Federal First-Line Supervisors: How Good Are They

摘要

Report discusses the results of an MSPB study on the quality of Federal first-line supervisors. A survey was administered to selected Federal employees asking them to rate the importance of 118 different tasks to supervisory effectiveness and to provide an overall assessment of current supervisory performance effectiveness levels on these tasks, as well as several abilities. Nonsupervisory employees rated their immediate supervisors' performance, first-line supervisors rated their own performance, and second-level supervisors rated the performance of their subordinate supervisors. As a group, first-line supervisors see themselves and were seen by others as being of fairly high quality overall. However, the supervisors wer not of equal quality, nor do they perform equally well on all the tasks deemed important to the supervisory role. Also, throughout the survey, first-line supervisors rates themselves the highest, second-level supervisors rated them second-highest, and nonsupervisory employees rates the first-line supervisors the lowest. This report discusses the implications of these findings for agencies attempting to assess the quality of their workforce. It also emphasizes the importance of the first-line supervisor's role in Federal agencies, and provides recommendations for ensuring that individuals in these positions are of the highest quality.