Functions of Supervision Quiz

Functions of Supervision

• Staffing: selecting new employees, orienting and training them, appraising them, etc.
• Directing: leading, motivating, developing, and recognizing subordinate efforts
• Controlling: comparing actual results with anticipated results, using appropriate standards, and taking corrective action when necessary

Characteristics of Effective Supervisors

• Getting others to cooperate: convincing subordinates by listening to their ideas, providing a rationale for tasks, and treating them fairly
• Listening to others: paying attention to subordinates' concerns, being aware of relevant facts, and being an active listener
• Delegating responsibilities: giving others authority commensurate with responsibility, selecting the right person, and helping them understand tasks
• Understanding subordinates: considering background characteristics, such as ability to think, social traits, personality traits, character, work habits, and relationships with others
• Treating others fairly: avoiding perceived lack of fairness, treating all subordinates consistently, and understanding feelings towards each other

Special Skills of Supervisors

• Conceptual skills: analyzing situations to solve problems
• Human skills: working effectively with others, including subordinates, peers, and superiors
• Technical skills: understanding operations and tasks for which they are responsible
• Teaching skills: training subordinates
• Coaching skills: developing subordinates
• Counseling skills: helping subordinates in various ways
• Communication skills: relating well with subordinates

Supervisory Responsibilities

• Career goal planning: helping employees plan their goals, assessing strengths and weaknesses, developing plans, and putting them into action
• Ethical behavior: setting an example, developing a code of ethics, and ensuring subordinates behave ethically
• Tardiness: determining legitimacy of tardiness, rewarding punctuality, and addressing underlying causes
• Absenteeism: addressing lack of job satisfaction, making jobs more interesting, and improving working conditions
• Stress and burnout: helping subordinates deal with stress, identifying causes, and providing support
• Sexual harassment: avoiding harassment, implementing policies, and educating subordinates
• Disciplining employees: disciplining effectively, understanding situations, and using discipline as a teaching tool
• Terminating employees: terminating as a last resort, understanding hiring conditions, and consulting upper-level managers

Basic Approaches to Leadership

• Leadership is the ability to influence people towards achieving goals, involving three key aspects: people, influence, and goals.
• Effective managers have to be leaders, and both leadership and management are necessary for organizational success.

Distinction between Leadership & Management

• Leaders take a personal and active interest in achieving goals, whereas managers tend to play a relatively passive role in accomplishing goals.
• Managers need power to be entrusted to them by the organization to deal with people, while leaders have power within themselves and the required drive to lead people and motivate them to work towards achieving goals.
• Managers limit their interactions with people, while leaders interact with people frequently and in a more natural way.

Contingency Theories

• Contingency Theory adds the environmental aspect to understanding leadership effectiveness studies.
• Three key theories: Fiedler’s Model, Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership Theory, and Path-Goal Theory.
• Leadership is more flexible – different leadership styles used at different times depending on the situation.

Fiedler Model

• Effective group performance depends on the proper match between leadership style and the degree to which the situation gives the leader control.
• Assumes that leadership style (based on orientation revealed in LPC questionnaire) is fixed.
• Considers three situational factors: leader-member relations, task structure, and position power.
• For effective leadership, find a leader to fit the situation or change the situation to fit the leader.

Criticisms of Fiedler’s Model

• Lack of flexibility, as the model assumes the leader’s style to be fixed, so the most effective way to handle a situation was to change the leader.
• It doesn’t allow the leader to change leadership style based on situation.

Path-Goal Theory

• Developed by Robert House to describe the way leaders encourage and support their followers in achieving goals by making the path clear and easy.
• Four types of leaders: directive, supportive, participative, and achievement-oriented.

Formal and Informal Leaders

• Formal leader is a member of an organization given authority by virtue of their position to influence other members to achieve organizational goals.
• Informal leader is someone within an organization or work unit who is seen as worthy of paying attention to or following, but does not hold a position of power or formal authority.

