Lesson 4

Job Site Training - slide 9

Examples

Example 1: The customer is unable to remember his/her sequence of job duties
There are probably a million solutions to each job site training issue or challenge that an individual will face. Is there any way to discover if any one of those strategies is best for a particular individual?

The answer to that is there is no magical solution that I can give you. We have already discussed the importance of brainstorming, and I recommend that you sit down with your customer and come up with as many ideas as you can to solve the challenges the individual may be facing in the work place. That goes to brainstorming with your co-worker as well, because sometimes when you are in a situation you may be to close to problem. Therefore, it becomes difficult to see the solution for yourself. Ask your customers advice, call in a co-worker of supervisor to the job site to evaluate the situation and provide their opinion. External observation can sometimes help to solve a problem that you have been facing. Let’s brainstorm for just a minute around the three scenarios’ you see on this particular slide.

Example 1: Examples

The customer is unable to remember his/her sequence of job duties.
The customer has difficulty reading.
The customer can’t count to package work materials.

We have already talked about a picture book, but we know a picture book won’t work for this person. What else could we do? We might post an assignment board that is posted prominently where the individual can see it. On that board, depending on the customer’s ability, we might have picture cues, or assignment lists, or whatever strategy can be individualized for the person you are serving. You might look at having an audiocassette if the person can follow verbal instructions to remember his sequence of job duty tasks in this example. Can we draw a flow chart or a picture chart that the person can follow? You may be able to add one or two more strategies to this short list that I have developed.

Example two: Individual has trouble reading copy requests to complete work assignments.

I can think of a number of ideas that may be helpful for the individual in this example. We may have separate in and out boxes for each co-worker who is requesting the work. If the person can’t read, you could put a picture on each box, so that the person would know that all of the work in that box belongs to Mary. Whereas the work that’s in the box directly below that belongs to Bob based on the picture that is attached to the box. We also might assist the person by highlighting relevant features of the task, for example, a thick outlined box where the number of copies is listed. Again, we might try audiocassette requests for copy work that would have instructions for the individual.

Example three: Person is unable to count to package work materials.

Could we put strips of tape down on the table so that when the person one item on each piece of tape, we gather up that amount to put in the package? Could we have a picture of the number of different items and the person matches to sample? For someone more structured, could we have a box with that number of dividers to allow the individual to collect all the items in the separated box and place them in the packaging? Could we have a sample package of what needs to be collected? For example, let’s say that we are assembling hospital kits. Could we have a sample kit there to match to sample? Again, each of you could probably add 5 or more ideas to each of these scenarios that I have described. Often times, we may be trying our best guess with the individual and if that doesn’t work we try something else. Going back to Marc Gold’s concept of trying another way to assist the person in meeting the challenge of what he/she is facing in the worksite.