PeopleWork Supervisor
Core Essentials

Leadership skills development for anyone who guides, directs, or leads others in your small company industrial operation.

The ultimate system to set frontline supervisors up for success and prepare your industrial company’s future leaders.

What is PeopleWork Supervisor Core Essentials?

PeopleWork Supervisor Academy is the gold-standard online training experience for frontline supervisors who want to build trusting, loyal, and effective teams of employees dedicated to doing the work safely and efficiently. Combining leadership, safety, and supervisory skills, we prepare your supervisors to succeed.

 ‍Whether you are new to supervisory, experienced, or even if you have your eye on being a team leader one day, our step-by-step supervisory training gives you the tools and support you need to fast-track your growth — saving you years of frustrating trial and error.

We have helped 1000+ new, experienced, and one-day-future supervisors across multiple industries gain the very skills that employees say they want their supervisors to have. Best of all, supervisors don’t have to leave the field to attend training. No more boring classrooms. We bring the learning directly onto the floor where supervisors are.

Our Academy program learning modules are now available to small operations. Since the Academy program is cohort-based (up to 15 participants at a time), for smaller operations, we have packaged the very same video modules for smaller companies.

These are the Core Essentials: 38 self-directed learning videos for your frontline supervisory team.

Just imagine supervisors with more…

Respect.

The ability to rally their teams and build connection and trusting relationships.

Confidence.

Beyond technical skills, creating and having certainty in your frontline supervisors.

Leadership.

The skills to lead their teams today and develop the people to lead the company tomorrow.

Teamwork.

Understanding what employees want and creating plans for individual team member development.

Empowerment.

Encouraging employees to become leaders without overwhelming them or burning them out.

Motivation.

Increase team motivation with positive reinforcement and celebrating small wins regularly.

Caring.

A leader who is empathetic and can communicate the work through the eyes of the employee.

Trust.

Specifically, a two-way trust that is shared and given in the relationship between supervisor and employee.

Safety.

More than just physical safety, but also mental and emotional safety where people feel comfortable.

It’s everything we cover in PeopleWork Supervisor Core Essentials.

How do PeopleWork Supervisor Core Essentials work?

Self-directed micro-module video training videos (approx. 5-minutes each) are released inside a private member-only site. You will get:

The core seven modules (38 videos) of PeopleWork Supervisor Academy video training
Done-for-you downloadable resources and PDF summaries

PLUS…

Lifetime membership – When you join the PeopleWork Supervisor Academy, you’re a member for life. Complete the live program, then revisit and review the material as much as you want. The training Modules, bonus resources, weekly live coaching, and the online supervisor community, are yours forever.

The Core Essentials

8-week microlearning program of one new idea every weekday for 2 months.

Module 1
Know Your Role

Recall your best boss and the important question: are you being that example for someone else?
Technical skills are the skills employees think are dead last in importance. There are seven other skills that employees want you to have.
Being a supervisor is like being a baseball manager, but the baseball manager has a technique they use that can help supervisors build better teams.
The gunslinger supervisor does it all and is the only person allowed to deal with problems. It harms a team’s cohesiveness.
A look at what employees deserve from their supervisors and how employees take their cues from the leader.

Module 2
Become Premium-Brand

Why is it we choose one brand over another? One person over another? Did you know you have a brand already?
If your team had to describe you, would they describe you as a budget brand supervisor or premium-brand supervisor? Want to learn the difference?
Long driving road trips are the basis for building better engagement among your team members?
Road construction that backs up traffic proves the pitfalls of a lack of information and why people jump to conclusions from their worst fears and worst outcomes.
Review of what employees want and need from supervisors. And two words that can help them become more effective.

Module 3
Focus Down, Not Up

A supervisor’s greatest center of influence with their team starts by recognizing where supervisors are starting from. The team depends on supervisors to be there for them.
With so many of them, the competition to get noticed as a mediocre supervisor is tough. True leaders are rare and noticeable. Are you one?
You can find a correlation between a mediocre supervisor and staff turnover. People do not leave a job; they leave their supervisor. Here is how to fix it.
Most Hollywood movies follow a 7-step formula. The first two steps are most important for supervisors. It is in these first two steps that they can identify their purpose.
Will you take a step that can elevate your effectiveness? It’s easy to do once you create your three critical actions.

Module 4
Create Elite Teams

As a supervisor, if you don’t have certainty about your team, you will be afraid of what could happen. Elite teams have certainty.
What decisions will your team make when you are not in the room? Where there is certainty, there is trust.
Would it surprise you to learn that leadership is not as important as coaching skills? Coaching is what turns ordinary teams into elite teams.
This is the section that turns more heads. You have three choices of the kind of supervisor you can be. Only one of which can create an elite-level team.
Tools to creating your elite team. Standards instead of rules, identifying team strengths, and creating a mission against something.

