Supervisor Training: How to Develop a Supervisor Training Program

Great teams begin with great supervisors. Supervisors bridge the gap between management and employees, ensuring smooth operations and a positive workplace culture. In order for your business to thrive, your leaders need to have the skills to flawlessly face common workplace challenges and adapt to change. When you learn how to develop a supervisor training program, you can feel confident that you’re providing those in leadership roles with the tools to perform to the greatest of their abilities. Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating a supervisor training development program.

Recommended Assessment

Supervisory Skills Questionnaire

• Receive a supervisory score
• Benchmark skills
• Create an action plan

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Assess Supervisor Skills

The first step in creating an effective supervisor training program is understanding what your company’s strategic goals and objectives are to then know how supervision aligns with these goals. Whether you’re hiring new supervisors or training your current management, the next step in developing a supervisor training program is obtaining a baseline understanding of the skills you’re trying to improve. This will allow you to better track your employees’ progress and ensure you create a successful program. As a starting point, some key soft skills that all supervisors should be proficient in include

• Coaching
• Communication
• Conflict management
• Decision-making
• Performance management

You can gather data on your supervisors’ proficiencies through surveys, interviews, and performance reviews. After you’ve assessed the strengths and weaknesses of each employee in the areas you’d like to work on, you can then begin honing in on the specifics of your training program.

Outline the Specific Goals of the Program

With a baseline obtained, you need to create goals and initiatives for the program – are you trying to improve leadership skills, enhance team performance, increase employee engagement, strengthen conflict resolution skills, etc.? By establishing these goals from the beginning and creating your program around them, you can more easily assess if they’ve been met. When creating your development program, it’s best to focus on two to four goals within a single training program.

Once your goals are set, it’s important to specify what supervisors should know or be able to do after completing the training. That way everyone is on the same page and will be able to work together to achieve the learning objectives.

Create Modules and Define Objectives

Once you’ve identified your specific goals for your participants, you can then turn those goals into separate modules within your training program. Breaking the modules down even further, there should be various objectives that need to be met in order to complete the module.

For example, if the module is based on the goal of learning a new skill, the first objective could be to understand the definition of the skill. The next objective might be to learn why the skill is important, followed by discovering ways to implement the skill. All of these objectives help the participant work toward the goal of learning the new skill.

Develop Your Materials

Thoughtfully developing your materials plays an important part in ensuring your supervisors engage with and retain the information. As we mentioned, each module should be based on a specific goal and broken down into separate objectives. This is where you can get creative. The method by which the participants reach the objective is entirely up to you.

Whether you want to teach participants using a learning game, real-world simulation, fun activity, or something else is entirely up to you. The key to engaging your participants and improving the effectiveness of your training program is to present them with high-value materials in a variety of ways.

HRDQ’s Reproducible Training Library makes it easy to create personalized training program materials using tools such as a customizable PowerPoint presentation, participant workbooks, and more!

Implement Your Program

You have a baseline understanding of what competencies to work on, you set goals and initiatives for the training program, you defined what training success looks like, you’ve created the course, and you’ve determined the learning format. Now it’s time to actually implement the program.

It may be helpful to test out your training program in a small trial run with a small group of experienced supervisors. You can gather feedback and go back to the drawing board as needed to refine the program before it’s rolled out to everyone.

You should also plan the training schedule around a time that minimizes the disruption to regular work. It can be especially helpful to conduct training in phases or cohorts to manage time effectively so employees aren’t stressed about finishing their work.

Yes, you have a training program created, but you might also want to consider bringing in an expert facilitator to have instructor-led training. Effective trainers can make a huge difference in learning and development outcomes because they know effective ways to gain learners’ attention and make the training interesting.

Reassess Your Training

Once you’ve prepared and delivered your supervisor training program, you need to reassess two items:

• Whether your participants met their goals
• Whether your training program was successful

To gauge these results, ask your team to complete the assessments you delivered at the beginning of the training once more. Take note of whether or not their scores improved. If so, it’s a sign that you’ve created a successful program and that your supervisors gained value from it.

Another way you can gauge the results of the training program is to refer back specifically to the goals you created. Throughout the next month after the training, track to see if your supervisors are implementing what they’ve learned.

For instance, if the goal was for supervisors to improve relationships with their team members, have they begun scheduling more team and one-on-one meetings? Have they created team-building sessions? Are they applying the tools given to them in the training program in real life? If so, this indicates success. If not, follow-up training may be necessary.

Provide Ongoing Support

Training is not a one-and-done sort of thing. Professional development is an ongoing process. Everyone needs a refresher at some point, and there are always skills we can further develop to become more effective leaders and supervisors. Offer follow-up sessions and resources to help supervisors’ retention. Creating a work environment of continuous training and development is a key part of providing ongoing support. To make it fun, recognize and reward supervisors who show that they are working on improving their skills.

Start Training with HRDQ

We hope you have a solid understanding of how to develop a supervisor training program! At HRDQ, we have all of the resources you need to create an outstanding program that prepares your employees for whatever comes their way.

If you’re ready to begin, here’s how to create your training program with HRDQ:

• Start by identifying key areas of improvement with HRDQ Online Assessments. A good place to start is with our Supervisory Skills Questionnaire. This questionnaire reveals an overall supervisory score as well as strengths and areas for improvement.
• Then, build your program with the HRDQ Reproducible Training Library (RTL). You can curate specialized training content from our library to design your program and customize it to meet your training needs.
• Incorporate training materials and activities from our full Supervision Training Collection.
• If you need assistance creating or delivering your training programs, reach out to an HRDQ Training Consultant. Our expert facilitators can deliver training either virtually or in person – whichever is best for you and your organization!