The supervisor helps the department or team he or she is leading to clarify their goals and mission as well as approaches to achieving their aims. He or she helps to shape the common goals and approaches of the team. Thus, he or she builds confidence and commitment to the team and every individual in the team.
Supervisors empower members of their team with problem-solving, technical, teamwork, functional, interpersonal as well as decision-making skills. They have the power and the ability to manipulate forces within the team or department towards common direction or objective. The political perspective assumes that an organization is a political arena which comprises selfish goals, deception as well as in-fighting.
Thus, they always manipulate, push as well as bargain to advance their own interests as well as the interests of their teams or departments (Katzenbach & Smith, 2003). They can therefore easily convince others, especially their subordinates, to achieve the desired results. This may sometimes involve deception tactics or selfish acts even though the supervisor may do that for the benefit of the organization.
He or she is the advocate of the organization and institutes actions plans and programs which are in line with the organization goals. Some tactics applied by the supervisors could include keeping the goals flexible as well as manipulating the channels of influence to achieve the desired result. They may also advance their agendas patiently to achieve the determined aims.
It is the supervisor who is in direct contact with the workers and responsible for managing performance within the departments or organization. Therefore, he or she can always investigate the cause of performance problems that exist within the workplace, department or organization.
They also give direct attention to the cause of the performance problem. Thereafter, the supervisors can develop action plans to overcome the problem and achieve the results. The action plan includes empowering workers to find a solution to the problem or devise an alternative to the problem.
Supervisors provide direct communication to workers about the goals of every task which are always in line with those of the organization. Supervisors are responsible for setting goals for every task or for the particular department. This can be achieved effectively by incorporating the subordinates within the department in setting the goals of the task or the department.
After formulating the goals, the supervisor communicates the goals to the employees and puts in place strategies which ensure that the goals will be attained. He or she provides feedback to workers on whether the goals are being achieved or not.
The supervisor conducts performance appraisals regularly and assesses employee performance to enable him or her to communicate what the employee can do to improve his or her performance.
Besides, supervisors are responsible for instilling strong organizational cultures in employees by communicating their goals and ideas about the work to employees. Strong cultures encourage commitment, flexibility as well as adaptability among the workers (De Silva, 2010).
The role of supervisor as coach and resource coordination
Supervisor as a coach provides training and promoting of the employees. He or she ensures that new members of staff in his or her department and the organization as a whole are oriented to the tasks assigned. Supervisors develop training plans with the staff to ensure that employees acquire the necessary expertise in performing their jobs.
They work with the staff/subordinates to set suitable goals, time lines as well as action plans. They are also responsible for delegating duties and providing support and guidance to the employees on how to go about the job.
Since supervisors are the ones responsible for overseeing as well as observing their units, they have the responsibility of ensuring that resources are available to employees. They have to negotiate and help to secure resources for their departments or teams in order to maintain workflow in the department.
This enables supervisors to acquire and achieve cooperation from the team as well as individual within and outside the organization (Byham, Wellins & Wilson, 1991). As decision makers within the department, supervisors allocate resources and determine how the limited resources are distributed within the tasks in the department to achieve maximum effectiveness within the team.
Supervisors also need to help their subordinates identify action plans which enable them to solve their performance problems. They are in charge of the production process and responsible for the products until they leave the production area to the market.
This means that they have to offer additional training or help employees to devise action plans which improve their performance, and hence, quality of the product or service. They are to help employees who experience performance problems which need corrective actions and make them do what the employees aspire to achieve.
The supervisor has to empower the employee to implement the action plan successfully. Helping employees identify and implement action plans motivates the staff eliminates the possibility of poor quality products and gives employees confidence in their jobs. They also develop trust and confidence in the supervisor.
Dimensions of performance
Performance dimensions are measures for evaluating employees. They are universally applied to employees within the organization. Thus, they are those characteristics or things that an employee has to demonstrate to be effective in the organization or workplace. He or she represents knowledge as well as skills which are necessary for the success of the organization.
This includes critical aspects within an employee’s roles in the organization. They are normally organizationally focused and not job focused. Performance dimensions are usually included in each employee’s performance plan.
According to Sanderson and Urwin (2002), performance dimensions are designed to examine competencies of individual employees.
Some of the dimensions for measuring competencies of employees include determining the employee’s verbal/nonverbal communication abilities/skills, relationship skills, organizational skills, ethics and integrity, decision making and analytical skills, objectivity, leadership and initiative skills as well as flexibility and adaptability.
They also include examining the employee’s application of the organization’s policies, standards as well as procedures. However, the dimensions may vary from organization to organization depending on the sector in which the organization operates in as well as its vision and goals.
Absolute judgment scale
Advantages of absolute judgment scale
Absolute judgment scale can be utilized in evaluation of responses which do not have physical measurable items or characteristics. This makes it be an appropriate tool for conducting performance appraisal of employees’ performance dimensions which can not be quantified. According to Helson (1954), the method does not require direct comparison of variables and standards.
Evaluation is done by performing a weighted geometric mean of the current and past behavior or characteristic. The judgments are therefore based on comparative rating scale such as low, medium and high. The absolute categories offer fair distribution of appraisal characteristics over a range of stimuli in use.
In addition, absolute judgment scale can be used to conduct performance appraisals for groups or departments since it allows experts or a team of managers to discuss and come to a consensus.
Disadvantages of the absolute judgment scale
In some cases, the absolute judgment scale results in a skewed frequency-distribution curve where the predominance of judgments is placed at the upper end of the scale. It means that it is subject to relative judgment by the individual doing the appraisal/evaluation. Besides, the judgments are also relative to the standard of reference adopted by the organization.
Judgments are sometimes influenced by the relative time-error in that the person or panel performing the evaluation may make their judgments based on the past characteristics or behavior of the employee. Judgments could also be affected by individual bias by the person conducting the evaluation.
Thus, the confidence/accuracy level of absolute judgment scale may be low in some cases, and in addition, the judgments can not be quantified.
Reference List
Byham, W., Wellins, R., & Wilson, J. (1991). Empowered teams: Creating self-directed work groups that improve quality, productivity, and participation. New Jersey: Jossey-Bass.
De Silva, S. R. (2010). Human resource management, industrial relations and achieving management objectives. Web.
Helson, H. (1954). The use of comparative scales for the evaluation of psychological data. The American Journal of Psychology, 67(2), 321.
Katzenbach, J. R., & Smith, D. K. (2003). The wisdom of teams: Creating the high-performance organization. New York: Harper Business Essentials.
Sanderson, M., & Urwin, C. (2002). A performance dimension approach to competence. Web.