People-Leading Skills for Frontline Supervisors | KevBurns

Good People Want To Work For a Good Boss

We give frontline supervisors in industrial companies the people-leading skills they need to be that boss.

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People who show up and stay.

Employees who recommend their employer.

Safer work, and fewer problems reaching you.

Sound Familiar?

You're short-staffed. New hires don't show up, or they're gone in a few weeks.

The good people you have are hard to keep and harder to replace.

Your safety program is solid, but it isn't getting through to the crews the way it should.

Problems the crew should handle keep coming up the line to your mid-managers, and then to you.

And you know it gets harder from here.

Experienced people are getting ready to retire, and you'll be competing with everyone else for fewer good workers.

What's Really Behind It

Money used to decide where people worked. Today, pay everywhere is competitive. So employees choose the job they'll take based on who they'll be working for. They expect to work with someone who coaches them.

It also used to be that the employer was the only one who could fire someone. But today's employees fire their employer by not showing up. Companies feel like they're losing control of hiring and retention, and sticking to old ways of doing things is a big part of why.

The biggest one is the Hope Promotion, when companies would take their best employee, make them a supervisor, and hope they'd figure out the people-leading part on their own. It used to work. Now it's a big driver of no-shows, turnover, and low engagement.

Meanwhile, each of your departments is trying to fix its own piece: HR the turnover, Safety the incidents, your mid-managers the escalations. But nobody is looking at all of them together. If they did, they'd see it all comes back to your supervisors. 

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Look at What You've Been Spending

Now look at what you've been spending to fix it. Recruiting for the same jobs again and again. Overtime to cover the people who didn't show up. Raises and signing bonuses to keep the ones you have. Outside programs for safety. Reduced production due to short-staffing. Rework on quality issues. Your mid-managers' time on problems the crew should have handled.

Each one lands in a different department's budget, so nobody adds it up. But together it's a big number, spent everywhere except where the problems actually start.

 

A Story You May Recognize

A while back, you brought in outside help to fix a safety problem. Around the same time, HR started a retention program because people kept leaving. Both were good programs, and for a while things got better.

But the incidents came back, and so did the turnover. Both problems were on the same crew, under the same supervisor. Nobody connected them because they showed up in two different departments' reports.

Now think about production, rework, and all of the other programs you've tried.

There's a Better Way, and You Already Use It

When a sales rep is struggling, or a new department head is trying to find their feet, you don't send them to a class. You coach them. Supervisors need the same thing.

No one has more influence on your employees than a supervisor, and that influence runs both ways, positively and negatively. Their people-leading skills decide how that works out for you.

A supervisor who learns to coach becomes the kind of complete supervisor today's employees want, with both the technical skills and the people-leading skills. We call that a CareFull Supervisor.

Your people keep showing up, and they stay. Your crews solve more of their own problems. Your departments' programs finally take hold. Good people come recommended by people who already work for you.

You get better people than your competitors for the same pay. And when your experienced people get ready to retire, the next supervisors are ready.

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How the PeopleWork Supervisor Academy Works

That's what the PeopleWork Supervisor Academy does. In small groups of 12 to 15 supervisors, we take them through an 8-week daily learning program. Each video lesson is under ten minutes, something they can put to use the same day.

Then, once a week, they meet together live on Zoom with Kevin for a one-hour coaching session (7 sessions).

After the initial 8 weeks, we support your supervisors for 50 more weeks while they continue learning twice weekly: Monday Mentor on Mondays and 52 Benefits of Safety on Fridays.

No classrooms. No disruptions. No scripts. We coach their best to emerge.

Start with your strongest supervisors to mentor those who follow. And yes, you can watch the lessons too, so you can engage your supervisors and build a stronger team.

 

I found tools to build trust with our employees and to have them buy into what we're doing and why. We're trying to create a different culture here and it's in the engagement between the operators and the supervisory staff.

- Shannon Barnaby

I used to be focused on putting out fires. Now I spend more time coaching my team to be able to fix it themselves. That's the biggest improvement for me over the last 8 weeks.

- Dave Hoxie

I've gotten better at being able to communicate, and it's helped with the team's understanding. Definitely better buy-in. In fact, one of my guys was about to quit, and I was able to explain to him what the goal was. He came to a better understanding, and he's still here.

- Alex Cappelle

New Braunfels Utilities

NBU started in 2020 as a safety project, led by Safety Manager Billy Shearer. Nearly 200 of their people have been through the Academy. It's now a requirement for anyone who seeks a people-leader role.

NBU recently passed 1,000,000 work hours without a lost-time incident. That credit belongs to their supervisors and crews. NBU has committed to the program through 2028.

Read NBU's Case Study

World Class Contracting

WCC put two groups of 15 supervisors through the Academy. After just a few weeks, escalations to senior management started noticeably dropping off.

"I could see it in my guys by the end. We're a better company because of this." (Jordan Hindbo, Founder).

"The Academy was everything and more than we expected." (Colin Mueller, CEO).

 

Start With Your Biggest Problem

1

PEOPLE

We can't find or hang on to our people.

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2

SAFETY

Our safety program isn't getting buy-in.

Read More

3

ESCALATIONS

Supervisor problems land on our desk. 

Read More

Let's Talk

Tell us what you're seeing. Talk with Kevin directly, and you'll come away with a clearer picture of what's behind it and whether it makes sense to work together. If it isn't a good fit, we'll tell you.

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FAQ

What is a CareFull Supervisor?
Why don't companies develop their supervisors' people-leading skills?
Why is "care" so important?
How do we know if our supervisors need this?
Will my supervisors actually engage with this?
Is this soft skills training?
What's PeopleWork Supervisor's track record?