Supervision Today

1. Describe how workforce diversity has affected supervisors ? Employees don’t set aside their cultural values and lifestyle preferences when they come to work. Supervisors must remake organizations to accommodate these different lifestyles, family needs, and work styles. They must be flexible enough in their supervisory style to seek the involvement of all employees and be aware of the fact that all employees are differently motivated in terms of what they want and need from work. Diversity of the employee pool requires a broad range of new policies and practices. Work schedules will need to be more flexible to accommodate single parents, working parents, and couples maintaining commuter relationships living in different locations. Companies will need to explore the possibilities of providing child care and elder care so that the employees may be better able to give full attention to their work. Benefits program may need to be redesigned and individualized to reflect more varied needs. Career –planning programs may need to be reassessed to deal with employees who are less willing to relocate for broadened job experience and promotions. Employees will need training to learn to understand to appreciate people who are different from themselves. Supervisors will need to rethink their motivation techniques to respond to a widening range of employee needs. Employees are recognizing that work is squeezing out their personal lives and they are not happy about it.

2. How has technology changed the supervisor’s job? We have to look at how the typical office is set up organizations today have become integrated communication centers. By linking computers, telephones, fax machines, copiers, printers, and like supervisors can get more complete information quickly than ever before. With this information supervisors can better formulate plans, make faster decisions, more clearly define the jobs that workers need to perform, and monitor work activities on an as