Employee Assistance Program Providers: How to Be a Good Supervisor

17 Jan How to Be a Good Supervisor to Your Employees

Posted at 15:54h in Counseling, EAP by Ryan Dame

Supervisors have an important role in the workplace and a huge impact on the way your employees grow. How do you motivate your employees and lead them well with the help of your supervisors? Well coached employees are creative forces who can contribute to your business in ways supervisors may not have thought of. It may take some time to evaluate how you or your supervisors are doing and how to grow from there. We will discuss how knowing your employees’ strengths and weaknesses can help. Getting your employees’ feedback and knowing what motivates them can drastically change the way you work. Trial and error is also a key way to growing as a supervisor and understanding your team. We at Care Plus Solutions believe we are the highest quality employee assistance program provider to help you and your supervisors to implement all of the resources and tools you will need to manage your employees. If you consult with or oversee supervisors, then you should know how to help these leaders develop coaching skills. It’s not that difficult, but there are a few keys worth considering:

1. Teach supervisors to know and use their employees’ strengths and weaknesses.

The best thing you can teach your supervisors is to learn how to see an employee’s strengths and weaknesses. This will allow the supervisor to know what part of a project to give them and how to motivate them. If you have an employee who works well by themselves and not so well in group settings, you may want to hand over a more independent task. But you can teach them to grow their capacity to work in a group setting by slowly working them up to working with one other person for the next project. If you know someone is great at communication and vision, but lacks in organization, you may pair them up with another employee who can help. It’s all about teamwork. Finally, if you suspect you have employees that may struggle with mental health, which is more common these days, employee assistance program providers are the way to go.

2. Help the supervisor determine what motivates employees.

Motivators will be unique to each employee with which you work. Getting to know a person’s story and the “heart” behind their work can do wonders. Having purpose in life is what gets someone motivated every day to get out of bed, which is why it’s so key that we know the “why” behind our employees’ work. If you know what motivates a person, you will see their work flourish and see them do things with passion. Encourage your supervisors to know what makes their employees get out of bed every morning and to use that to motivate them throughout the week. Create a vision that motivates the entire team.

3. Inform supervisors how to be good communicators of the company’s strategies and goals.

employee assistance program providers Communication is key. You can help your supervisors become great communicators by knowing what they want to say and how to say it in a way employees will understand. They will need to know your identity and message as the employer to clearly communicate the company’s strategies and goals. So this step will involve the two of you coming together to effectively portray a vision and goal. It may take some brainstorming and trial and error to figure out how to properly communicate this to your employees.

4. Learn how to navigate and overcome work barriers with your supervisors.

Work barriers can be physical limitations, lack of resources, lack of education/information, lack of training, negative attitudes, and many more. The process of overcoming these barriers will take lots of patience and understanding. One helpful resource to overcome all of these barriers is a great employee assistance program provider like ours at Care Plus Solutions. There are mental health tools, educational tools, financial help, and so much more that can benefit your employees. Employee assistance program providers not only help assist employees but can benefit your supervisors who may be experiencing the same limitations. A strong team only comes from a strong supervisory team.

5. Teach supervisors how to communicate goals to employees while leaving the “how to” up to the individual employee.

Delegation is an important skill to know as a supervisor. Having your employees become co-dependent on you is something you want to stay far away from. Be there for your employees but also learn how to empower them in a way that they take on tasks themselves. A great supervisor clearly communicates the goals of a project and then delegates the tasks to the team. You want to be sure to delegate each task to employees who are able to handle the task at hand.

Here’s another helpful article on how employee assistance program providers can help your employees get through and overcome personal issues that affect their performance at work.