Supervisor

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For the computer control software, see supervisory program

For the title of an elected official, see County board of supervisors

A Supervisor is an employee of an organization with some of the powers and responsibilities of management, occupying a role between true manager and a regular employee. A Supervisor position is typically the first step towards being promoted into a management role.

Supervisor, foreman, foreperson, team leader, overseer, cell coach, facilitator and area coordinator are all different names for the supervisor function. The US Bureau of Census has four hundred titles under the supervisor classification.

An employee is a supervisor if they have the power and authority to do the following actions (according to the Ontario Ministry of Labour):

Give instructions and/or orders to subordinates.
Be held responsible for the work and actions of other employees.
Administer discipline and penalties.

If an employee cannot do all of the above, legally he is probably not a supervisor, but in some other category, such as lead hand.

A supervisor is first and foremost a gang boss whose main responsibility is to ensure that a group of subordinates get out the assigned amount of production, when they are suppose to do it and within acceptable levels of quality, costs and safety.

A Supervisor is responsible for the productivity and actions of a small group of employees. The Supervisor has several manager like roles, responsibilities, and powers. Two of the key differences between a Supervisor and a Manager are (1) the Supervisor does not typically have "hire and fire" authority, and (2) the Supervisor does not have budget authority.

Lacking "hire and fire" authority means that a Supervisor usually does not recruit the employees working in the Supervisor's group nor does the Supervisor have the authority to terminate an employee. The Supervisor may participate in the hiring process as part of interviewing and assessing candidates but the actual hiring authority rests in the hands of a Manager. The Supervisor may recommend to management that a particular employee be terminated and the Supervisor may be the one who documents the behaviors leading to the recommendation but the actual firing authority rests in the hands of a Manager.

Lacking budget authority means that a Supervisor is provided a budget developed by management within which constraints the Supervisor is expected to provide a productive environment for the employees of the Supervisor's work group. A Supervisor will usually have the authority to make purchases within specified limits. A Supervisor is also given the power to approve work hours and other payroll issues. Normally, budget affecting requests such as travel will require not only the Supervisor's approval but the approval of one or more layers of management.

As a member of management, a supervisor's main job is more concerned with orchestrating and controlling work rather than performing it directly.

1 History of supervision
2 Responsibilities
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] History of supervision

The role of the supervisor in a factory setting is quite new, starting about two hundred years ago. At the start of the Industrial Revolution, the factory owners realized that they needed foremen who could force the unskilled and uneducated factory workers into changing their work habits to fit the new factory system.

The uneducated and unskilled workers, who were drawn in from the countryside, needed to learn a whole new way of existence, a life that made the hourly wage and the factory whistle the central part of their waking life. It was the foreman’s job to force the workers to stay at their machines for their entire twelve to fourteen hour shifts and not go around socializing with whomever they met. Brutal discipline was combined with starvation wages to force the workers into accepting the modern factory system. For instance, in England when the factory whistle blew, the factory gates were locked and all the tardy workers were not allowed in until lunchtime. They were then fined a further four hours pay.

Life and work in the early factory towns did not improve the life of the workers; that took some time in coming. At the time of Charles Dickens, the life expectancy in Britain dropped to seventeen years compared to a life expectancy of nineteen for the citizens of the Roman Empire.

The skilled tradesmen, banded together in craft unions, used their knowledge and limited numbers to retain a level of independence and better conditions that, to some degree, remains today.

[edit] Responsibilities

A supervisor in the workplace has four distinctly separate sets of responsibilities. His first duty is to represent management and the company. It is the supervisor’s job to organize his/her department and employees, visualize future impacts and needs, energize the employees to get their tasks done and supervise their work ensuring that the productivity and quality standards are met. To ensure that this is done, the supervisor makes certain that his employees have the training, the tools and the material that they need to carry out their duties.

Another important part of the job is to act as a middleman and buffer between the employees who actually do the job and the rest of the organization. The supervisor makes sure that his employees’ pay is correct, their vacation pay arrives on time and they receive proper care if they get injured on the job.

The supervisor also has legal responsibilities to ensure that his area of responsibility is free of safety violations, all employees received proper training and that all human rights are upheld. The supervisor is also responsible for the health and safety of all his subordinates and to ensure that they work in a harassment-free environment.

It is also be the supervisor’s responsibility to develop all the potential leaders that work under him so that the company can identify and place all the employees who demonstrate that they have the interest and abilities to be promoted or transferred to better positions.