The Advantages and Disadvantages of Supervision

Supervisors have a long list of qualities and guidelines to measure up to, which at times can be difficult. Fortunately, there are a lot of people out there who can possess these qualities and follow these guidelines successfully. Therefore, this topic of the advantages and disadvantages will most likely vary between supervisors in different industries, but generally, supervisors see eye to eye on the basics of management.

Seeing Eye to Eye

Most supervisors have advantages subordinates do not. The ability to see these as advantages may be difficult though for someone who may not possess good personality traits, has no self-esteem, ignores ethics, and is unable to organize. Being a role model for subordinates could also be difficult and could even be a disadvantage, because of this required code of rules to actually be a good supervisor.

According to Gareth R. Jones and Jennifer M. George, authors of Essentials of Contemporary Management, supervising has a wide range of topics that need to be addressed.

Possessing good personality traits is arguably one of the most important qualities to have as a supervisor.

A supervisor needs to have a good personality to influence their behavior and approach to manage people and resources. Having a good personality can range from having good self-esteem, having a need for achievement and success, to organization skills. The need to recognize a code of ethics and conduct is also very, very important. Without the implementation of ethics in the workplace, a supervisor will not be able to gain their employees’ faith and trust. Having no faith or trust in a supervisor can create major disbelief in one’s superior and could most likely create slight chaos in business being that the manager is not doing their job. A supervisor should also be able to recognize policy and the enforcement of policies, such as sexual harassment, dress code, and training. Planning, organization, and control also aid supervisors in success and competitive advantage.

Advantages & Disadvantages of Being a Supervisor

According to Linda Smith, a supervisor at the Ground Round (a local restaurant), all qualities are very important to her success as a manager at a restaurant establishment. Recently, we discussed her views on the advantages and disadvantages of being a supervisor. Linda became a supervisor by working her way up the business ladder. She started as a server at the Ground Round about thirty years ago, and about ten years into her job she was offered a higher position as a supervisor. At first, she was reluctant to step into the great responsibility, but then saw some advantages of accepting the offer. Some primary rewards to accepting the position were that she could make her own schedule, she would be able to have control over things like task management, and would finally be able to have a dependable and steady income as opposed to basing her income solely on making tips as a server. As she saw the advantages of becoming more and more appealing, she accepted the offer.

As she worked as a supervisor for the next twenty years, Linda also recognized some disadvantages to being a supervisor. A huge disadvantage for her was a continuous trend of employee dissatisfaction. Being able to satisfy every employee’s wants and needs is extremely stressful. Linda has found that there is a fine line between having a business relationship with her employees and having a personal one. Forming relationships with your employees can get difficult, due to the manager's responsibility to recognize that they cannot favor one employee over another solely because they have a personal friendship. This has become a problem for Linda in areas such as scheduling and delegating tasks. She explains that in the restaurant business, you most likely will not ever have the same schedule from one week to the next.

Business is always up and down, people’s availability changes constantly, new people are hired and let go, and sometimes even seniority comes into question. Employees seem to take things more personally when someone who may have a closer personal relationship with Linda gets a better schedule or gets assigned a more favorable task. This is hard for her to explain that sometimes things just work out that way and that it's not because she favors one employee over another. Some other disadvantages for Linda have ranged from things like missing inventory, dissatisfied customers, and conflict amongst other supervisors and peers. Linda said,

“The best advice to go about handling these situations is to just take care of them as they come, stay calm, and remember that there is always a way to bring your business and all of its parts out of bad waters. Basically; Stay positive.”

Linda sees huge differences between being a supervisor and being an employee. First of all, a supervisor has a large set of responsibilities to handle. In her position, she needs to make sure a wide variety of tasks are set in place to be completed. Linda handles scheduling for employees and her fellow managers, some pricing, advertising for the restaurant, marketing for the restaurant, assigning daily side-work for the servers, hiring, replacing consumed goods and other necessary materials for the restaurant, customer service, and managing all of the money. She likes to set a good example for anyone who may achieve a supervisory position in their future by doing things the proper way and making sure everything runs smoothly on a day-to-day basis. She also recognizes that her employees are very important to her, due to the personal interactions that the servers have with the customers. Her demonstrated leadership becomes an integral part of those interactions since the restaurant business is heavily weighted by the value and satisfaction of its customers. Although, she does not interact with the customers like her employees do which is also recognized as a difference between her and her subordinates.

Supervising is difficult, simply because of everything that a manager needs to be and needs to do.

Supervisors or managers must have good qualities, be responsible for many things, and be able to set a good example for several groups of people. Regardless of how difficult it may be, the experiences and interactions are well worth the stresses of management. Linda had also described that supervising for so long over several years' time, it becomes “second-nature” to oneself. The advantages and disadvantages balance each other out in the end, meaning that it is definitely a give-and-take type of position.

(L. Smith, personal communication, January 12th, 2010)

References

George, J., Jones, G. (2003). Essentials of Contemporary Management. New York: McGraw Hill/Irwin