Curiosity Question

Rockie

What is the difference between a supervisor and a manager or do you consider them interchangable?

allsteaks

In the normal, but quickly becoming antiquated, hierarchy, the levels of management from lowest to highest are: supervisor, general supervisor, superintendent, manager, director, vp, president, CEO, Board of Directors. Obviously not everyone has all of these levels and some organizations have additional levels. But I believe that is the basic concept. So a supervisor would work for a manager.

HRQ

I consider a supervisor to be one who is responsible for making sure other people do their jobs. I see a manager as someone who is resoponsible for ensuring their department performs successfully.

A supervisor is task driven, a manager is results driven.

Paul in Cannon Beach

They are certainly not interchangeable here. A "manager" is someone who reports straight to the executive director and is responsible for a department or set of functions. Usually they have a great deal of autonomy, budget control, hiring power, etc. They generally oversee a few supervisors. The term has a certain degree of esteem here.

Supervisor refers to the folks directing our ground level staff. They are generally experts in their specific area and have some independent decision making ability but must report to their manager. They are often "working" supervisors which means they should be able to jump in and actually do the work themselves if needed.

Hope that is helpful.

stilldazed

I agree with prior posters. There is a difference.

In practical application in our organization, supervisors generally help pull a shift, provide services (we're a service org), etc, the same as subordinate workers, but they also responsible for scheduling their staff, participate in interviews/discipline/training of their staff, and generally act as a go-between or initial contact person for trouble-shooting issues. Managers in our organization may have similar responsibilities but dedicate less time to pulling a shift and more time to strategic activities and other planning activities in his/her department.

Wildsporty

A Manager is the employee that manages the department and a supervisor is the employee that supervises the other employees.

The supervisor reports to the Manager.

The supervisor is is charge of scheduling, and keeping the staff working and solving the little problems. He/She is to whom the other employees in the department report to.

The supervisor may work with the employees if needed.

The Manager makes sure the department runs smooth and that the supervisor is doing the job. The manager would also be in charge of the department budget.

Shirley

Lisa_in_TX

I generally agree with previous posters.

Our organization, though, is a bit different than the traditional manufacturing organization design. We have "delayered", so the terms have become more interchangeable. Some supervisory duties were escalated to the "leader" (manager) level and others were delegated to the empowered work team. The intermediate layers of supervision were eliminated.

So, when we talk about getting supervisor approval, we generally are talking about leader approval.