Middle managers and supervisors

Encouraging participatory styles in middle managers and supervisors Giving time for safety... 

Top management, middle managers, and supervisors express the company s attitude toward safety by their own actions every day. You cannot turn this commitment on and off It must be consistent. 

The result of these attitudes is that a minimum commitment is made to the initiative until senior management show by conhnuous example that the initiative is here to stay. A significant new safety initiative is likely to require at least two years of operation to convince middle managers and supervisors and four years to convince employees that the initiative is seriously intended ... 

The role of middle managers and supervisors will normally be centred on implementing the detailed arrangements for all functions of the organisation, including health and safety. 

It is important that middle-level managers know how accidents happen and, specifically, how they can prevent the incidents as part of the overall program picture. Additionally, middle-level managers want to know how much time and effort will be required to perform these specific tasks. Middle-level managers and supervisors are often heard saying, I already have more than enough to do, and now Fm responsible for safety. Isn t that the safety person s job . 

What realistically can be expected of line supervisors, middle managers, and location managers in such organizations. 

We offer you, the reader, several takeaways. Whether you are an executive, a thought leader, a middle manager, a supervisor, or an individual contributor we present you with informal and formal ways to make your... 

At the enterprise level, the executive management responds to the voice of ownership and is primarily concerned with profit, return on capital employed, market share, etc. At the business level, the managers are concerned with products and services and hence respond to the voice of the customer. At the operational level, the middle managers, supervisors, operators, etc. focus on processes that produce products and services and hence respond to the voice of the processes carried out within their own function. 

Probably the first and most important administrative action is to adopt a company policy of health awareness. The attitude of top management to health awareness is reflected in the subsequent attitudes of middle management, supervisors, and the employees themselves. No program of control is going to succeed without the full cooperation of management. In order to establish the frame of reference within which further actions can be successful, it is necessary then to adopt, declare, promulgate, and publicize a formal policy of health awareness within the plant. This policy should include the following ... 

The team generates reports for two management reports. Vibration inspectors generate and distribute detailed surveillance reports to the equipment owners and the area maintenance supervisor so that corrective action can be planned. The inspectors also provide a summary report for middle management. 

Information technology, because it tends to break down organizational barriers, turfs, and layers, could face opposition from individuals entrenched in the companies hierarchy. For example, production planning, inventory control, and quality control will increasingly be under the control of front-line employees, and this will pose a major threat to low-level supervisors and middle managers (Osterman 1989) and may even lead to their extinction (Drucker 1988). 

The safety and loss prevention professional should specifically show the risk versus return in regard to the efforts and time of middle-level managers or supervisors and the specific amount of work required to achieve the requested results. Using the above eye-protection program as an example, the safety and loss prevention professional could provide an approximate amount of time each day the manager or supervisor will be required to address eye protection and correlate the costs and benefits of the expenditure of a few minutes each day. 

Define safety roles and responsibihties for owners, upper and middle managers, supervisors, and driving and non-driving employees. 

Huy QN (2002) Emotional balancing of organizational continuity and radical change the contribution of middle managers. Adm Sci Q 47(l) 31-69 ICC A (2014) Responsible care. International Council of Chemical Associations (ICC A), http // www.icca-chem.org/. Accessed 16 June 2014 Kaiser HF (1974) An index of factor simplicity. Psychometrika 39(l) 31-36 Kapp EA (2012) The influence of supervisor leadership practices and perceived group safety climate on employee safety performance. Saf Sci 50(4) 1119-1124 Le Coze J-C (2013) Outlines of a sensitising model for industtial safety assessment. Saf Sci 51 (1) 187-201... 

Provide multiple paths for employees to make suggestions, concerns, or problems. One mechanism should use the chain of command and make sure that there are no repercussions against employees. Hold supervisors and middle managers accountable for being responsive to all employee concerns. 

As we discussed, it is important to note that the supervisor and middle management performance should be different, necessitating some changes in the measurements used at this level. Normally, we want the middle managers to get their supervisors to do something in safety. Thus, we can measure managers to see if they meet with their supervisors and review activities or monitor the quality of the supervisors work [2]. 

Behaviors performed by employees, co-workers, supervisors, and middle management contribute to or produce the primary symptoms... 

Remember the lynchpin While driven from the top and enacted at the bottom, they absolutely must engage middle managers as active and visible champions of the change. I have suggested in a number of the eolumns in this series that first-line supervisors (and the level or two above them) are eritieal lynehpins in the organization. 

Supervisors and middle management, as well as shop-floor workers, should be rewarded for safe performance. This creates a more cohesive and pervasive safety orientation within a company (Bartels, 1976 Zohar, 1980 Bruening, 1989 Doherty et al, 1989). This notion could potentially be applied to the hierarchy that exists within families (parents and offspring) or other membership groups. 

The chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and the weakest link in any organization can vary. The workforce at any particular place of business is different. Your company may have the best-equipped and most dedicated hourly assembly-line team member workforce in the world. Possibly the company you work for may boast of the skill and ability of your front-line supervisors and middle management. Or your company may have the most highly touted chief executive that every Fortune 500 company is begging to lure away. I believe that it is truly difficult to say what group is the most important link in the safety chain, but it depends (see Figure 9-1). 

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