Rise, Incorporated

Organizational Barrier to Competitive Employment

Many community rehabilitation professionals do not receive adequate education and training to assist them in obtaining competitive employment and minimum or prevailing wage outcomes for adults with significant disabilities. The majority of rehabilitation staff are rarely exposed to evidence-based practices that are known to correlate with superior customer services and rehabilitation outcomes. Further, these competencies and training needs are not prioritized for new employees entering community rehabilitation careers.

Strategy to Address Barrier

With a goal to better train and prepare its direct service personnel, Rise, Incorporated, a community rehabilitation organization in Minnesota, conducted a study to identify the core competencies and personal qualities of its highest performing staff. The goal of this process was to isolate the qualities of its experienced high performers that distinguish them from other community rehabilitation staff. Which factors enable high performers to consistently achieve better outcomes, including competitive employment and wage benefits, for the agency’s rehabilitation consumers? The desired organizational goal was to redesign a staff development and training curriculum for new and existing staff to increase high performance. Also, the agency was interested in restructuring job descriptions for its direct service staff to prioritize job functions, competencies, and qualities known to produce the best services and outcomes for business and rehabilitation customers.

Case Example of Organization Change Strategy

Launch of New Staff Development Training Program and Redesign of Job Descriptions.

Following its research of trade literature and an internal study of its “high performers,” the core information was aggregated and then prioritized by the agency’s staff training committee. Afterwards, a publication was commissioned by the agency’s staff training committee and written by one of its members. This publication, entitled Reach for the Stars: Achieving High Performance as a Community Rehabilitation Professional, has become the agency’s framework for training its new staff and retraining existing staff.
The agency’s staff training committee now schedules formal training events to nurture the development of skills and competencies that were found to correlate with high performance. All of the agency’s existing staff were retrained within one year. And all new staff are now exposed to critical training events within one year of hire. The organization’s high performers have been recruited to assist in the training of other agency direct service staff. Also, the staff training committee schedules training with outside speakers and consultants on topics relevant to these core job competencies. The agency has recently formed a subcommittee on “emerging practices” to insure that its direct service staff are continually exposed to high performance strategies that lead to better job and wage outcomes of program participants.

Finally, the organization has conducted a formal review of its direct service job descriptions and has modified and prioritized the job functions and competencies so they are now compatible with high performance outcomes. Core job functions and competencies were identified and ranked by the high performers in their order of importance using a Delphi consensus building procedure. The goal was to identify core skill sets that are crucial to better service outcomes. These job functions and skill sets hold high importance to the agency’s managers and are used as a tool for recruiting new staff and determining their mastery of desired skills. Job competencies that are lacking now provide a conceptual framework for planning both agency-wide and individual staff development training.

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