Organizational Outcomes of Supervision within Human Services: A Scoping Review

ABSTRACT

Workplace-based supervision is positioned as a resource within human service organizations with the potential to enhance practitioner well-being and performance under stressful, demanding conditions. This article presents a scoping review synthesizing 175 empirical peer-reviewed publications between 2011 and 2021, including study characteristics, key concepts, methods, and outcomes examined. Providing a comprehensive perspective as its unique contribution, this review mapped the supervision outcomes across the international, multi-disciplinary human services literature. It generally reported the beneficial impact of workplace-based supervision, with notable positive impacts found for competence, implementation, job satisfaction, wellbeing, and retention. Our analysis provides support for workplace-based supervision as an organizational investment.

PRACTICE POINTS

• There is a varied evidence-base on supervision in human services within increasing international attention and mixed disciplinary foci.

• There is a large body of research reporting on the beneficial impact of workplace-based supervision supporting this organizational investment.

• Supervision was found to have a generally positive impact on worker and organizational outcomes, with the most notable positive impact on service-related worker outcomes including competence and implementation.

KEYWORDS:

• Human services
• organization
• outcomes
• scoping review
• supervision
• workplace-based

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/23303131.2023.2226197

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada under an Insight Development Grant [#430-2021-00673].