Module 5
Selling the Safety Brand

The word “selling” may make you bristle. But don’t worry, it’s not what you think it is. We discuss why selling safety is necessary for supervisors.
In order to get a handle on how to better sell the safety program, we present the simple rule that will help you get better buy-in to your supervisory and safety.
Selling is not about jamming stuff down your people’s throats. Selling is about getting permission to help them be better and to help them get what they want.
Basketball coach Jack Donohue did this one thing every day to get buy-in to his coaching and buy-in to the team mission. And his players could not wait for it.
How can you motivate employees to be more enthusiastic about safety? It starts with identifying what benefits that employees get from safety.

Module 6
Motivating Your Team

Supervisors do not generally know much about what motivates people. But motivation of the crew is a supervisor’s responsibility.
Everyone is motivated to do something. Trouble is that employees who seem unmotivated are just not motivated by the same things you are.
“I’m only in it for the money.” There are six things far more important to employees than money? A half-million workers divulge what it is.
The things you should already be doing to make sure that you don’t undermine your own efforts to raise the level of motivation in your team.
Safety meetings are wasted and could be utilized so much better – in the same way a sports team uses their pre-game meetings to get buy-in to the mission.

Module 7
The Supervisor As Coach

When employees buy-in to safety, you do not need to chase after them. You can replace that time with coaching and mentoring, which is more satisfying.
No one does their best thinking under pressure. Certainty is tied to consistency. And consistency is one of the most admired traits for supervisors.
Your team buys into you because they trust and respect you. Because you listen to them, hear them and care about them. Conversations matter.
Nowhere does it state that safety meetings cannot be fun. Here are four things you should be talking about in safety meetings.
Wrapping up the 8-week program, we encourage supervisors to pay close attention to the words in today’s message.

BONUS: Lifetime Membership

When you join the PeopleWork Supervisor Academy (or Core Essentials), you’re a member for life. Once you’ve completed all of the elements of the program, you continue to have access as much as you want. All of the training Modules, the bonus resources, are yours forever.

Are Core Essentials right for me?

Are you an industrial company determined to break free from the cycle of frustration of knowing your people can do better? Do you care deeply about your team’s success? Do you want to set your supervisors up for success?

Then PeopleWork Supervisor Core Essentials are right for you. Think of it as a haven for forward-thinking leaders.

Bid farewell to endless talk and indecision. Our video learning arms supervisors with practical tools, igniting their leadership potential.

No more questioning if you have truly set your supervisors up for success. We are here to erase doubt and replace it with unwavering belief.

In today’s dynamic economy, industry boundaries blur. Whether you manufacture widgets, refine or ship energy, or weld steel beams, success hinges on universal principles like:

Trust as Currency: Build trust within your team, with clients, and across any industry. Trust is the bedrock of success.
Meaningful Connections: Beyond transactions lies connection. Forge bonds that resonate—supervisor to employee, company to community.
Employee Caring: Protect and value your most precious asset—your employees. Their well-being fuels collective achievement.
Leadership Pipeline: Prepare supervisors not just for today but for tomorrow. Nurture future leaders within your ranks.

At PeopleWork Supervisor Academy and Core Essentials, we help you create supervisors who lead with heart, empower teams, and shape a brighter industrial landscape.

Yes, PeopleWork Supervisor Core Essentials work for…

First-time Supervisors
First-time supervisors often grapple with self-doubt from transitioning from peer to leader. We provide foundational skills, from effective communication to trust-building for first-time supervisors to foster trust with their teams, creating a solid foundation for future success.

Experienced Supervisors
For seasoned supervisors, the academy delves into advanced leadership concepts. It is not just about managing tasks; it’s about inspiring greatness. Experienced supervisors learn how to mentor and develop their team members. Passing on wisdom becomes part of their legacy.

Up-and-coming Future Supervisors
Future leaders get insights into what it takes to lead. Beyond technical expertise, future supervisors learn active listening and empathy—the bedrock of effective leadership. The academy encourages future supervisors to think beyond the day-to-day.

What Supervisors Have to Say

Our company has been working with the PeopleWork programs for five years, and we have committed to three more. A testament to how much of a difference these programs have made for our people and culture.
Billy Shearer
New Braunfels Utilities, TX

Other outfits may teach frontline leadership skills, but none would have the message, the steps, the method of delivery, the professionalism, and charisma. This is the whole package.
Kim Grant
Paper Excellence, BC

I was able to work through quite a few of the things that this program provided us with and it helped me in being better planned and more prepared. And I’ve noticed much more engagement from my team.
Beau Boughman
CHS Refinery, KS

Who teaches PeopleWork Supervisor Core Essentials?

The learning is led by Kevin Burns, worldwide Amazon best-selling author of PeopleWork: The Human Touch in Workplace Safety and, The CareFull Supervisor: The Skills to Lead and Be the Supervisor Employees Want to Have. Named by BookAuthority.org in 2020 as the author of the #4 Top Workplace Safety Book of All Time, Kevin’s mission is to help supervisors realize their greatest potential to improve industrial workplaces everywhere.

What you will learn is based on nearly 30 years of experience. Train with the industry leader who has helped, and continues to guide frontline industrial supervisors to success using his exact playbook.

PeopleWork Supervisor Core Essentials