What Ever Happened to Supervisory Training?

Woodruff lmberman

N ewspapers are full of news about the current emphasis on retraining employ- ees affected by the cutback in defense

spending. Other proposals aim at retraining em- ployees who might be adversely affected by the new North American Free Trade Agreement. Still other proposals are for retraining empJoyees who were let go as a result of industrial restructuring. One gathers the impression that training is a sure cure for poor employee performance, which lowers company profits, affects return on assets, causes delays in shipments, produces lamentable quality, and generates high labor cost per unit. Nothing is said about training supervisors.

Many years of consulting experience in facto- ries gives rise to the opinion that employee train- ing can indeed be helpful. But with failure to train and retrain supervisors, plant performance can still be lamentable. The movement by some firms to urge or force their supervisors to take formal college courses as a sort of training may also be a mistake-or at least so the evidence inclicates.

Forty-Two Companies

In the last three years we have investigated the results of supervisory training in 42 companies, involving a variety of trainers. All 42 companies had supervisory training of more or less similar content-how to teach a job, how to give an order, how to deal with absenteeism, how to distribute the work, how to delegate, and so on. The object of such training was to teach the su- pervisors how to manage factory employees for better results.

Thirty-two companies reported varying de- grees of positive results flowing from the supervi- sory training-lower turnover and absenteeism: reduced waste and spoilage, improved quality, and increased productivity. But in ten of the companies we found no improvement in results.

The trainine was a fail- Lll r

C I

-e, a flop. Digging brought to

light some interesting aspects of management performance. All ten companies that had poor supervisory per- formance also were not I being well managecl as ’ businesses. They were not in the red, but their performance was not great either. Their margin on sales was in the lowest quartile of their indus- tries (according to Dun Pr Bradstreet), and their return on assets was equally poor. In short, the dismal results from their supervisory training simply mirrored the poor management perfor- mance in general.

What, then, could explain both the poor profit performance and the poor supervisory performance of these ten companies? The one clear conclusion that emerged was that the cli- mate of the company was wrong. This mani- fested itself in many ways. Supervisors felt that management was unfair; hourly employees were cynical about the efficiency and effectiveness of management; and middle management execu- tives believed that top management was indiffer- ent to their problems. In these ten companies, managers said they wanted their supervisors to use modern personnel behavioral techniques to motivate employees. But management policies were clearly based on the notion that the only effective motivators of hourly people were a big stick or a carrot.

Hackneyed and Trite

The “big stick approach” was epitomized by one executive, who said, “The only way to achieve higher productivity is to have the supervisors make employees push the wheelbarrow faster.”

What Ever IHappened to Supervisory Training? 75

This approach is sometimes put forth as an infal- lible sure-cure for all current malaises. It is ac- cepted mainly by people who forget that produc- tivity means more than manpower. Among other things, productivity involves using up-to-date machinery, processes, methods, materials, de- signs, and tools. It requires an even flow of parts, better scheduling, and so on. Concentration on the stick leads lazy managers to overlook the many other facets of improved productivity.

The “carrot approach” is often as bad. Nor- mally, the carrot approach emphasizes cash in- centives for individual production that beats a standard, such as piece rates. This throws the whole burden of enhanced productivity onto the hourly employees. But the carrot approach ex- poses management to sharp criticisms. Workers

on piece rates trying to beat a standard usually are downright critical of management when they encounter such

“Effective coaching (as distinguished from criticizing) leads to a dimate in which supervisors accept high responsibility and team spirit, then reflect that to their hourly people. I’

problems as parts and tool shortages, ma- chine breakdowns, poor scheduling, and poor maintenance-all of which interfere with their ability to earn incentive pay. Under those circumstances, workers complain loudly. Individual in- centive plans over any

lengthy period require a high-quality manage- ment, often of a better caliber than ordinarily exists in plants in which only day rate is paid.

Because money is a key variable in motiva- tion, it is commonly believed that it is the only important variable. This is the same kind of error found in the tested and much overused dose, the colic cure that mother used to make-which didn’t work.

Climate of the Plant

In the ten poorly performing companies, the failure of supervisory training to produce any measurable beneficial results lay not with the supervisory group but with the higher manage- ment group. The “climate” maintained by higher management was not conducive to cooperation by hourly employees or supervisors-or to earn- ing much profit.

What creates a “climate” that encourages greater cooperation by hourly employees? Over the years, we have found that the climate is de- termined by the plant manager, or whoever di- rectly manages the plant. Ten characteristics, listed below, are involved; and if most of these

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factors are present, the climate of the plant will not be conducive to management’s gaining the cooperation of the hourly employees or supervi- sors. The result: poor plant performance.

