Supervisor Workload

The level of workload placed on the supervisor is of importance, and instances of supervisors becoming overloaded should be avoided (see Chapter 6). 

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Optimize supervisor workload. It is imperative that the supervisor does not become overloaded in a way that impacts his or her supervisory role. Conversely, a supervisor with too little to do may cause subordinates to question the supervisor s role. 

At the beginning of 1992,1 reckoned that I could be in possession of the much-desired degree in the fall. Because of the workload of my doctoral supervisor Prof, von Schnering, however, I extended this period several times. I ended waiting five more months to February, 1993, until Prof, von Schnering began to proofread my dissertation. 

Set a tentative date Attempt to set the time most convenient to the plant production people. Stable operation during the test is essential, and the production personnel can anticipate periods of potential instability best. Contact the laboratory supervisor. A performance test usually means increasing the lab workload, and the lab supervisor must schedule additional personnel. Obtain a commitment from the lab supervisor to complete the analysis by a reasonable date. The longer a sample sits on the shelf, the smaller is the reliability of the analysis because of possible leakage or chemical reaction, and the greater is its chance of being lost. 

Workload problems are not concerned solely with the immediate level of effort necessary but also deal with the issue of work pressure. This is defined as an unrelenting backlog of work or workload that will never be completed. This situation is much more stressing than a temporary increase in workload to meet a specific crisis. It produces the feeling that things will never get better, only worse. Supervisors have an important role in dealing with work pressure by acting as a buffer between the demands of the employer and the daily activities of the employees. Work pressure is a perceptual problem. If the supervisor deals with daily workload in an orderly way and does not put pressure on the employee about a pile-up of work, then the employee s perception of pressure will be reduced and the employee will not suffer from work pressure stress. 

Specific questions about the number of occupational safety accidents there had been the year before revealed widespread ignorance. Ability to reply was structured largely according to position in the hierarchy (Chart 9.1). These differences very much reflected the contingencies of work, most particularly receipt of company reports (Ch. 7). Consideration of accident reports and statistics was part of managers workloads and they were the most confident that they saw accident reports and statistics whereas the workforce, in the context of these questions, did not refer to any accident data. The majority of safety representatives believed that they had access to the relevant accident information but not all supervisors received the accident data. Access to the data did not necessarily mean that it was read or retained. Safety representatives remarked that it could be very difficult to get through the data they received in addition to their other responsibilities. Managers claimed to read the information but... 

Transfer environment— supervisor/coworker support, resource availability, workload, job security, authority/autonomy Organizational culture—openness to innovation/risk taking... 

Automation—Advances in technology have allowed complex system designers to automate various system control tasks and thus change the role of human operators from frontline controllers to system monitors or supervisors. Despite being originally conceived as a way of reducing operator workload in complex systems, it is apparent that automation can potentially cause both decreases and increases in workload levels (Young and Stanton, 2(X)2). 

The primary goal of the information acquiring process about complexity factors was to use them as parameters for mathematical modeling of the relationship between air traffic characteristics and controller workload. The aim of such a model in turn was serving as a basis for a decision support tool that would help supervisors in making decisions about the optimal sector configuration for various traffic situations. 

All transitional work positions are subject to Utility management s review and approval. The determination may be made by any of the following your department manager, supervisor, the Safety Coordinator, the Human Resources Director, or the Chief Executive Officer. If the workload of another department is involved, the determination will also include that manager and supervisor. 

The deployment of multiple mobile robots for USAR using this organizational structure for the robot collective is the proposed solution in this research. As described earlier, the design for autonomous coordination using the hierarchical structure for the robot collective has been derived from the desire to make efficient use of robot onboard computational power and communication bandwidth while attempting to alleviate human supervisor cognitive workload levels and loss in situation awareness. The schematic ofthe SHMRS equipped with a hierarchically structured robot collective is illustrated in Figure 1. 

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