Chapter 13: Staff Supervision 401

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

SUPERVISION

13.00 Chapter Outline

13.01: Learning Objectives.................................................

13.02: Introduction.............................................................
13.03: What is Supervision?...............................................
13.04: Functions of a Supervisor.........................................
13.05: Abilities of a Good Supervisor..................................
13.06: Strengthening Employee Supervision.......................
13.07: Progress Questions...................................................
13.08: References................................................................
 Chapter 13: Staff Supervision 402

13.01 Learning Objectives

After learning this chapter you will be able to:

(1) Define supervision.

(2) Describe the abilities of a good supervisor.

(3) Understand the close working relationship between supervisors and the human
resources department in the implementation of human resources programmes.

(4) Describe the functions of a supervisor.

(5) Describe the abilities of a good supervisor.

13.02 Introduction

A manager's success in supervising work depends not only upon his or her authority, but
also upon his or her inter-personal skills in working effectively with subordinates.

In this chapter, we will defend the relevance of supervision as a topic of human resources
management, discuss sixteen functions and nine qualities of an effective supervisor before we
examine the approaches of strengthening the role of employee supervision in work organisations.

13.03 What is Supervising?

“Supervisor” is a general name which in organisations is used to refer to a host of titles

such as foreman, office manager, ward sister, sergeant, chief clerk, shift leader, superintendent,
charge hand, leading seaman, head steward, floor manager, and leading chef.1 The name refers
to the largest group of managers in the management team of any work organisation. The
supervisory group is the lowest level of managers to whom the largest number of employees
report. By virtue of their place in the management hierarchy, supervisors are closest to the
majority of the employees and for this reason their work has greater relationship to human
resources management functions.

At a glance, many people question the rationale of having supervision as a topic in a

human resources management course. In this connection, the author has come across such
questions as, “What is the relevance of this topic to human resources management? Do you
mean, that human resources specialists are supervisors? If human resources management
includes a study of the roles of supervisory level management as a topic, why not middle level,
and top level management as topics as well?” Probably because of similar perceptions, many
human resources management texts do not contain a chapter on supervision. Let us however
attempt an explanation to justify the rationale for a topic on supervision in human resources
management.

First, the inclusion of a topic on supervision in human resources management does not
imply an intention of teaching supervisory management in this course. It is intended to provide
 Chapter 13: Staff Supervision 403

the reader with a cursory understanding of the important aspects of the supervisor’s work with
the purpose of suggesting that the human resources department ought to exercise greater
influence on supervisory level management to the advantage of effective human resources
management in the work organisation. Supervision is a well written management field which
comprises an independent elective in management curricula, for interested students.

You will recall our repeated emphasis so far that the human resources department should
co-ordinate human resources activities and enable managers in the department to manage
employees better and more consistently. The target group we have had in mind for this kind of
enablement is mainly the supervisors, because as we have already stated this is the management
level to which the majority of the employees report. In our view, if the human resources
department understands the nature of the work of supervisors, it will design human resources
programmes which are better suited to the working needs of supervisors, and which are aimed at
removing the problems which supervisors face in managing people to perform. Because, as we
have often underscored, the people for whom the human resources department is a specialist, are
not in the human resources department but scattered in the various departments under
supervisors.

_________________________________________________________________

top
managers

middle managers

supervisors

non managerial employees

__________________________________________________________________

Fig. 13-01: The supervisor in the managerial hierarchy

Secondly, the understanding of the supervisors’ work will enable the human resources
department to establish the required type of rapport that encourages supervisors to work more
closely with the human resources department at the consultation level, so that they are enabled to
 Chapter 13: Staff Supervision 404

create the right working environment which is conducive of high levels of performance and
harmonious work relations. This type of rapport is also beneficial to the human resources
department: it will enable the human resources department to be more effective in its duties.
Co-ordination is made easier through the attraction of the participation of supervisors in the
designing of jobs, employee interviewing and selection, training and development, motivational,
and performance appraisal programmes.

The supervisor’s work and managerial style directly affect employee performance, and
job satisfaction. As we will note in the next two sections i.e. the abilities, and the functions of
supervisors, the organisation’s productivity as well as the job satisfaction of employees are
primarily dependent on supervisors. So, most employee problems related to performance and
employee management problems should be traced from the supervisory level rather than the
middle or top level management levels.

To supervise an activity or a process means to ensure that it is done correctly. 2

Supervision is a management function performed by all managers in an organisation at one time
or another. However, our focus in this chapter is on supervisory level managers, or the lowest
ranking members of a management team who have direct responsibility for supervising non-
managerial employees. Supervisors have responsibility for direct supervision of the
organisation’s human resources and for this reason their position and role are critical to human
resources management. The success of a human resources management programme in an
organisation is largely dependent on the effectiveness of its supervisors.