Charismatic Leader

• Charisma means a gift in Greek, and natural born leaders must have vision, expressed as an ideal goal.
• Must be willing to take on high personal risk and engage in self-sacrifice to achieve the vision.
• Needs to remain sensitive to the feelings and needs of their followers.
• Must be engaging in behaviors that are perceived as counter to norms.

Transformational Leader

• Similar to Charismatic leader but distinguished by their special ability to bring about innovation and change.
• Recognizes followers’ needs and concerns, helps them look at old problems in new ways, and encourages them to question the status quo.
• Transformational leadership qualities include showing genuine concern, enabling, and being accessible.

Leadership Styles - Autocratic

• Autocratic leadership style has characteristics such as making many rules, seeking authority and control, and retaining responsibility rather than utilizing complete delegation.
• Advantages include reduced stress, increased productivity, improved logistics, and faster decision making.
• Disadvantages include a short-term approach to management, leaders perceived as having poor leadership style, increased workload, and people disliking being ordered around.

Effectiveness of Autocratic Leadership Style

• Effective in short-term projects with high technical complexity, industries where employees perform low-skilled tasks, companies with high employee turnover, and tasks requiring exact specification.

Leadership Styles - Democratic

• Democratic leadership style encourages decision making from different perspectives, and leaders seek consultation on all major issues and decisions.
• Advantages include a positive work environment, successful initiatives, creative thinking, reduced frictions, and reduced employee turnover.
• Disadvantages include slow decision making, danger of mocked participation, and not being appropriate for all situations.

Leadership Styles - Laissez-Faire

• Laissez-Faire leadership style is characterized by a "hands-off" view, minimizing direction and face time.
• Effective style to use when employees are highly skilled, experienced, and educated, and when outside experts are being used.
• Disadvantages include making employees feel insecure, inability to provide regular feedback, and inability to thank employees for their work.

Trust & Leadership

• Trust is a psychological state that exists when you agree to make yourself vulnerable to another because you have a positive expectation for how things are going to turn out.

Communication

• Communication is the process by which information is transmitted and understood between two or more people.
• A significant portion of a supervisor's day is spent on four common types of communication: reading, writing, speaking, and listening.

The Communication Process

• The communication process involves a sender, message, channel, noise, and receiver.
• The sender creates and transmits the message, while the receiver interprets the message and reacts by giving feedback.
• Encoding is the process of translating thoughts or feelings into a medium, such as written, visual, or spoken.
• Decoding is the process of translating the message into a form that has meaning to the receiver.
• Feedback is the receiver's response to the sender's message, which should be helpful, well-timed, and meaningful.

Barriers to Effective Communication

• Noise can be any distraction, disruption, or interference with the normal flow of communication, and can enter the process at any step.
• Filtering occurs when a sender manipulates information to make it more favorable to the receiver.
• Selective perception occurs when the receiver selectively sees and hears based on their needs, motivation, experience, and other personal characteristics.
• Information overload occurs when information inflow exceeds an individual's processing capacity.
• Emotions can influence how the receiver interprets a communication.

Direction of Communication

• Communication flows in three directions: downward, upward, and horizontal or lateral.
• Downward communication involves sending messages from management to employees, and is used to inform, instruct, and provide feedback.
• Upward communication involves sending messages from employees to management, and is used to convey feelings, ideas, and aspirations.
• Horizontal or lateral communication occurs among members of the same work group at the same level or among horizontally equivalent personnel.

The Grapevine

• The grapevine is the unofficial and informal communication system in an organization.
• Supervisors have predominantly negative feelings about the grapevine, but it is more prevalent at lower levels of the managerial hierarchy.
• The grapevine cannot be extinguished, and attempts to stifle it may stimulate it instead.
• Monitoring and officially correcting grapevine information is a strategy for coping with the grapevine.

Methods of Communication

• Verbal/oral communication includes speeches, formal one-on-one and group discussions, and informal rumor mills or grapevines.
• Advantages of verbal/oral communication include speed and feedback, while disadvantages include distortion.
• Written communication includes memos, letters, emails, fax transmissions, and notices placed on bulletin boards.
• Advantages of written communication include being well-thought-out, logical, and clear, while disadvantages include being time-consuming and lacking feedback.
• Nonverbal communication includes body movements, facial expressions, and physical distance between the sender and receiver.
• Informal communication may or may not follow official reporting relationships and prescribed organizational channels, and may have nothing to do with official organizational business.

