DTG-EMP

Job Development and Employment Outcomes
Finding jobs for people with employment barriers.

Motivation
How to ensure your client's motivation to go to work.

Data Management
How to use data management to be proactive and anticipate problems in achieving employment outcomes.

Hiring Job Developers
How to hire the right people to be successful job developers.

If a person does not want to find work or stay working, the potential for a successful employment outcome is very unlikely. Motivation to work is a fundamental pillar.

Motivation is internally driven. It comes from inside of each of us. All human beings are motivated. The question is: what is their motivation targeted at? If someone is not willing to work, they are still motivated about other things, just not working.

Successful employment programs recognize, support and build on the personal motivation to work. When programs cannot do this, a lot of time and money is invested in candidate preparation, fruitless job searches and ongoing unemployment.

Consequently, the assumption that a person is motivated to work by virtue of applying to a program can be a costly error. It is one shared by many rehabilitation agencies.

There are a number of false and problem indicators related to the personal motivation to work:

False Indicator - The person verbally says I want to go to work but in reality they like the concept of working but do not have the internal commitment to follow through.

Solution – Ensure during intake that the person’s motivation is deeper than just a conceptual notion of work. It should be determined that they have considered and are motivated by certain benefits if they do work. (See brochure on Cognitive and Motivational Tools for Initiating Behavioral Change (CMT) workshops page.)

False Indicator - The person sets conditions on their employment or general willingness to go to work. “I will go to work if you find me this specific kind of job or get me this specific wage”. There are conditions to going to work. Some people can have legitimate conditions for going to work - health, specific training, financial need, etc. But most often this comment reflects a false presentation of the motivation to work. Generally, the person sets even more unrealistic conditions the closer they get to actually having to go to work.

Solution – Work with this person to identify the real value they will derive from working. If there are attendant issues in this person’s life that need to be addressed prior to working, then they must be addressed first. (See brochure on Cognitive and Motivational Tools for Initiating Behavioral Change (CMT) workshops page.)

Problem Indicator - A person may say they want to work but when given a job opportunity they continually lose it due to social competency reasons - don’t fit in, respond poorly to supervision, poor work habits. They don’t learn from their mistakes. They are always blaming others for their own problems.

Solution – This person may have a cognitive deficiency, which prevents them from learning from their mistakes and increasingly causes them to become de-motivated about working as they experience ongoing work failure. They eventually decide working is not for them and abandon any motivation to work. (See the brochure and research on reThinking unEmployment for a fuller explanation of cognitive deficiencies, motivation and unemployment.)

Problem Indicator - The applicant attends the first one or two meetings with the vocational counsellor and never returns. The applicant receives an education via the vocational rehabilitation agency, at the end of which they decide not to work.

Solution – In either case the applicant has not really made up their mind that working is for them. This should have been identified at intake. The issue of their ambivalence to working should have been worked on through a series of intake tools. (See brochure on Cognitive and Motivational Tools for Initiating Behavioral Change (CMT) workshops page.)

Problem Indicator - The candidate is employed but has run into either typical or atypical work conditions that are de-motivating them about staying on the job. The person is communicating that they would like to quit.

Solution – The employment support person should address the employee’s desire to quit. Specifically, they should help the person determine if quitting is or is not the best decision. They also need to help the employee’s transition to self-managing these situations – essentially getting through hard moments at work on their own. (See brochure on Cognitive and Motivational Tools for Initiating Behavioral Change (CMT) workshops page.)

A candidate’s real motivation to work and the job developer’s expertise in finding jobs are the two pillars of successful employment outcomes.

Remember the motivation to work is not enough for people with visible employment barriers you will always need some level of job development.

Quotes, Hints, Tips, Cautions

Developing candidate skills before knowing they are motivated to work can be a waste of resources.

Testimonials

EMP Inc. began working with Oregon's Office of Vocational Rehabilitation Services (OVRS) in 2005 by responding to our request for an organizational assessment. Senior management's goal was to create a proactive organization and wanted to know if their work could benefit or improve from ideas and techniques already known to others who share some of the same challenges and goals. The results of this assesment were later used to create a pilot project that we called Enhancing Employment Outcomes (EEO) that was implemented in 2006-2007. Development of the EEO project's work plan and schedule, training, progress reports and final evaluation were also provided by EMP Inc. during this year-long pilot.

The objectives for the pilot project were to see if Oregon could benefit from building a service delivery system that had, at its core, the following:

Counselors and managers who could assess for motivation to work and could successfully implement work motivation intervention strategies when motivation is a barrier to employment.
Counselors and thier managers who had an advanced and practical way of conducting thier relationships with employers to the betterment of their clients
Counselors and managers with an enahnced expertise in job development methodology that would positively impact their relationship with those who contract job development services, known in Oregon as CRPs

The results of Oregon's implementing the EMP "Model", which we called Enhancing Employment Outcomes Pilot project (EEOP) exceeded our expectations. Participating staff became rejuvenated and had a new sense of empowerment based on a whole "tool-box" of techniques provided to them by EMP. Staff's new found knowledge and enthusiasm produced an additional 113 job placements within the first year of work on this project, even while we included only forty volunteer pilot participants.

The need for a greater statewide implementation of the EEOP has been acknowledged by OVRS. We consider the pilot project to have been a stepping-stone and learning experience for the larger implementation.

OVRS believes in the EMP "Model" and as such we are dedicating the next two years to a statewide initiative to increase the quality and quantity of employment outcomes while meeting the workforce needs of Oregon employers. We are ready to proceed in a new direction that differs from the way in which buisness has been done in the past. From the forty pilot participants thirty three have evolved to form an advisory group to OVRS senior managers for our statewide implementation with a roll-out beginning early in 2008 and running through to 2010. Goals for a statewide implementation of the "Model" currently include:

Providing OVRS field staff with the tools they need to take more control of the job development and employer outreach process, as it is crucial to the success of all OVRS's work.
Providing OVRS field staff with the tools to link employment outcome goals to a candidate profile system
Providing OVRS field staff with the tools to produce motivated, reliable and dependable candidates.

Why did we work with EMP Inc.? We worked with EMP Inc. primarily becassue of the unique service they are able to provide vocational rehabilitation programs. As an example, EMP understands that agencies are working with more clients with increasingly complex issues and offers us strategies that result in positive vocational outcomes. It is extremely beneficial that they also have working knowledge of how public vocational rehabilitation programs are organized, which is critical to designing programs that can actually be applied.

It cannot go without saying that the customer service that Allen provides is always above and beyond. He makes himself available to his customers and is always professional no matter how big or how small the task at hand is. Allen's trainings are educational, informative and FUN! Staff related to Allen and trusted him as an expert in his field; they simply could not get enough of him!! Oregon is looking forward to our continued work with EMP Inc. over the next couple of years. We are excited by the prospects of a more statewide implementation. We are convinced that EMP will lead us to our stated goal in 2005 i.e. to lead a dynamic proactive organization effecting ongoing success.

Kris Kennedy, MA, CRC, Project Manager, State of Oregon, Office of Vocational Rehabilitation Services