Supervisor

A supervisor, or lead, (also known as foreman, boss, overseer, facilitator, monitor, area coordinator, line-manager or sometimes gaffer) is the job title of a lower-level management position and role that is primarily based on authority over workers or a workplace.

A supervisor is first and foremost an overseer whose main responsibility is to ensure that a group of subordinates get out the assigned amount of production, when they are supposed to do it and within acceptable levels of quality, costs and safety.

As a member of management, a supervisor's main job is more concerned with orchestrating and controlling work rather than performing it directly.

Supervisors are the direct link between management and the workforce and can be most effective in developing job training, safety attitudes, safe working methods and identifying unsafe acts.

"Doing" can take up to 70% of the time - (this varies according to the type of supervisory job - the doing involves the actual work of the department as well as the planning, controlling, scheduling, organizing, leading, etc.).

[2] Supervisors often do not require any formal education on how they are to perform their duties, but are most often given on-the-job training or attend company sponsored courses.

In 16th and 17th century rural England, it was used as a title slightly inferior to "Master", similar to "Goodman", and was not confined to elderly men.

The chorus of a famous Australian shearer's song, The Backblocks' Shearer (also known as Widgegoeera Joe), written by W. Tully at Nimidgee, NSW (c.1900), refers to a gaffer: As industrial and commercial enterprises grew in size - especially after introduction of techniques of the Industrial Revolution - the perceived need for supervisors and foremen grew in tandem.

One example is the development of the hierarchical model and practices of the plantation economies in the antebellum American South, where the overseer provided the interface between the planter and the indentured servants, and later slaves.