Assignment 8

808 Words2 Pages

The concept of the span of management encompasses how many people one person can effectively supervise. Several factors play a part in determining how many people one person can supervise. One factor is the competency and skills of the supervisor and his employees. The more competent a supervisor is the more employees he or she is able to supervise. As the supervisors experience and competency builds the more employees he will be able to successfully supervise. Even though a supervisor may have great skills, competency, and experience there is still only a limited amount of people he is able to directly supervise. The skills and competency of the employees also influence the number of employees one is able to supervise. If a supervisor has a group of employees that are competent in their jobs functions the less time he or she will be spending correcting or mentoring employees on how perform their jobs. If a group of employees work in close physical proximity to their manager, this greatly influences the amount of time it would take a supervisor to respond to an issue. A supervisor will be able to respond to issue more effectively and quickly is he is close to the work area than if he is in a distant location from his employees. Supervisors that have to spend great or excessive amount of time performing nonsupervisory duties are less able to manage a large group of employees. Their time is consumed by other duties such as emergencies. The prime example of issues involving nonsupervisory duties is the emergency medical response systems. Due to the uncontrolled environment employees work in, there is always a vast assortment of emergencies that can take a supervisor away from his primary supervisor duties. Also the complexity and sim...

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...an handle most issues that arise on a day to day basis.
Issues such as competence and kills of superiors and their employees, physical proximity of employees to management, the time manager spends performing nonsupervisory duties, the complexity of task being supervised, and the ability to use technology to monitor performance; influence to ability of leaders to increase to span of management. Even though research has been done there still is not a magical ratio of supervisor to subordinate number. The number of employees a supervisor manages still remains a factor of personal experience and ability. Team management is one sure way to expand the span of management to ensure quality management is being preformed and issues are being addressed.

Works Cited

Dunn, R.T. (2010).Dunn &Haimann’s healthcare management (9thed.).Chicago, IL: Health Administration Press.

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