13.04 The Functions of the Supervisor

After looking at the qualities of a good supervisor in the previous section, let us now
review the main functions of a supervisor. You will notice from functions one to six, that the
supervisor works hand in hand with the human resources department and thus confirm our
argument in part 13.03 for establishing close co-operation and understanding between the two
parties.

(1) Helps the human resources department in designing jobs. As we have stated in
chapter four, the supervisor is best placed to know the tasks of specific jobs, their human and
industrial engineering demands, as well as the size of the task bundles which can be
accomplished by a normal person. He or she should be consulted in the process of job design.

(2) Helps the human resources department in job analysis. In the duty of analysing
jobs for purposes of job redesign, human resources planning or career development it is essential
for human resources department experts to cooperate with supervisors because of the latter’s
immense resourcefulness.

(3) Helps the human resources recruitment process i.e. in shortlisting, interviewing,
testing, and selection of suitable candidates. From his or her knowledge of the jobs under his or
her charge, the supervisor should be coopted in the recruitment process if the work organisation
is to succeed to recruit the right candidates. The supervisor knows the performance standards,
the job environment and demands, and above all he or she is the ultimate user of the services of
the candidates being recruited.3
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(4) Helps the human resources department in orienting and placing new employees.
Close co-operation between the human resources department and the supervisors ensures that
employees are appropriately oriented and placed so that they make a good start off on their jobs.4

(5) Helps the human resources department in appraising the performance of his or her
subordinates. Employees work under the guidance and charge of the supervisor. This is the
manager who best understands their performance, and therefore the manager who in the interest
of the organisation is best placed to appraise their performance. It is from the supervisor’s
appraisal that management can make the correct decisions regarding training and development,
compensation, promotion, demotion, transfers, and disciplining. Stressing the point of who
disciplines, Flippo observes:

A staff personnel agency can and should provide advice and

assistance but disciplining subordinates is so close to the essential
nature of leadership and command that it should not be taken
away from the supervisor.5

(6) Helps the human resources department in training and developing employees.
Every supervisor is a trainer, by the nature of his or her job. He or she has a duty to train
subordinates on the job but also to help identify skill deficiencies and recommend employees for
the organisation’s formal training and development programme. 6

(7) Communication and representation. The supervisor is an important medium or

mouthpiece for communicating messages from management to employees and vice versa. If the
supervisor negatively manipulates information, management is likely to be drawn far apart from
each other, a situation which causes poor interpersonal relations and conflicts destructive to the
organisation’s performance. Effective supervisors encourage free communication and
participation by employees in key decisions.7

(8) Controlling. The supervisor is the officer in the work organisation who inspects
the performance of employees in order to ensure that products of the right quantities, and quality
are produced. In this way, the supervisor becomes crucial in the strategic efforts of maintaining
the fit between the organisation and its markets. Lowery captures this point well in the
following quote:

The primary distinction between supervisors and the managers

at other levels is in their role in the organisational hierarchy.
Managers at all levels have responsibilities for planning,
organising, directing, and controlling. At the middle level and
top levels, more emphasis is given to the functional planning
and organising. At the supervisory level, the primary emphasis
is on directing and controlling.8

(9) Co-ordinating. Supervisors must ensure that the difference tasks and processes
are effectively co-ordinated so that they are performed according to plan.

(10) Compiling records and writing reports. The human resources department depends
very heavily on supervisors in compiling records such as absenteeism, sickness, etc. as well as
 Chapter 13: Staff Supervision 406

the production of such reports as accident reports, production reports, overtime worked, etc.
when they are required for decision making.

(11) Planning and scheduling of work. Supervisors must plan what subordinates must
do and thus the preparation of duty rosters, shifts, and overtime schedules is his or her
responsibility.

(12) Maintaining health, safety, and cleanliness. Supervisors are responsible for the
implementation of the organisation’s health and safety programme, that we discuss in detail in
chapter fifteen. Because they are positioned in close contact with employees, supervisors
perform the duty of ensuring that the organisation’s health and safety programme is well
observed, and they discipline those who violate it. The supervisor ensures also that employees
leave their work places in a clean state after work. 9

(13) Maintaining equipment and machinery in good working order. Supervisors

ensure the timely repair and preventive maintenance of machinery and equipment so that they
remain in good working order. Through this task, the supervisors save the organisation the
higher costs of corrective repairs and maintenance, and thus ensure that production operations
run normally.

