Supervisory Skills

In the present times, the competition for limited resources such as the space for expansion, talented human resources, as well as the market for the produced goods and services have increased more than ever before. This has made the world to appear like a jungle where only the organizations that have the necessary competitive skills are destined to survive and develop.  For this reason, most entrepreneurs are determined to embrace and implement practices that would enhance the competitive advantage of their businesses, including effective management, enhancing innovation, talents and skills development, motivating employees, as well as embracing technology. However, effective management plays a fundamental role as far as the success of an organization is concerned. Bad Teddy Bear Manufacturing company have been experiencing a number of human resource management issues such as poor performance appraisal, employee motivation, absenteeism as well as numerous employees` complaints. The management of this organization has embraced changes with the aim of improving the company`s overall performance, including firing its shift supervisor and I have been appointed as the new shift supervisor. In this paper, I will describe strategies that I will embrace and implement in order to fix most of these issues.

In order to raise the morale of the employees, I will play the role of a leader rather than being a manager to my employees. I will achieve this in a number of ways. For example, I will be ensuring that I always hold a brief meeting with the employees before they start their shifts in order to enlighten them concerning the SMART objectives of the company as well as ways of achieving them. By so doing, all the employees will learn the direction of the organization and will be determined to dedicate their efforts towards the attainment of the set goals and objectives within the stipulated duration. Moreover, I will be actively participating in the execution of various roles including guiding those who are not meeting the daily targets on how to do it. By actively being involved in the execution of tasks, I will be a role model to my employees, and this would in the long run motivate them to work hard (Afsar, Badir & Kiani, 2016). Moreover, I will embrace theory Y in the management process. This theory stipulates that employees are like to work, self-motivated and more importantly, they can complete the assigned tasks without or with minimal supervision (Clegg, Kornberger & Pitsis, 2015). This will greatly motivate my juniors. In addition, I will also be appreciating my employees for their exemplary performance through the word of mouth. Precisely, I will frequently be using phrases such as good work, perfect, well done, keep it up, maintain, congratulations, among others. Appreciating employees make employees perceive themselves like valued assets of an organization, and this does not only motivate them to improve in their performances, but also enhance they loyalty to the organization. This will make Mr. John who had served this organization for 14 years to stop having thoughts of quitting.

Moreover, I will be treating all of my employees without discrimination or favors. Precisely, I will adopt a performance appraisal process that I will be using to evaluate the performance of every employees at the end of every year. In order to effective conduct performance appraisal, I will use a rating scale, and I will be awarding points to each employee based on his or her reporting to work patterns, his quality, neatness in terms of completing the assigned tasks within the set duration, generational differences, experience, among other aspects. This will help me to identify employees who are performing below my expectations and those who are best performers. I will be providing feedback concerning the overall performance score to each employee in order for each employee to know where he or she needs to improve on (Lee & Steers, 2017). Through this performance appraisal, I will manage to know the employees who should be considered for promotion as well as those who needs training and orientation. For example, I can urge Mr. John to start learning on how to use a computer in order to enhance his skills. This will eliminate favorism and complaints like that of Mr. John who had been serving the organization for 14 years and have never been considered for promotion.

Additionally, I will ensure that effective communication is part of the culture for this organization. Through effective communication, I will manage to counsel Mr. Ben and Mr. Ken on how absenteeism and reporting late or leaving the organization before time can negatively hurt the overall performance of the organization. Moreover, I will give the two employees a chance to change. If they fail to change, I will warn them that I will seek punitive measures including suspension and even firing them. On the other hand, I will consider the situation of Madam Jane, and allow her to be leaving early in order to go and take care of her child. However, I will ensure that she compensates this time by reporting earlier than the others or she foregone her day off.

References

Afsar, B., Badir, Y., & Kiani, U. S. (2016). Linking spiritual leadership and employee pro-environmental behavior: The influence of workplace spirituality, intrinsic motivation, and environmental passion. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 45, 79-88.

Clegg, S. R., Kornberger, M., & Pitsis, T. (2015). Managing and organizations: An introduction to theory and practice. Sage.

Lee, T. W., & Steers, R. M. (2017). Facilitating effective performance appraisals: The role of employee commitment and organizational climate. In Performance measurement and theory (pp. 75-93). Routledge.