While the relationships between employees and supervisors vary from partner ministry to partner ministry, as a supervisor of a Reliant employee, you have a few basic responsibilities.
Basically, be the employees' biggest cheerleaders in their ministry work.
Notify Reliant promptly when any significant employment issues, questions, or concerns become known. This includes performance issues, reports of discrimination/harassment, safety issues, emergencies, or changes in the employment situation.
- Travel Notification
- Time Cards
- Continuing Education
- Moving Allowance (see this International Allowance Submissions page for International Workers)
- Spiritual & Ministry Planning Retreats for certain staff levels
- Some types of travel expenses (see Wedding, Funeral, and Memorial Services)
- Some specialty equipment over a certain dollar amount (see Computers and Equipment)
The requirement of approval by a supervisor allows for accountability and transparency in certain transactions, especially those that involve finances. Therefore, please closely read and review what you are approving and make sure you ask the employee for any clarification that you may need.
Please see the Supervisor Approval page for instructions on how to approve items via the various online platforms Reliant uses. For more detailed instructions on Google applications, see Supervisor Approval for Google Forms.
The supervisor or ministry leader may write the Job Description, or the employee may write it. Either way, the supervisor must approve the final Job Description.
- Instructions on submitting a Job Description can be found here: Job Descriptions
- Tips on writing a Job Description can be found here: Creating a Job Description
For Internships and Residencies, Job Descriptions will be outlined in the Program Parameters document.
Once a year, supervisors will complete an Annual Review with each employee. This is an opportunity to provide feedback to the employee on their progress, performance, and fruitfulness. The instructions for the Review are a bit different, depending on the employee's partner ministry:
- U.S. Churches and Ministries, including Collegiate - Employee Annual Reviews
- International - Annual Evaluations for International Field Staff
- Internships and Residencies - Due to the nature of your program, this may not be applicable. However, contact your Program Team Lead if you would like information about Reliant's Annual Employee Review process.
For a more comprehensive list of responsibilities of Local Churches or Ministry Supervisors and of Reliant, you can view Reliant's general Memorandum of Understanding.
6 Comments
Barb Seckler
Julie ThomasIn the approvals section - would you want to include Bonuses? A supervisor would typically approve (for US) Moving bonus - Moving Allowance for Internationals a Moving Bnus or Vehicle Bonus requires supervisor approval International Allowance Submissions. For reimbursements a supervisor does need to approve certain specialty equipment items Computers and Equipment as well as spiritual retreats Spiritual & Ministry Planning Retreats and some other types of travel (funerals)Wedding, Funeral, and Memorial Services. That may be too much detail but those are the items I know we see pretty commonly.
Julie Thomas
Barb Seckler, I made some changes to the Supervisor Approval section, however, I didn't see anything on the Computers and Equipment page about needing supervisor approval.
Barb Seckler
Hi Julie Thomasit's listed on the actual computers and equipment form that if they are requesting specialty equipment (like a guitar etc) above $1,000 the supervisor has to approve their form
Julie Thomas
Gotcha. I may have missed that on the form. Thanks!
user-1a794
Julie Thomas - i'm glad for this section. I'm just getting into it. I wonder if the "basics" page doesn't need to address salary? For our people salary setting and budget approval are a key thing.
Julie Thomas
user-1a794 Is there a Solomon page that covers this? I've tried to link the items to existing Solomon pages.