(14) Disciplining. A supervisor has the responsibility of maintaining high levels of

work performance in his or her section. He or she should thus be prepared to take appropriate
corrective action against individual subordinates who engage in behaviours that impair their
performance or that of their colleagues. Such behaviours normally include:

(a) Absenteeism
(b) Leaving workplace without permission.
(c) Theft.
(d) Falsifying work records.
(e) Wilful damage to employer’s property.
(f) Drunkenness at work.
(g) Insubordination.
(h) Quarrelling
(i) Fighting
(j) Smoking in unauthorised places.
(k) Failure to use safety gear.
(l) Carelessness of all sorts.
(m) Sleeping on the job.
(n) Sexual harassment
(o) Use of abusive or threatening language to supervisors.
(p) Possession of weapons in the work place.
(q) Possession of drugs.

(15) Maintaining good labour relations. Supervisors take care that through their
interactions and coexistence with employees, they maintain good labour relations that obviate
the sharpening of the management-employee conflict on the one hand and the undesirable
outcomes of destructive conflicts on the other hand.
 Chapter 13: Staff Supervision 407

In order to promote the right employee-management relations, the supervisor should

ensure that the appropriate trust and confidence between the two parties are maintained.
Effective employee-management relations also depend upon the supervisor’s concern for ethical
values during the performance of his or her duties. In this respect, Chruden and Sherman draw
the following code of ethics for supervisors:10

(a) Set a high standard by your own example.

(b) Emphasise the future rather than the past.

(c) Look for and treat causes rather than symptoms.

(d) Admit your mistakes and learn from them.

(e) Accept responsibility; don’t pass the buck.

(f) Consider long-run as well as short-run results.

(g) Seek solutions which benefit everyone involved.

(h) Use legal and ethical means to achieve legal and ethical ends.

(i) Respect the dignity of every individual.

(j) Try to understand others and make yourself understood by them.

(16) Provides assistance to subordinates. During their life in the organisation,

employees can have problems. These problems can be job related or personal. Whether job
related or personal, such problems affect the performance capability of the employee, and so the
performance of the organisation. The usual signs of a “problem employee” are absenteeism,
hostility, moodiness, day dreaming, etc. We will discuss a host of these problems in chapter
eighteen.

The duty of the supervisor here, is to recognise these problems and to assist
employees to solve them. Such assistance may be in the form of talking the employee out of his
or her problem, counselling or even referring the employee to another person who can assist.

13.05 Abilities of a Good Supervisor

In order for supervisors to be effective in their work, they need to possess the following
abilities:

(a) Energy and good health

A supervisor cannot remote-control the work under his or her charge. He or she
must be always at work and therefore must move from one job to another, to oversee employee
performance. This obviously requires an energetic and healthy person. The middle and top
level managers are able to get things done without physically being present at the jobs. This is
 Chapter 13: Staff Supervision 408

however possible because of the presence of supervisors. It is correct to say, that supervisors are
the only level of management that are physically present in the work place most of the time, and
on whose physical presence good work depends.

(b) Ability to get along with people.

As we mentioned in the introduction, the supervisor works in close contact with

the majority of the non-managerial employees. To be able to perform his duties effectively, he
must be an expert in establishing and maintaining good inter personal relations with employees.
You will remember that in many African countries, the kind of employees the supervisor
normally deals with are employees who possess low levels of education, poor general
understanding, low unit salaries, unattractive working conditions, and repetitive physically tiring
jobs. Such people demand high levels of understanding and tolerance from the supervisor.

(c) Technical competence.

In the performance of his or her duties, a supervisor uses more technical skills
than either the middle or top level managers. He or she has to be knowledgeable in the technical
aspects of the jobs under his or her section, so that in demanding high standards of performance,
the supervisor must be able to show the employee physically how to accomplish the required
high standards by performing the work himself or herself. The supervisor cannot rely on writing
letters or circulars to the employees when issuing instructions, like middle and top level
managers do.

(d) A good practical teacher

A good supervisor must physically show employees how to perform tasks. He or

she orients new employees on how to perform the tasks to the organisation’s expectations, but
also very often the supervisor has to correct performance mistakes and behaviour.

(e) A good problem solver

On practically every working day, the supervisor is faced with employee problems of a
private and an official nature. The supervisor must assist the employees solve these problems so
as to prevent them from interrupting with the employees’ work. We will see in chapter fifteen
that personal problems can interfere with the employees’ concentration on their work, and even
cause stress.

(f) Leadership qualities.

As we have stated early during the chapter, the supervisor is at the lowest level of
leadership in the work organisation. As a leader, the supervisor is in charge of the work group
and therefore:11

(i) shows his or her subordinates what to do and how to go about work performance
in order to hit production targets in terms of quantity and quality.

