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Shift Leader Job Description: Top Duties and Qualifications

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Indeed’s Employer Resource Library helps businesses grow and manage their workforce. With over 15,000 articles in 6 languages, we offer tactical advice, how-tos and best practices to help businesses hire and retain great employees.

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A Shift Leader, or Shift Supervisor oversees and supervises a group of employees in a specific department during work hours. Their duties include organising work shifts, training production line employees, planning workflow changeovers and conducting performance reviews.

Shift Leaders duties and responsibilities

A Shift Leader ensures production or delivery processes in their department run smoothly according to set company regulations and procedures. The other duties a Shift Leader performs include:

  • Enforcing safety code and regulations in the production environment
  • Reporting potential hazards in the production floor or warehouse
  • Instructing workers on the correct safety gear to wear on the production floor
  • Reporting accidents that happen on the production floor and conduct preliminary investigations
  • Supervising production work done at the end of each shift to ensure it’s completion and quality
  • Coordinating the renovation of manufacturing or warehouse facilities and overseeing construction of new ones
  • Keeping a log of production and delivery processes at each shift
  • Inducting and training new production or delivery line employees on the process workflows and doing performance reviews
  • Providing recognition and constructive feedback throughout the shift as appropriate

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Shift Leader Job Description Examples:

Our mission

Indeed’s Employer Resource Library helps businesses grow and manage their workforce. With over 15,000 articles in 6 languages, we offer tactical advice, how-tos and best practices to help businesses hire and retain great employees.

Read our editorial guidelines
Create a culture of innovation
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What does a Shift Leader do?

Shift Leaders in manufacturing or retail companies ensure that the employees in their departments perform the roles assigned to them at every work shift. During department meetings, they address challenges interfering with process workflows in order to stop delays in production and ensure that the delivery targets set by the company are met. Shift Leaders also assign duties and set work targets for workers in their departments at the start of every shift. They supervise the start, the shutdown of every production process and switches to new teams at the end of a shift. A Shift Leader collaborates with the human resource team to ensure employees have the skills and experience needed to work in the department they oversee.

Shift Leader skills and qualifications

A successful Shift Leader candidate will have various prerequisite skills and qualifications to oversee the daily duties, that include:

  • Strong communication and listening skills
  • Verbal and written skills
  • Problem analysis and problem solving skills
  • Leadership and mentoring skills
  • Record keeping and mathematics skills
  • Basic rescue and first aid qualifications

Shift Leader experience requirements

Shift Leaders are required to have at least three years of work experience in a similar role like Shift Manager, Clerk or Supervisor. Past experience working at busy warehouses, and production and delivery environment, is an added advantage. They must demonstrate an ability to respond to emergencies that happen in a production or delivery floor.

Shift Leader education and training requirements

Shift Leaders are required to have a bachelor’s degree in either business administration or management and have basic reading, writing and mathematics skills, plus a two to four tertiary course pursued at a vocational technical institute. Employers seek applicants who have studied computing, manufacturing processes, machinery and factory operations or staff management. A levels, 2 or 3 diploma course in leadership and management, demonstrates an applicant’s ability to oversee a team of shift employees.

Shift Leader salary expectations

According to Indeed Salaries, the average salary of a Shift Leader in the UK is £9.97 per hour. The salary figure may depend on the company, geographical location, a Shift Leader’s education and experience.

Job description samples for similar positions

There are other job descriptions a company can consider hiring for, similar to a Shift Leader job. These are

Create a culture of innovation
Download our free step-by-step guide on encouraging healthy risk-taking
Get the guide

Shift Leader job description FAQs

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