The multiplication of multi-activity profiles in French companies is not always accompanied by suitable supervision. More and more employees have accumulated transversal responsibilities without their perimeter or their prioritization being formalized. This informal flexibility, often thought of as a gain in fluidity, produces reverse effects if it is not organized with method.
Tolerate operational ambiguity as a management method
Entrusting several missions to the same employee can appear as a sign of confidence. But when this award is based solely on perceived availability or spontaneous competence, it installs sustainable ambiguity. The employee concerned oscillates between functions without any hierarchical line clarifying the expectations. This gray area creates a continuous tension, difficult to verbalize, but noticeable in daily arbitrations. This managerial vagueness maintains a form of informal over-engagement, rarely recognized in activity reports.
Danone, as part of its post-Cavid internal transformations, has gradually reduced this implicit logic. The company, active in the food industry, has formalized differentiated mission sheets for hybrid posts, with a temporal distribution visible by the teams. This change, established following a charge audit, did not modify the real perimeter of responsibilities, but made it possible to restore benchmarks in the distribution of efforts. The clarity effect produced on collectives has contributed to soothing tensions hitherto not expressed.
Multiply missions without equipping arbitrations
The saturation effect is not due to the quantity of tasks, but to the absence of criteria to prioritize them. An employee engaged on several fronts cannot invent the principles of arbitration between his missions alone. Without explicit framing, it depends on the immediate context, the degree of emergency perceived or the most visible expectations. This reactive management generates a form of diffuse stress, maintained by the permanent oscillation between competing emergencies. Individual performance becomes random, not for lack of competence, but by the absence of an organizational compass.
Monoprix, which mobilizes a strong versatility in its sales teams, has integrated this question into its proximity management. Hierarchical activity grids have been built in connection with radius managers, in order to equip employees on the priorities of each time slot. This measure made it possible to stabilize work rhythms and reduce the conflicts of education between managers. The initiative is not based on a rigid organization, but on a minimum structuring allowing everyone to understand where to concentrate their energy at every moment of the day.
Delegate without formalizing: a risk of invisibilization
The versatile employee often absorbs peripheral missions without being recognized as such. It becomes a silent stamp of organizational dysfunctions. The activities carried out outside the framework, for lack of clear identification, escape the processes of recognition, training and evaluation. This progressive invisibilization alters commitment, even among the most invested employees. The feeling of utility persists, but is disintegrated when it is neither visible, valued, nor integrated into human resources management tools.
The problem is not due to the versatility itself, but the way it is made observable and pilotable. Without a formal point of passage, there is neither an activity repository nor a base of professional dialogue. Managerial speech is then based on fluctuating perceptions, insufficient to structure a professional trajectory or formulate a return of experience. This void feeds silent frustrations, often revealed too late, at the time of a departure or a course accident.
Avoid silent accumulation of additional roles
The rise in multi-activity profiles is rarely made by explicit decision. It settles in successive shifts, often thanks to unrepected departures, annexed projects or ad hoc needs that have become structural. This non -framed phenomenon of stacking gradually transforms the post sheet without the management taking the measure. The employee, faced with a continuous extension of his perimeter, struggles to define what is his main mission and what constitutes a cyclical addition.
The HR departments, however, have tools to capture these drifts. Repositioning interviews, load reviews or roles maps make it possible to reintegrate additional missions into a clear contractual framework. This flat -flat work is not intended to restrict autonomy, but to restore correspondence between the requested commitment and the recognition granted. It is on this condition that versatility remains sustainable and that it really contributes to collective performance.
Identify the points of friction before they settle
The organization of work without formal structuring is often based on local adjustments, carried by field energy. These internal micro-compromises work as long as activity volumes remain controllable. As soon as the pressure intensifies, the inconsistencies masked by the good will of the teams go up brutally. The overloads become visible, the responsibilities are caught, and the alert signals multiply without clear outlet.
To avoid this rocking, a few companies rely on non -financial indicators: overlapping rate between services, frequency of redundant requests, dispersion of internal contact points. These metrics, combined with formalized land feedback, make it possible to detect the tension areas upstream. To act at this stage is to allow regulation without rupture, before the imbalances affect the stability of the teams or the fluidity of the processes.
