Swap shop.

• Author: Pfeifer, Margarida O.
• Position: Deparment store chain Iguatemi's job-rotation program - Art

Once a year Joao Bazzon, a manager at one of Brazil's most luxurious department stores, Iguatemi, switches jobs with a colleague in operations. Forty other executives at the Sao Paulo company also trade places, usually with janitors and security guards in a program the company calls "Today, I'm you."

"This is the best way of getting managers to understand what happens at the base level, to identify where the main problems are and what solutions are needed to improve service," says Bazzon, who has worked in security and as an elevator operator. "We managed to correct many things that were going wrong but had previously gone unnoticed." The shoppers--42,000 a day pass through 140,000 square meters across the company's 330 outlets--don't really notice the work that the company's 300 employees put in to keep clean marble hallways, large flower vases, gardens, sitting areas, bathrooms, escalators and elevators.

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