Supervisions lead to better support and understanding for teams

There are many advantages to effective supervision, but a potentially lesser-known benefit is how it supports how happy employees feel at work. Lucy Knight, Registered Manager of Valerie Manor shares her insights.

As a registered manager, I know that staff are key to running an ‘Outstanding’ home, which Valerie Manor is rated as. Through close contact and regular supervisions, I know how things are with our staff team and how things are going with them and the home.

It’s really important to get to know staff and their own preferences when it comes to supervisions, including when to schedule these. It’s also important to book supervisions in advance and give your staff time to prepare.

We schedule supervisions every three months officially, but I also make sure I see my staff every week. If I feel somebody could benefit from extra supervision then we’ll discuss and arrange that.

Having regular supervisions helps you as a manager to support your staff. It’s been a very difficult and stressful period for many working in care and so having regular discussions and giving your staff the opportunity to voice their opinions is really important.

As a manager, you need to know where staff are at and discuss this with them. By having regular supervisions, you’re ensuring that you’re not allowing issues and concerns to escalate.

We have a structure which allows us to have a number of different supervisors in the home, including our deputy manager who has clinical expertise and supervises our nurses and an ancillary manager who supervises our ancillary staff.

As supervisors, we all have different areas of expertise and so we’re equally flexible in sharing how we supervise. It helps us to support staff around our specialisms and gain a deeper insight into their roles and any help needed.

Supervisions really do help us to better understand our staff wants and needs, as well as ideas for the home, areas of interest, and what they might wish to undertake in terms of learning and development.

The supervision also provides a great opportunity to better understand some of the quieter staff, providing them with an opportunity to tell us about their work and how they contribute to the running of the home.

We do discuss policy and procedure changes in supervisions, but this is often to check understanding. The sessions also can provide opportunities to refresh knowledge on important issues.

However, the most important thing to remember is that the supervision is an opportunity for our staff to “bring things to the table” and have their say.

We document key points from the supervision and scan this into our staff files on the computer system, but we also give a copy to our staff member too. The record is really useful for both the supervisor and the staff member in helping prepare for the next supervision.

We can run through things together, check that we have actioned what was discussed. If things haven’t been done, we can discuss progress and form an action plan together.

Supervisions aren’t appraisals and I think some providers mistake the process for something else. It’s not about setting a series of tasks with an individual; it’s about providing an opportunity to discuss how things are going with an individual. If you get supervisions right, it can be such a positive experience for both the supervisor and your staff member.

We get so many incredible ideas from our supervisions that have helped our ‘Outstanding’ home.

Find more resources from Skills for Care on effective supervision.

Discover more information about creating happy and healthy workplaces on our dedicated spotlight page.

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