Supervisors are Unsung Heroes
Supervisors are the companies unsung heroes, They really are the glue that holds it all together. They couldn’t do it without the infrastructure of the organization, but organization couldn’t function properly without them either. Frontline supervisors play a key role in the business success. But in many organizations, the hiring and training processes (or lack of) are hindering new supervisors’ chances for success.
As recently as 2004, companies were beginning to allocate more funds for supervisor training, according to results from an ICMI survey. Unfortunately, the current economic climate may slow down — or even reduce — that commitment. “It’s tight right now, with a pending recession. The first thing that usually goes is training.
Savvy managers and executives realize the true value of the supervisor’s role, and invest in it in the most efficient and meaningful way. Supervisor training that goes beyond industry-recognized skill sets is going to be more important as productivity takes on a more prominent role in contributing to companies’ bottom lines.
Many companies promote supervisors from within their ranks, usually pegging their top performers as the perfect candidates. But keep in mind, newly promoted supervisors are moving from a scripted, managed environment to one in which they write the scripts and do the managing. Workers may communicate well with customers, but how about with the people they’re managing — their former peers — and with upper management? Some of the top areas of concern for a new supervisor include: how to run a center (e.g., hiring, staffing, scheduling issues); how to evaluate workers and work through performance issues; how to manage conflict; and how to reach the customer satisfaction goals set by the center and/or organization.
The move is not one that everyone can make successfully — at least not without the right type of support. Offering supervisor training and development is a good start. Many of them are green; a lot of them are first-time managers. It’s a high-pressure job, but without executive leadership’s willingness to look at the position and conduct a job analysis, it’s not realistic to assume that you’ll get better results from training.
The hiring or promotion stage is, perhaps, the most crucial time to consider the types of training you have to offer new supervisors. Only about 50 percent of worker skills are transferable to the role of a center supervisor. They have to make up that deficit somewhere, somehow. Many companies that promote supervisors from within the frontline ranks typically have in place stringent requirements for competencies, interviews, and pre-employment tests for outside candidates. They still use these for employees from within, because of nondiscrimination issues, but they don’t use the data the same way!
Many times the company is blind to the weaknesses of its internal people who were up for the job. While the managers at the company believed that they knew from experience the strengths and weaknesses of its in-house candidates, however, the need is to focus only on the necessary skills and strengths that the position would require. When asking managers to give examples of the veteran agents’ problem-solving skills, and when and where they’d used them. Most of the time they couldn’t think of one. They were great reps, great order-takers, but they always transferred the calls when problems came up. Most supervisors are problem-solving 80 percent of the day.”
The three essential skills for supervisors, are problem-solving, customer focus and communication. “If they don’t have those top three strengths, you’re going to have to work very hard with them, or you’ll be putting them in a no-success situation.” Every third supervisor hire should be someone from outside the company with different experience. Otherwise, you fall into the trap of, ‘We’ve always done it this way. We’ve tried that before and it didn’t work.’”
Most managers have similar reasons for wanting to hire from within. For instance, in some cases, the company wants to create an advancement opportunity for agents. However, oftentimes, the preference to hire from within comes from a desire to maintain status quo. “A lot of managers don’t want to sit down and talk, They don’t hire supervisors who are good leaders; they hire ‘yes’ people — the workers who everybody likes. And, generally, they’re likeable because they have a hard time challenging management.
“I’d love to hear of a supervisor who came to his or her manager and said, “You know, I took escalated calls all day and I don’t think this is a good use of my time. Here’s why. What are we going to do about it? Here’s a suggestion I have. But most supervisors just take the calls and struggle to meet the goals and implement the programs that managers pass along to them. “When that happens you’re not really growing. And you’re not developing future leaders who can move beyond the role of supervisor.”
Training is not enough! Classroom, e-learning, seminars and/or self-study training can be effective methods for transferring knowledge — making it stick is another matter. The first time a new supervisor gets stuck on the job, all of that learning goes out of that window. Coaching as a follow-up to training, either on site or over the phone. Mentoring is another effective way to accomplish this follow-up in-house — but who mentors, and how, is key.
Most mentoring takes the form of on-the-job shadowing, which is unlikely to reveal all of the mechanics at work in the typical supervisor’s day. Simply watching another manager or supervisor perform their job functions doesn’t provide a clear understanding of all that’s involved with the job. “We often overestimate what’s transparent. It takes a great amount of time and determination on the manager’s part to make sure that new supervisors — and even veterans — are learning what they need to succeed and to help the team satisfy its mission.
A sense of involvement in supervisor training is not commonplace. Most managers don’t participate in supervisor training, Nor do they perform an adequate needs assessment of what the problems are and what type of training is best. It is even rarer that managers and executives view supervisors as valuable assets — not just in meeting goals, but in analyzing barriers and devising strategies.
We believe that your efforts to mentor your supervisors and help them to mentor their workers will help put your team on the road to success. “Team up new workers with a supervisor,” “Partnering with the supervisor builds stronger relationships among the staff. Workers’ relationship with their supervisor is ongoing.”
Most supervisors who are promoted from within tend to identify much more strongly with frontline agents than with management, “One day you’re an worker; the next day, you’re a supervisor. Nothing really changes except they move your cube and you have a different set of responsibilities. Newly promoted supervisors often find themselves in a veritable no-man’s land: no longer belonging to the frontline ranks, but not welcomed into the management community.
This causes stress for supervisors, which is often exacerbated by management’s insensitivity to frontline staff in their implementation of policies and procedures. “In many cases, it creates loose cannons: supervisors who don’t agree with company policies or values, and who contradict them to the team. That’s usually accompanied by cynicism and a sense of being overburdened. They then build their team around the wrong values, a cohesiveness built on negativity. They’re pushed to meet stats and answer calls, and they don’t really have a perspective on the bigger picture.”
Pull Supervisors into the fold. To combat this downward spiral, managers and executives have to escalate the value of the supervisor within the organization. “This is the person who is at the table with your customers every day, If marketing wants to know what the issues are or how to sell something, if sales wants to know what products are needed, or senior management wants to know why we’re losing customers, ask your team supervisors, because that’s what they’re working with every day. Failing to tap into supervisors’ hands-on knowledge of the customer base costs upper management a lot of valuable insight.
Grooming supervisors to be more business savvy can take a lot of the strain out of organization-wide communication and free valuable time by streamlining problem-solving in the center, as well as the analytical process for upper management. Teaching supervisors to pass information up and down is very important. When a supervisors comes to you with a problem, write it up along with a proposal for how to fix it. They’re learning what to say and with whom to communicate.”
As more and more organizations realize the value the team has on the bottom line, they should also look at how they are investing in one of the most valuable cogs in the machinery.
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