Wally Glasscock is president of Glasscock Development & Training, Richmond, Virginia, and chair of
APPA’s Supervisor’s Toolkit Task Force. He can be reached at wallyg@erols.com.

     All too often outstanding employees at educational facilities are promoted without any prior training or experience and are required to perform as front-line supervisors. Colleges and universities have long recognized this fact and understand the importance and need to train and develop these individuals.

     Colleges, universities, and other educational facilities desire to offer supervisory training. However, budget demands, lack of qualified staff to do the training, and time restraints often prohibit formal development of promoted staff. Upper management recognizes that untrained front-line supervisors create the opportunity for violations of federal, state, and campus laws, rules, and regulations. Lack of training front-line supervisors can result in high employee turnover, low employee morale, requests for transfers, and overall poor production of the shop, crew, or team. These can translate into possible monetary costs as well.

     APPA has highlighted the need for front-line supervisory training through surveys, regional and local meetings, and personal contacts by APPA members. As a result, APPA has developed a front-line supervisor’s management and development training program. Supervisor’s Toolkit: Nuts and Bolts of Facilities Supervision includes many ideas and suggestions from APPA members, as well as personal input and survey results provided by educational institutions. The final product will be available for preview at the Educational Facilities Leadership Forum in Nashville, Tennessee this July.

      In addition, the Supervisor’s Toolkit will be presented as a separate track at the Institute for Facilities Management in Indian Wells, California on September 14-18, 2003. Institutes in the future will include a one-day Facilitator Skills Enhancement Course (Train the Trainer) session. This will enable Institute attendees to enroll in the supervisor’s toolkit course, for which they will remain on site for one additional day to learn facilitation and presentation skills. Facilities departments may then lease the program, which will include all handouts, workbooks, films, and instructor’s guide to conduct the training at their campus.

Solutions for Success
     In July 2001, a task force selected by Lander Medlin, APPA’s executive vice president, met in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, to discuss different approaches to developing a training program for front-line supervisors. Included in the group were facilities directors, front-line supervisors, training managers, and human resources personnel. Each person in the group had training experience with facilities and a vital interest in front-line supervision training.

     After establishing immediate and long-term goals and objectives, the task force agreed to meet on a regular basis until a front-line supervisor training program had been completed and was ready for production. To say this task was easy would be misleading. Many individuals brought ideas to the table and all were discussed, analyzed, committed to print, and finalized into an easy-to-use presentation format.

     The task force members worked many hours on writing and developing this program in addition to the daily responsibilities each had with his or her position at home. Development meetings to write, review, and create material were usually four days in length, not including travel. Their hard work and dedication are much appreciated, and I congratulate them for the professional approach taken to accomplish this task. The program would not exist without the support given by each educational institution represented on the task force. (See sidebar below for the full list of task force members.)

     Supervisor’s Toolkit: Nuts and Bolts of Facilities Supervision, has eight modules of varying length.
The training package includes: a leader’s guide, participant workbooks, nametags, wall charts, films,
and video clips. The program is presented in PowerPoint and will be available to lease on a CD-ROM.

Ideas into Action
      The program is designed for a full week (36-40 hours) of training. Members may send a potential trainer to APPA’s Facilitator Skills Enhancement Course for certification, lease the program, and run it in-house. The training is also available through leasing the program and utilizing one of the task force members to conduct the training. This will allow for some flexibility in scheduling the training. The program can be presented for a full week, or conducted on a flexible schedule over two or more weeks if conducted in-house. Two or more member institutions could join together to lease the program and conduct the training.

Field Tests
     Field tests were held in April 2003 to validate the training material. Front-line supervisors from three
APPA regions were invited to attend a full week of training, which was conducted by members of the
task force. Class size was limited to 25 participants, the recommended size for all classes. Programs
were held at Howard University in Washington, D.C., Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and the
University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida. The field tests provided validation of the training
material with front-line supervisors. The evaluation and feedback from those participants enabled the
committee to make necessary changes to meet the needs as identified by front-line supervisors.

     The task force has reviewed the feedback from the field tests and are making the necessary changes to the
program as indicated by the evaluations. The program will be available for preview in the APPA booth at the Educational Facilities Leadership Forum in Nashville, Tennessee on July 27-29, 2003.