Sunday 5 August 2018

Why New Supervisor Training Services Found To Be Key A Key Ingredient Of Business Growth

By Nancy White


If commercial enterprises are to do well, then providing new supervisor training services needs to be a key element in their strategy. Yet to often it is in this area that enterprises fall down in so far as they tend to promote people into supervisory jobs before they have acquired the required expertise.

It is unlikely that a company would appoint a trades person or a technician without first verifying that they had both the skills and tools required to do the job. With supervisors, however, it regularly happens that new appointees are sent out into the workplace totally unprepared for the demands that lie ahead of them. As a result many newly appointed supervisory staff rapidly begin to doubt their own abilities, suffer crises of confidence and soon begin to fail in the execution of their core responsibilities. This leads to a vicious circle of anxiety and stress which in turn feeds back into the job situation only serving to make matters worse.

Sometimes the cause of this problem is the belief in an old mistaken theory that great managers are born not made. This belief advocates throwing people into the deep end trusting that their natural abilities will eventually surface helping them to cope and ultimately thrive. Another is the practice of promoting staff into supervisory roles based on their technical competence. In these instances it is believed that the primary duty of a line manager is to deal with the technicalities of the job role, and that if this is successfully achieved, the process of man management, perceived as a secondary level duty, will naturally follow.

Of course technical knowledge is important, but successful organizations know that for their companies to thrive it is necessary to invest heavily into this area of management development. Such investment of both time and resources needs to take place not only prior to appointment, but also throughout the ongoing career of the incumbent. Some companies even refer to this type of preparation as as the process of empowering their future line managers with a toolbox of supervisory skills. In large companies these programs could be run in house whilst smaller concerns could elect to send trainees onto courses run by specialist training consultants.

A managers development course would ideally be divided into key areas of functional performance. Clearly the subject of leadership, both in theory and practice, would be prominent. This would include topics such as motivating, decision making, communicating, empowering staff as well as the selection and development of staff within the work unit.

Planning is another vital tool in the supervisory toolbox. Course material here should cover subjects such as the importance of planning and why companies place such importance on this function. The effects, both positive and negative planning can have on business outcomes. Acquiring the skills to forecast, how to set objectives and creating action plans are also important. A sound knowledge of policies and procedures are important for businesses, particularly regarding those dealing with workplace health, safety and environmental security.

Naturally one of the most important skills for a new supervisor is the actual business of workplace organization which is really the nuts and bolts of how to direct people to get work done. Delegation is probably the most critical skill a supervisor requires to manage workplace teams effectively. The key to good delegation is sound communication with and among teams and in building effective relationships.

No supervisory development program would be complete without acquiring the skills to control and monitor progress within the organization. This would include the methods through which performance is measured, evaluated and where necessary action is taken to correct and improve performance.

Empowering new and future supervisors with skills as outlined, will provide them with the tools to effectively carry out and succeed with their line management responsibilities.




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