Handling Discipline and Grievance

• A complaint is an indication of employee dissatisfaction
• A grievance is any complaint or dissatisfaction arising out of employment relationship at the workplace

Issues that May Cause Grievance

• Terms and conditions of employment
• Health and safety
• Work relations
• Bullying and harassment
• New working practices
• Working environment
• Organizational changes
• Discrimination

Grievance Principles

• The employee should have the right to secure consideration of their complaint or grievance without fear of victimization
• Management should develop a grievance procedure providing for quick consideration
• The procedure must be fair and equitable
• The employee should be given every opportunity to present their grievance
• Participation by employee or their representative in formulation of procedures
• Employee must be aware of procedures

Grievance Procedures

• Formal communication channels designed to settle complaints as soon as possible after the problem arises
• Stage 1: Employee presents grievance to immediate supervisor within 5 days after the alleged incident
• Stage 2: If employee is dissatisfied, they submit claims in writing to their manager within 5 working days
• Stage 3: If employee is dissatisfied, they submit claims in writing to the general manager or their nominee within 5 working days
• Stage 4: If employee is not satisfied, the company and the union may refer the matter to arbitration or the Ministry of Labour

Points to Note

• If the employee fails to take the next step within the specified time, they shall be deemed to have waived further prosecution of the grievance, and the grievance shall be deemed to have been dropped

Arbitration and Mediation

• Arbitration is a dispute resolution process in which the disputing parties present their case to a third-party intermediary who makes a decision
• Mediation is a form of third-party intervention in which the mediator helps the parties negotiate an agreement
• Mediation can focus on improving relationships or resolving immediate disputes

The Discipline Stage

• Decision to discipline should be made after discussions with other people in management and talking about the specifics of the case with the Human Resources Department
• Factors to be taken into consideration are:
  • The employee's past record
  • The severity of the incident
  • Was the employee provoked?
• Discipline should be issued in writing to an employee and only after the investigation and interviews have taken place

Labour Laws

• Trade Union Act, 1919: governs the establishment, function, and conduct of registration of trade unions
• Redundancy: an employee who has been continuously employed for at least 104 weeks is considered to be dismissed by reason of redundancy if...
• Minimum Wage Act, 1938: Jamaica has a national minimum wage
• Maternity Leave Act, 1979: entitlement, length of maternity leave, and who qualifies for maternity leave with pay

Handling Discipline and Grievance

• A complaint is an indication of employee dissatisfaction, while a grievance is any complaint or dissatisfaction arising out of employment relationships at the workplace.
• Issues that may cause grievance include terms and conditions of employment, health and safety, work relations, bullying and harassment, new working practices, working environment, organizational changes, and discrimination.

Grievance Principles

• The employee should have the right to secure consideration of his complaint or grievance without fear of victimization.
• Management should develop a grievance procedure providing for quick consideration, which must be fair and equitable.
• The employee should be given every opportunity to present his grievance, and participation by the employee or his representative in formulation of procedures is essential.
• The employer should be prepared to consider changes in policy when it causes undue hardship or irritation.

Grievance Procedures

• Grievance procedures are formal communication channels designed to settle complaints as soon as possible after the problem arises.
• The procedure involves three stages:
  • Stage 1: The employee presents his grievance to his immediate supervisor within five days after the alleged incident.
  • Stage 2: If dissatisfied with the answer, the employee submits his claims in writing to his manager within five working days.
  • Stage 3: If dissatisfied with the manager's answer, the employee submits the complaint in writing to the general manager or his nominee within five working days.

Discipline in the Workplace

• Discipline is the means by which supervisory personnel correct behavioral deficiencies and ensure adherence to established company rules.
• The purpose of discipline is to correct behavior, not to punish or embarrass an employee.
• A positive approach may solve the problem without having to discipline, but if unacceptable behavior persists, management may use discipline to correct the behavior.
• Discipline should be restricted to the issuing of letters of warning, letters of suspension, or actual termination.

