Train Executives to Monitor Span of Control

03/05/07

How can HR help executives enhance the effectiveness of managers who report to them? Train executives to monitor their subordinate managers’ span of control the number of people they are currently supervising. This skill is especially important when downsizing or reorganizing shuffles the job responsibilities of junior managers, leaving them with too many or too few people to supervise.

Which Are Overextended
Senior managers should pick up on these warning signs that their subordinates have too many people reporting to them:

They lose touch with employees’ decisions. Managers who are blindsided by workers’ actions or who didn’t grasp their full impact until after the fact may be stretched beyond their limits. They need fewer people under their wing.
They show symptoms of chronic stress. These materialize when managers have more employees than they can control effectively. Evidence of chronic stress includes mood swings, temper tantrums, alcohol or drug abuse and, ultimately, burnout.
They harbor buck-passing employees. Bosses with an excessive span of control may not realize workers are goofing off or giving people the run-around until irate customers sound off to a higher authority.
Their employees duplicate efforts. The old wisecrack, “I’m doing nothing and my buddy’s helping me,” applies here. If two employees are doing virtually identical tasks, one of them is probably unnecessary. Higher managers who note this condition may recommend that the supervisor review employees’ job assignments with an eye to consolidation and downsizing.

Which Are Underassigned
A span of control that’s too narrow produces a different slate of problems. Train executives to watch for these clues that lower-level managers should be assigned more employees than they’re handling now.

Complaints of micromanagement. Supervisors who don’t have enough people to manage can drive subordinates up the walland maybe out of the company. Senior managers should investigate workers’ gripes (often voiced in exit interviews) that their supervisors demand to be involved in every detail of their work. Such complaints from well-trained and capable people point to a span of control that needs to be broadened.
Managers with too much idle time.
Managers who spend much of the day hanging around employees’ work areas or pursuing needless “make work” projects may need more people to look after. The company isn’t getting its money’s worth from their services. Moreover, a narrow span of control encourages the above-mentioned micromanaging at worst, and boredom at least.

Span of Control: Deciding Factors
So the managers in your seminar say they’ve noticed some of these warning signs filtering up from below. What factors should they take into account before adjusting a supervisor’s span of control?


1. The supervisor’s skills. These include technical, human relations, and administrative savvy; leadership style; communication skills; supervisory experience; and willingness to delegate authority. Managers weak in any of these areas need additional training—and their bosses should see that they get it. Managers who are strong in these areas may merit a wider span of control, but not before their boss considers two additional factors.

2. Employees’ skills. Workers who are mature, well trained, and experienced often need little direction. Even rookie supervisors may be able to handle quite a few of them effectively. If employees are inexperienced new hires or immature, however, it would be wrong to assign too many to a single manager, regardless of the manager’s skills or experience.

3. The nature of the work itself. What are the workers doing? Building a space shuttle? Taking door-to-door surveys? If employees’ mistakes could trigger another Challenger disaster, the boss should have a relatively narrow span of control. There’s too much at stake to do otherwise. But in less esoteric work, where there’s more margin for error, a manager may broaden the supervisor’s span of control because perfection isn’t a life-or-death matter.