Supervision Interview

Josh Evje

The following encompasses a summary of responses between myself, Josh Evje and Richard Casper, who is the current third shift supervisor at Henkel Technologies. Richard supervises third shift production, which manufacture’s adhesives, sealants, and resins for the automotive industry.

Richard has been a third shift supervisor at Henkel for eleven years, yet he has been employed with the company for seventeen years. Richard currently supervises twenty-six production employees. He is also helping oversee our facility’s second shift which currently has twenty-three employees and has no production supervisor. His primary objective is to oversee the daily operations of the production floor, help provide a safe and productive work environment, and conduct informative and helpful shift change meetings for the incoming and outgoing shifts.

Richard feels his main purpose is to provide a productive work environment while motivating people to work as a team. He feels the team strategy is a big advantage over an individual approach.

Shift change meetings are stressed most importantly from upper management for Richard to spend time conveying. (The notes and information discussed at these meetings are distributed by the production manager). Richard spends a lot of time mediating employees on paper work inaccuracies, and other areas of a specific employee’s issues. He also has to complete all shifts’ time cards, and all shifts safety suggestions. Acceptable suggestions are then submitted to the production manager. After conveying all needed info at a shift change meeting, Richard delegates which work takes priority according to the information he received from the production manager. Richard feels he would like to be able to spend more time on the floor helping production associates develop easier ways to complete tasks, and to develop a program to cross- train all of production to aid in filling a position should someone call in. He would like to be involved in the training process because the training is in the process of being outsourced. He feels that if the company would allow certain individuals within the organization to do the training, there would be a higher success rate and fewer issues down the road.

Unlike most supervisors, Richard claims to spend very little time planning. He has no budget, or anything with a long term goal to compile. He says that he has a daily objective to meet the production schedule and the only planning that does come about is when an employee calls in unexpectedly. He said he doesn’t plan on people calling in, he just deals with those situations on an on hand basis, and does his best to fulfill his daily objective.

All disciplinary measures can only be suggested by front line supervisors. Their suggestions have to be submitted to management, reviewed by management, then given out by the supervisor depending on the degree of severity. He says he has no option to hire or fire, though his opinion is usually sought before a decision is made. Richard nor the company has a training regiment at this time although it is currently in the process. He says that is something he has expressed interest in but it has fallen on deaf ears. He would like to have much more involvement in the training area of not only new hires but seasoned operators due for advancement.

Richard says fairness and responsibility play a key role in his motivation tactics. He feels that if an employee shows desire to learn for an honest reason(not just the money), he will slowly give that employee more responsibility to perform special tasks. He believes being fair plays a big part in this as well because many people are motivated by money and that is not someone he is looking for. He wants to dish out more responsibility to those who show effort, accuracy, and devotion. Being fair can be tough he says, but it is necessary. He likes to show praise as well. I myself have witnessed this on several occasions. He will buy lunch for the whole shift if a tough, almost unattainable, schedule is made, or if a several special projects are completed within the allowed time and an excellent job was done.

At Henkel, we have a schedule board that has every employees name on it as well as their daily task broke down hour by hour, so a supervisor or lead can monitor where every employee is, at any given time. If one employee is behind schedule another will be called on to help and catch the later up-this is where the responsibility factor comes in. We also have a quality dept. at Henkel. Quality has to perform specific tests before any product can be packaged. Aside from the quality dept., Richard performs daily quality audits to ensure all associates are following standard operating procedure.

I discussed the five basic functions of a supervisor with