The Discipline Process

• The process has two stages: the investigation stage and the discipline stage.
• The investigation stage involves gathering facts and evidence to confirm what took place, including witness statements, reports, and documentary evidence.
• The discipline stage involves making a decision to discipline after verifying the facts and gathering all evidence, considering factors such as the employee's past record, the severity of the incident, and whether the employee was provoked.

Labour Laws

• The Trade Union Act, 1919, governs the establishment, function, and conduct of registration of trade unions, outlining procedures for gaining membership and settling industrial disputes.
• The Act covers the legality of trade unions, submission of statements of accounts, rules of trade unions, and procedures for handling disputes.

Redundancy

• An employee who has been continuously employed for at least 104 weeks is considered to be dismissed by reason of redundancy if the employer ceases to carry out work, reduces the kind of work, shuts down the business, or the employee suffers personal injury or develops a disease due to the nature of the job.
• A seasonal worker who has worked with an employer for not less than 90 days in each season for two or more consecutive seasons may be dismissed by redundancy.
• If an employee is dismissed by redundancy, he/she is entitled to a written statement indicating how the redundancy payment has been calculated.

Employment Termination and Redundancy Payments Act, 1974

• The notice required to be given by an employer to terminate the contract of employment of an employee who has been continuously employed for four weeks or more shall be:
  • Not less than 2 weeks' notice if period of continuous employment is less than 5 years
  • Not less than 4 weeks' notice if period of continuous employment is 5 years or more but less than 10 years
  • Not less than six weeks' notice if period of continuous employment is ten years or more but less than fifteen years
  • Not less than eight weeks' notice if period of continuous employment is fifteen years or more but less than twenty years
  • Not less than twelve weeks' notice if period of continuous employment is twenty years or more
• The notice must be in writing unless it is given in the presence of a credible witness.

Problem Solving & Decision Making

Successful Problem Solving

• Depends on good, smart, timely, and long-term decisions

Decision Making Process

• Involves examining possibilities, comparing them, and choosing a course of action
• Making a series of decisions is involved in problem solving
• Decision making determines how an organization solves its problems, allocates resources, and accomplishes its goals

Types of Decisions

• Programmed decisions: made in response to recurring organizational problems, with decision rules developed and applied in the future
• Non-programmed decisions: made in response to unique, poorly defined, and largely unstructured situations with important consequences for the organization

Problem Solving Approaches

• Reactive problem-solving approach: waits until a problem surfaces before taking action
• Proactive approach: seeks out potential problems before they become serious

Decision Making Techniques

• Brainstorming: a group creativity technique designed to generate a large number of ideas for the solution to a problem
• Means-end analysis: requires setting subgoals based on the process of getting from the initial state to the end/goal state when solving a problem
• Bounded rational decision-making process: makes sense when the decision is non-programmed

Decision Making Conditions

• Certainty: knowing exactly what the outcome will be
• Risk: knowing the probability of the outcome
• Uncertainty: not knowing the exact outcome

Errors in Decision Making

• Stereotyping: making assumptions about a group of people and applying them to individuals
• Escalation of commitment: continuing to invest in a decision despite poor results
• Recency syndrome: easily remembering events that have occurred recently
• Conformity with social pressures and domination by a few members are disadvantages of group decision making

Good Decision Making

• Set clear goals
• Stop and think carefully before making a decision
• Keep emotions out of decision making

Group Decision Making

• Advantages: more ideas, more alternative, and more expertise
• Disadvantages: time delays, conformity with social pressures, and domination by a few members
• A major advantage is that members are likely to be committed to a decision

Purpose of Decision Making

• To solve a problem
• To collaborate
• To involve people in decisions

Problem Definition

• A problem is a discrepancy between the ideal and actual conditions
• A problem exists whenever objectives are not being met

Test your knowledge on the functions of supervision, including staffing, directing, and more. Assess your understanding of the roles and responsibilities involved in supervising employees.