(ii) is dedicated to the work in his or her section.

 Chapter 13: Staff Supervision 409

(iii) identifies and mixes with his or her subordinates in order to build and maintain
cohesive work groups in order to enhance productivity and high quality interpersonal relations
among employees in his or her section.

(iv) is change oriented, i.e. he or she appreciates the dynamic nature of the
organisation’s performance processes and the need to ensure constant adjustments wherever
necessary in order to maintain the homeostatic, evolutionary and cybernetic character of the
organisation.

(g) Ability to withstand pressure

By the nature of his or her work, a supervisor is a target of pressure from his or her
subordinates and bosses. His bosses often interrupt the supervisors’ work schedule, prescribing
new tasks, with new demands often with a time dimension. On their part the employee seek
guidance, counselling, instructions, help etc. on an individual basis. An effective supervisor
should be capable of withstanding this such types of pressure.

(h) Ability to understand people.

As we have repeatedly stated, the supervisor is very near his or her people. He or she
should be able to understand them both as employees and as private human beings. This will
help the supervisor detect problem areas and signs of job dissatisfaction among his or her
employees and fix them. This understanding will also help the supervisor to represent, motivate
his or her subordinates, and represent them effectively to higher levels of management. 12

(i) Ability to understand his or her boss

A supervisor should also be as near as possible to management. He or she should be able

to understand and implement organisational plans to management expectation. This
understanding enables the supervisor to help his or her boss and represent him or her effectively
in the lower levels of the organisation.

13.06 Strengthening Employee Supervision

Top and middle level management have a responsibility to strengthen supervisory level
management. When supervisors are strong, confident, like and perform their jobs well, the work
organisation achieves its objectives, and top and middle level managers can enjoy their work.
Strengthening the supervisors can take many forms: training, motivating, and empowerment are
a few but important approaches. For instance, Chruden and Sherman suggest the following
measures of strengthening the supervisor’s role.13

(1) Know your subordinates as individuals.

(2) Know your working conditions well.

(3) Keep yourself informed about your organisation’s corporate

objectives.
 Chapter 13: Staff Supervision 410

(4) Know your boss’s priorities.

(5) Know new technological developments that affect your job.

(6) Work with subordinates to solve specific problems affecting their

work.

(7) Keep your subordinates in picture on any information affecting their

work.

(8) Go for training to enable you improve and acquire skills of dealing
with people.

(9) Boldly stand up for and express your beliefs to upper management.

(10) Observe management ethics.

13.07 Progress Questions

(1) Describe the place occupied by a supervisor in the organisational

structure, indicating his or her working relationships with other
classes of employees.

(2) Discuss the main functions of a supervisor.

(3) Discuss the abilities which a good supervisor should possess to be

able to effectively discharge his or her responsibilities.

(4) Briefly defend the relevance of studying the supervisor’s role in

human resources management.

(5) Strengthening organisational performance by en large means

strengthening supervisory level management. Discuss.

13.08 Notes and References

1
TORRINGTON D. And WEIGHTMAN J. “Effective Management: People and Organisation”, Prentice Hall
International (UK) Limited 1994, New York.
2
Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary, William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., London, 1987.
3
GLUECK W.F., “Personnel: A Diagnostic Approach”, Business Publications, Inc., Plano, Texas 1982, p.143.
4
Please refer to our discussion in chapter seven.

See also GLUECK W.F., Op. Cit. p.143.

5
FLIPPO E.B., “Principles of Personnel Management” McGraw Hill Book Company, New York, 1976 p.438.
6
Please refer to our discussion in chapter twelve.
7
See also GLUECK W.F., Op. Cit. p.143.
8
LOWERY R. C. “Supervisory Management: Guidelines for Application” Prentice Hall Inc., Englewood Cliffs,
New Jersey, 1985 p.106
9
CASCIO W.F., “Managing Human Resources: Productivity, Quality of Work Life, Profits” McGraw Hill Book
Company, New York, 1989 p.127.
10
CHRUDEN H.J. and SHERMAN A.W., “Managing Human Resources”, South-Western Publishing Co.,
Cincinnati, 1984 p.313.

See also, SARTAIN A.Q. and BAKER A.W., “The Supervisor and the Job” McGraw Hill Book Company, New
York, 1978 p.123.

NGIRWA C.A., “Power: An Instrument for Effective Leadership of Business Organisations”, dissertation,
Johannes Kepler University Linz, Linz 1989 pp.272-278.
11

12

LIKERT R. “New Patterns of Management, McGraw Hill, New York

pp.113-115.
13
CHRUDEN H.J. and SHERMAN A.W.,Op. Cit. p.312.