Super Human Resources

Scenario

Joe began working for the City Water Department right out of high school. After seven years of progressing through the ranks of Water Systems Operator I, II and III, he has recently been promoted to the foreman position and is now responsible for supervising a crew of five system operators. Joe’s boss is talking about retiring in another four years and Joe would like to take over that position in the future.

Joe is a hard worker, follows safety protocol and is very knowledgeable about the City’s water systems, but he knows nothing about managing staff. Just this week, one of his crew called in sick after a weekend of partying, another one has arrived at work late every day for the last eight days, and yet another is constantly smoking in his truck which is a violation of City policy. These are Joe’s friends, they’ve worked side-by-side for the last six years and not only is he finding it difficult to discipline them, but they give him a hard time and don’t take him seriously. Joe feels he is being disrespected and taken advantage of, but doesn’t know how to improve the situation.

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Joe hasn’t received any training to prepare him for his new supervisory position because it’s not offered through his current employer and his manager just thinks Joe should tough it out and learn on-the-job like he did.

I decided to take a different approach to the training and present the information in a flipped classroom format rather than just have participants go through training units on their own. The idea is that several participants will go through the training program at the same time. Their “homework” is to go through one of the six online self-guided training units prior to attending a group class.

Each of the six training units has specific learning objectives along with a list of discussion and review questions. Participants will attend a group class with other newly promoted supervisors, as well as one or two more seasoned supervisors from the organization that I will handpick and invite to serve in a mentorship role.

During the group class we will go through different real life examples of situations a supervisor might face in everyday work, and come up with solutions and ways to react based on what the participants have learned in their self-guided study.

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Through the learning objectives of each training unit and the in-class group discussions, the supervisor will come to understand how their role fits into the organization as a whole. This training will also help prepare participants for future promotions in higher level leadership roles.

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