provide advice on appropriate dress for the work environment?
During placement
- Meet the visiting colleague at the designated time, date and location. This maybe via a Teams Meeting if the experience has been agreed as a remote option.
- Provide any local induction needed (e.g. fire emergency evacuation and procedures specific to the work area) and introduce them to team members.
- Clarify with the employee what they want to learn (this may have changed since the shadowing was organised).
- Discuss the activities they are likely to shadow (e.g. report writing, attending meetings, reading emails, answering phone calls, etc.), and the behaviour that you expect.
- Have a discussion about privacy, confidentiality and/or any relevant legal or workplace health and safety considerations, and digital needs if meeting remotely.
- Provide opportunities for the employee to ask questions and provide feedback.
After placement
- Reflect on the job shadowing experience and analyse what went well and you would do differently next time
- Explore any follow-up actions (if applicable), such as:
- further job shadowing opportunities
- sharing learnings from the experience with your team
- partner with the job shadower’s area to share information and collaborate on projects – this helps in process improvement and incorporates a collaborative approach
Feedback from previous participants
The job shadowing experience was a great overview of an area I have an interest in working in. I got the most from the time with my host by asking questions about their career path, discussing the structure of the department, various roles and how to get the experience for the role I am interested in.
To get the most out of the experience, participants should have an idea of what they would like to gain from the opportunity - is it a general overview of the whole area or a specific role? Do they want to know the skills required to work there, what a day in the role looks like or how they would go about moving into the area?I've been employed with Griffith for over 13 years, and this is one of the most useful experience for my development.
Guides and tools
| For Hosts | |
|---|---|
| Tips for Hosting Job Shadowing Experience Remotely |
