Creating Effective Supervisory Training for Canform Metals

In this course we have learned many ideas about what good supervision practice looks like.  Every chapter that we have studied, identifies some good tip or practice that a supervisor should follow.  (Review our course learning plan to see the chapters that we have covered.)

Imagine that you are a consultant for a company that advises clients on how to train its supervisors. That will be your role.  Your potential client is Canform Metals and your Report will try to influence them to hire you to train their supervisors.

Canform Metals has approached you to set up a four-hour training program for all their supervisors to attend next month.  They run a non-union machine shop that uses older technology as well as newer computerized technology.

They have 150 employees in three locations.  A quarter of all the employees are under 30 and have been with Canform Metals for less than three years.

A third of the employees are older workers over the age of 48 and have been with the Company for at least 20 years.

The balance is in the middle.  Even though the machine shop has been a male-dominated workplace, Canform Metals does have more female engineers and technicians joining them in the last three years.  This is a change that the organization is getting used to.

They have about fifteen supervisors in the organization.  Most have grown up from within the organization and were promoted because of their technical skills.

Canform Metals has never previously offered supervisory training before, but they think that it’s time to do so.

Here are some facts that you found out about Canform Metals when you met with the CEO in creating your needs analysis:

•Senior Management keeps hearing about situations where supervisors have made harsh decisions, and sometimes unknowingly discriminatory decisions, that have negatively impacted on individuals in the organization.  Some supervisors are more “old school” and reluctant to be flexible with the newer knowledge workers being hired. Interpersonal conflicts seem more frequent now.

•The CEO has been doing some reading and wants to create an environment where employees will be more engaged in their work and with the organization. Any suggestions?

•Performance reviews for all staff are done as of October 31st each year. They are often submitted late and are superficial.

•The CEO was concerned that recent expensive robotic machinery was not being used to the extent planned. When he asked some supervisors about this, they said that although some workers had gone to the training, “they did not seem to get it.” When the CEO followed up with two of these workers, they reported that the training was excellent but that given the high pace of their regular work, they were kept too busy to build their skill on the new technology.

The Idea

•The Health and Safety culture has been strong but he has noticed that younger supervisors are often reluctant to enforce all safety rules for fear of having their workers angry at them for doing so.

•Supervisors manage the hiring process as the HR function is small and very limited. They usually interview candidates themselves. Turnover in some departments is high as many new hires are dismissed after probation due to lack of the required skills for the jobs for which they have been hired. The CEO wonders if supervisors have the necessary skills to hire the right candidates.

•Recently a handful of longer-term employees were terminated for cause due to “incompetence”. This has resulted in two lawsuits against the company for appropriate severance, that Canform will likely lose. The CEO wonders if there was a way to avoid this situation in the future.

Can you help them?

You will be responsible for creating a Business Report identifying what you would recommend as a supervisory training program for Canform Metals.  Basically, this means your recommendation as to how you would fill a four-hour training day for Supervisors.

Use the attached template for each topic in your presentation. Maximum 4 one-hour topic sessions. Minimum 3 topic sessions – 2 one-hour sessions and one two hour training sessions.

What topics would you include?  Why?

How are each of the topics connected? In your Report, use text, effective proofreading, even graphics or photos to make your presentation as visually appealing as possible.

How do you start?

Review our course for ideas as to what you think may be the most important aspects of being a supervisor.  Think about it this way, if you only had four hours to train people to be good supervisors, what would you include in those four hours?

You may not be able to suggest training to solve all the problems at Canform Metals, so focus on what you think are the most important.

Once you come up with the topics and approximate time for each topic in the training day, you will need to start writing up what you will include in each section of that training day and why it is important.

Basically, you want to convince the client why that section is important and why they are spending valuable client dollars in the training room discussing any topic. 

This will be the main content of your written Report proposal.

Content of the Written Report Package

1. Cover page and professional formatting.  Make it look good!

2. Executive Summary – this will provide the reader with your conclusions as to how the “Training Day” will look and what will be included. Maximum of one page. This should be the last step that you do to complete your Report.  It basically summarizes the recommendations of the finished Report.

3. This will be the largest section of the Report. Use the template below for each topic you recommend and complete about one page minimum.

•You can rely on our textbook, or other sources if you wish, to support why each topic you choose is important. You would also include here any additional assumptions that you are making about Canform Metals that would support your choices.

 
• No specific referencing of sources is required.