Lesson 4

Job Site Training - slide 7

Self-Management
Self-assessment
Self-monitoring
Self-instruction
Self-reinforcement

Some of the most successful placements that I have seen, aside from the fact that the individual strengths, abilities, and interests have been successfully matched to the position, is merely related to the individual's ability to self-manage his or her work performance. You or I are probably very good at self-management. You have to be if you are an employment specialist, because you juggle many balls daily. Also, you can assess and monitor what needs to be accomplished in any particular given day. You go about accomplishing those tasks and most often than not relying on yourself out in the field; and since there are not any others to provide assistance, have become very good at self-reinforcing, self motivating. You say I've done a very good job today; I've been very successful. This is enough to keep you motivated to keep working.

If we applied that to a customer with a disability, initially that individual may not have a very good ability to self-manage or be able to assess whether he or she has accomplished what needs to be done in a given day. Let's use an example of a person who is doing data entry and has to enter a certain number of invoices during a time period in order to successfully meet the production standard of the position. You would need to be able to assess if that worker is entering the data accurately.

You may need to be able to attend to how fast you are doing it in order to get the task accomplished. You may need to self-instruct or remind yourself if you need to speed up or slow down, which is also a part of that self-assessment, self-monitoring piece. Also, you would need to be able to feel some sense of accomplishment at the end of the task that would be a self-reinforcement strategy.

If we are assuming that the individual is not able to self-assess or self-monitor when he or she starts this data entry task, we might provide some external cues to assist the person in being successful. Using this example, we might, after analyzing the task, insert a timer that would assist the person in self-monitoring. The person might set the timer for a certain time interval; and when the timer went off, that would be a cue for the person to self-assess to see how much work they had accomplished. Let's say you had to do 25 forms in a thirty-minute time period. Essentially, that's pretty close to one a minute. If we set a timer for a five minute time period and the timer went off, we need to take a minute and see if you have entered five of these data forms within those five minutes. If I have done that, I would put a check on a sheet that is positioned next to my computer where I could see that in that five-minute time period I was successful. This example was 25 entries within 30 minutes that gives us a minute to assess after each five minute to assure the self-monitoring, self-assessment, and self-reinforcement procedure.

You have to look at the scenario carefully and analyze it when you are putting some of these strategies into place. Initially, the person may need that intensive check every five minute strategy. Then it might go to check every 10 minutes, check every 15 minutes to the point that the person only has to check ever 30 minutes to insure he or she is being successful.
The self-reinforcement initially may be successful intrinsically to see that they have five checks on the card, and that indicates that I was successful during that 30-minute period. For some people that is the most intrusive that you need to get. For other individuals, you may need to add some kind of external reinforcement on top of that, in which they earn something at the end of the day or the end of the week if they have been successful in self-management and self-monitoring. I want to talk about self-reinforcement a little bit later, but I wanted to introduce you to thinking about innovative ways that may assist the individual in learning how to self-manage, self-monitor his or her work performance. We can't always count on someone else doing it for the individual.