Poor plant climate results if the plant man- ager

1. is “hard-nosed” and sold on the stick or carrot approach;

2. runs the plant entirely by production fig- ures;

3. thinks that money is all that matters to employees and raises the standards when a num- ber of employees show they can consistently make high bonuses;

4. holds infrequent meetings with the general supervisor and unit supervisors and devotes the meetings entirely to production problems with no meaningful assistance to supervisors in working out personnel problems;

5. issues communications to hourly employ- ees that consistently cry over poor results (“In the last six months our margin on sales was only 4 percent, while the industry average was 5.5 per- cent. So get on the stick and move. . . .“I;

6. overlooks the fact that plant and machine maintenance is consistently behind schedule;

7. disregards seniority for most purposes; 8. is indifferent to the fact that plant house-

keeping is poor; 9. hires people from outside rather than train-

ing and promoting people from within; 10. regards training, orientation, and im-

proved communication only as seasoning ingredi- ents-like salt and pepper-to be used only as contingencies occur.

In such a climate, particulary when price competition becomes keener, “push the wheel- barrow faster” is plant management’s only cry. Employees in such circumstances soon are con- vinced that management is their adversary. It is not inordinately difficult for supervisors in those circumstances to lose confidence in the fairness, good judgment, and prudence of the plant man- agers.

When the climate is wrong-when manage- ment’s emphasis is all on production and em- ployees are regarded as mere adjuncts to the machinery-neither well-designed supervisory training nor any other such well-intentioned prac- tices will change the situation. The plant may be making money-as some do even in a bearish economy-but employees will not take great interest in quality production, on-time shipments, waste and spoilage, or anything else they con- sider might benefit management. Absenteeism and turnover may remain high. The quality of leadership in the plant has to be changed.

I am not suggesting turning the plant into a country club. Rather, changes may be made in two areas:

Business Horizons /July-August 1993

1. The manager’s ability to recognize and reward excellent performance, particularly among supervisors, using non-monetary rewards. Re- ward versus punishment is a critical determinant.

2. The manager’s ability to change from a critic into a coach, which requires knowing how to listen. This determines how a manager works with subordinates on the job to solve problems and encourage more effective goal-directed be- havior. Effective coaching (as distinguished from criticizing) leads to a climate in which supervisors accept high responsibility and team spirit, then reflect that to their hourly people. Unless this kind of climate prevails (more or less), supervi- sory training and employee training produce no results.

College Training

A fairly new response of some companies, think- ing their solution lies in “better” first-line supervi- sors, is to 1) raise the educational requirements for the job (two, if not four, years of college), and 2) require the current foremen to take some “for- mal” courses. This shift to college gradyates (or people with some college training) has come about during the last ten years. The growth of junior colleges-and new four-year colleges springing up at virtually every crossroad-has’ produced a plethora of degree holders.

Yet in most production industries, on-the-job experience amounts to 92 percent of the front- line foreman’s job requirement (Burack 1982). College does not provide on-the-job experience. College provides technical knowledge, which is only about 8 percent of the foreman’s job. This pattern seems to hold for mass-production indus- tries that are machine-utilizing and assembly-line manufacturing-our most common type of indus- try requiring some traditional minor skills plus an elaborate subdivision of labor.

Even in plants of higher technical sophistica- tion-processing plants of all sorts, gas and elec- tric utilities, rolling mills, oil refineries, chemical plants, certain food plants (dried cereals, salad dressings)-Burack found that the front-line pro- duction supervisor’s job involved 88 percent on- the-job experience and only 12 percent technical knowledge.

Why the movement to college training, then, if this is the job content for supervisors in typical manufacturing and some processing plants? There is no actual evidence convincing to an ordinary jury that college training will enable a supervisor to elicit cooperation from hourly workers better ‘than a non-college educated foreman. This is a melancholy thought, but any perceptive plant executive can corroborate it. Front-line supervi- sion still requires a high level of dependence on how-to-do-it and how to listen, and companies

are in for difficulties when they seek college- trained supervisors primady because they alleg- edly can work better with hourly people.

Some of these problems and difficulties have already surfaced in two ways. First, in some in- stances companies decided to raise the educa- tional requirement of their supervisory jobs while keeping the job content the same. Because such a large proportion of a supervisor’s time is de- voted to the dav-to-

of the college-trained 1 people become bored. In our experi- ence, this has oc- curred in many types of firms: food plants, steel-processing

n The college graduate has been led to believe that a career is in store and supervision is the

plants, meat packers, 1 first runa of the ladder. some textile plants, metal fabricators, I Too oft& this is not the electronics shops, 1 case, Disillusionment household appliance factories, and so on. I often follows. M

Se&d, college I graduates normally have an itch to get ahead. Most of the front-line supervision jobs in factories and plants have little opportunity for promotion from such positions. Degreed personnel prefer to think of supervision as a stepping stone; when they discover that such is not the case, frustrations are created that are detrimental to smoothly running organizations.

