Lesson 4

Job Site Training - slide 3

Adding Extra Cues
An extra cue can enhance the relevant or important features of the naturally occurring ones.
Fade extra cues as the customer begins to notice the naturally occurring ones.

Most of the time, you or I will respond to the naturally occurring cues within the workplace. An example might be that your supervisor walks by while you are chatting with a coworker about what you are going to do over the weekend. But it's really not the appropriate time of the day to be talking about what you are going to do as far as socializing during your time off. You see your supervisor out of the corner of your eye coming down the hall, and you and I can immediately switch topics to "Did you hear how successful John is in his workplace? Well, I was off of that site for two-thirds of the day yesterday and only had to check in etc., etc." as the boss walks by, smiles nicely to you as you say hello. I am not suggesting that you do that because we always talk about appropriate things in the workplace, I am sure. The real critical feature often times for the people that we may be assisting in learning how to perform in the workplace don't cue into natural cues so we need to provide some kind of instruction or assistance for the individual to be able to respond and be successful.

One of the things that you can do is to add an extra cue to the natural cue. I am sure that all of you have done this already if you have ever taught anyone to do anything. That might be that you add something external like a color cue or a picture cue.

For instance, you put an arrow to the on button of the copy machine so that it draws attention to that button, and the individual who is responsible for operating the machine has that little bit of extra cue to assist him or her in performing the task independently. I should say at this point that if you plan to add any kind of cue such as an arrow to a button or change equipment in the workplace in any fashion that you really do need to seek the approval of the supervisor before doing so. This is pretty much common sense and you have already thought about that without my having to tell you.
I will say that in many instances when we have added cues to the workplace that it benefits everyone in the workplace and not just the individual with the disability. On some occasions, once the individual had learned a task and the employment specialist took down the extra picture cues, the employer actually called the employment specialist and said what did you do with our picture? Everybody was using those pictures for completing that particular task. So you can assist many people in the workplace with extra cues and not just the person with the disability.

Adding an additional cue to the natural cue requires that you teach the person to pay attention to it. Let's use as an example an individual who had a traumatic brain injury who could not remember that he need to go clock in when he got to work. It may be easy to just say, "Well, it's not that important to teach the person to clock in independently. The coworker has said that she will supply a natural support and clock the individual in every day, and we will eliminate the need for the person to learn that task."

In this particular instance, the coworker did volunteer to clock in the individual; but that person soon moved on to another job and no longer was available. The next individual that came on as the supervisor was not the least bit willing to initiate or take on the responsibility of clocking in the individual every day. When we think about some of these strategies, I would caution you not to quickly say, "Oh, the coworker is going to do it, or they will use a natural support".
If you can teach the person to do the task successfully, independently with some quick, easy instruction, you can get yourself out of the situation as the trainer. In this particular instance, what occurred was we sat down and started brainstorming some ideas related to cueing the individual to clock in. The natural cue of just seeing the time clock upon arriving in the workplace should elicit the individual to clock in. However, that wasn't successful so we came up with some ideas.

I'm sure you are thinking about some as you sit there and listen to this lecture. What did we think about doing? We thought about giving that person a watch that beeped at a particular time when he got to the workplace. We also thought about giving him a vibrating pager so that someone would call him. With this idea we were relying on something external or someone remembering to cue the individual to do the task. We decided to go with the beeping watch.
Initially, the employment specialist had to verbally prompt the individual when the beeper went off on his watch to go clock in. Gradually, what the employment specialist did was to delay the verbal prompting a few seconds so watch alarm would be the cue. As time went on, the employment specialist delayed the amount of time before she gave the verbal prompt; and the individual began to respond to the beep on his watch.

While we are talking about the time clock, let's look at some other issues around the time clock and cues to selecting a card out of the rack that needs to be inserted into the clock. Again, if we had an individual who could recognize his or her written name, could we get a coworker to highlight the individual's name so that card stands out on the rack when the individual signs in. Adding that external cue or prompt to naturally occurring cue of the written name could you put a dot on the card. How could you manipulate the card in other words? Can you always get the individual to put on the certain spot on the rack—the very first or very last card in rack so he/she doesn't have to read. I can put in a location or position and that assists me in identifying which card is mine. Again, I think that you as the employment specialist can get very good at this identification of natural cues and adding brief, extra cues to a task in order for the person to be successful at accomplishing the job duties.