Management, Supervision & Leadership
Managers and supervisors have a key role to play in ensuring that work is carried out safely. It is no good instilling the engineers and technicians with ‘good safety practice’ concepts, if these are not supported by their supervisors and managers.
The Management Role Line Managers, may be placed in a situation where they may have to compromise between commercial drivers and ‘ideal’ safety practices (both of which are passed down from ‘top management’ in the organisation).
The Supervisory Role Supervision may be a formal role or post (i.e. a Supervisor), or an informal arrangement in which a more experienced engineer ‘keeps an eye on’ less experienced staff. The Supervisor is in a position not only to watch out for errors which might be made by engineers and technicians, but will also have a good appreciation of individual engineer’s strengths and weaknesses, together with an appreciation of the norms and safety culture of the group which he supervises. It is mainly his job to prevent unsafe norms from developing, and to ensure that good safety practices are maintained. There can be a risk however, that the Supervisor becomes drawn down the same cultural path as his team without realising. It is good practice for a Supervisor to step back from the day-to-day work on occasion and to try to look at his charges’ performance objectively
A leader in a given situation is a person whose ideas and actions influence the thought and the behaviour of others.
Characteristics of a Leader
A good leader in the maintenance engineering environment needs to possess a number of qualities:
• Motivating his team;
• Reinforcing good attitudes and behaviour;
• Demonstrating by example;
• Maintaining the group;
• Fulfilling a management role.