That the supervisor’s job is often a dead-end job is true, but as Liebow (1970) pointed out:

Perhaps we make too much of this. This job of the lathe operator, the assem- bly-line worker, the truck driver, the secretary-these tend to be dead-end jobs too, but they are not bad jobs be- cause of it. Not everyone in our society is career-oriented. We have a large and relatively stable working-class population which does not aspire to moving up a career ladder. The working man or fore- man who earns a living and supports his family by doing work that everyone agrees is socially useful does not neces- sarily want to become plant manager or office executive. . . .

The college graduate has been led to believe that a career is in store and that supervision is the first rung of the ladder. Too often this is not the case. Disillusionment often follows.

Some college education might be desirable for many supervisory jobs as technology in- creases, but underestimating the value of on-the- job experience and know-how is a mistake. In

What Ever Happened to Supervisory Training?

addition, in the absence of technical training opportunities for the older workers, resentment of the new “fair-haired” boys and girls and their (alleged) preferential treatment often creates in- ternal conflict. Burack recounts instances of three firms hiring college graduates as first-line supervi- sors. Eight left their companies in less than one year. I have had the same experience.

Management Implications

All of this adds up to four conclusions important to management:

1. Companies that desire to improve their internal performance-turnover, waste and spoil- age, on-time shipments, safety, productivily- must look critically at their “climate.” For ex- ample, a group of supervisors for a Midwestern metal fabricator made the following comments to me:

l “In inventory control, we have no em- ployee problems. But we have problems with management. They should sit down with us and work out workable solutions. We could solve all of our problems if they talked to everybody, and decidecl on something.”

l “Most of us are willing to help solve the uneven flow of parts problem. But we are using the same procedures we used 15 years ago, ancl we have outgrown them. Get the reasonable people together, and come up with a workable solution that all parties agree upon, and then hold them accountable.”

l “We are never consulted. I don’t believe they give supervisors enough authority to have a say in anything around here. We’ve tolcl all of this to the upstairs many, many times. It is frustrating, because we have good employees, and we can’t help them.”

Management tends to become inured to its climate. Often it takes an outsider to focus on the problems and suggest proven solutions. Some- times this even involves training sessions with plant managers.

2. “Canned” foreman training courses-avail- able from all sorts of institutions and associa- tions-have value, hut they tend to diminish the good that can flow from training. Because they must, of necessity, be general, the supervisors often see no connection between what is taught to them and their own internal situations, To be most effective, supervisory courses must deal with case materials that come out of the supw- visor’s own plant. This requires preliminary dig- ging on the part of the instructor so he or she can amass pertinent case materials that arouse and stimulate the supervisor with the relevancy of the course examples.

3. Such training must be aimecl at one objec- tive: to teach the supervisor how to motivate hourly employees and gain their best cooperation in the attainment of company goals. The best kind of training to achieve that encl is teaching the supervisor hozu lo listen. Obviously, how to listen is not a substitute for a foreman’s knowing how to plan and schedule work or how to oper- ate the machinery or write reports. How to listen is no substitute for technical knowledge. How to listen is the key to human motivation; without it, the cooperation of hourly labor is minimal.

4. Training that takes place without measur- able objectives is not reliable. Supervisory train- ing that does not produce after-training improve- ments in lower turnover, better on-time ship- ments, reduced accidents, or improved productiv- ity or quality is a waste of time, energy, and com- pany money.

T 00 many companies assume that training pays off. But when pressecl for evidence, they fall back on generalities. The same

expenditures, if invested in new machinery, cer- tainly woulcl be expectecl to lead to measurably improved performance of some kind. Why not the same test for expenditures on supervisory training? The fact that 32 companies in this study were able to fincl specific iniprovecl results- some more, some less-is an indication that some top managements are hecoming more wary about how they spend their training money ancl more sophisticated in demancling measurable

improvements that justify the training. Can we hope that the same criteria will IX applied to government-sponsored training? 0

References

Woodruff lnd~erman, “Employee Participation: What It Is. How It \Vorks.” Target (Association for Manufxtur- ing Excellence), January-Februarymy 1993, pp. 19-26.

Elliot lhhow, “No Man Cm Live With The Terrible Knowledge That He Is Not Needed,” 1\1m Yo);(2 Times Mqnzim, April i, 1970, pp. 28+.

Woodruff W. lmberman is the president of lmberman and DeForest, a manage- ment consulting firm in Chicago, Illinois.

78 Business Horizons /July-August 1993