The role of a supervisor

The role of a supervisor is to be a problem-solver who supports the subordinates, considers their suggestions and ideas but does not criticize them. The supervisor is a person who is interested in assisting the employees to perform their tasks better. The supervisor provides guidance, training, support, encouragement, and advocacy for the rights of the employees. The supervisor takes control over task performance, monitors employee jobs and makes evaluations based on key performance indicators. Whether you are a supervisor of a team within a building project or a financial audit campaign, you will perform a set of common functions and duties. The role of a supervisor assumes the following major functions:

1. Providing effective supervision

• State the goals and objectives of a project and share appropriate documentation with the subordinates as much as possible
• Involve staff in decision-making process. Your subordinates may have insights that will lead to better decisions. Respect their contributions and let them know that they are trustworthy, committed and self-disciplined.
• Beyond formal meeting, talk to the staff informally. This approach will help you understand their views and learn opinions without asking them directly. Learn to listen to them and do not pro test against their opinions because being familiar with your subordinates will help you become more effective supervisor.
• During the meetings, identify decisions or issues which the subordinates feel are significant, and in which they would like to be involved. Consider their ideas, wishes and recommendations whenever it is possible. The subordinates are more motivated to work hard on tasks if they feel they help to solve issues.Ensure that all employees that will be involved in decision-making process have a chance to make their remarks and suggestions.
• Involve the staff to make recommendations at the agenda of meetings. Attach a sheet of paper on the notice board the day before the meeting so that any employee can leave on it the subjects she or he would like to discuss. Encourage active participation by the staff members at the meetings.

2. Setting performance goals

The supervisor should work at development of a set of performance goals. Performance goals are to be defined to both each employee and the team. Individualized targets outline the task list per team member, as well as the due dates for the completion of this task list. Performance goals for the team can be achieved by completion of individualized performance targets. When each employee is working to meet group performance goals, the team performance goals is more likely to be achieved timely. Performance goals should be determined in consultation with the team members in form of meetings. The supervisor should motivate the staff to achieve their performance targets through their own efforts. There are several rules which the supervisor should take while setting performance goals:

• Specific and comprehensive
• Quantitative when possible, and qualitative when appropriate
• Time-limited, prioritized and with clear deadlines, start/finish dates
• Clearly announced and explained, so that there is no doubt whether the goal has been met

3. Identifying the reason of performance problems

We live in imperfect world, and that's why we cannot create a supervisory system that will be absolutely trouble-free. Conflicts and issues are inevitable. The supervisor helps to resolve the troubles that employees are encountering. But sometimes for some reasons, employees may be unwilling to report a problem to the supervisor what makes the problem veiled and unobvious. In this case, the supervisor must make an extra effort to find out whether the problem exists. Once the problem is detected and unveiled, it is expected that the supervisor defines the nature of the problem before taking any corrective steps. There is a checklist of questions the supervisor should consider:

• What exactly is incorrect?
• When did the problem appear?
• What employees are involved in the problem?
• Where exactly is the problem taking place?
• What are the reasons of the problem?
• What resources will be required to solve the problem?

CentriQS is a supervisory system for managing and controlling tasks of the employees. With CentriQS you are able to create, assign, share, supervise, track and report tasks and task lists. You can assign a supervisor to a task or a group of tasks. The system of automatic notifications in CentriQS allows to receive short reports on task progress to email box. At the Scheduler view you can plan your meetings with the staff and build daily agendas. The Scheduler view displays tasks in daily, weekly or monthly view which makes it easer to plan tasks and events.