BA450 Unit 3 Performance Diagnostic Paper Example

The Key Was in the Manager's Pocket: A BA450 Unit 3 Performance Diagnostic Paper

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

BA450: Organizational Behavior Management

Unit 3 Performance Diagnostic Paper

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The writer, the agency, the homes, the staff and every figure are composite and illustrative; the articles cited are real.

The Problem and the First Plan

Baseline data showed that evening staff at our agency's Cedar Street home completed data sheets for only 31 percent of residents' scheduled teaching programs, compared with 70 to 88 percent at the other three homes. Spot checks showed that when programs were run, staff followed about half the steps correctly. The regional director's first suggestion was a mandatory retraining day for all Cedar Street evening staff.

Training is the most common response to poor performance in human services, and sometimes it is the right one. But training addresses only one cause, a lack of skill or knowledge. If staff know how to do the work but do not have the materials, are unclear about expectations or receive no consequences for doing it, training will not help.

The Performance Diagnostic Checklist

Carr et al. (2013) described the Performance Diagnostic Checklist-Human Services, an interview and observation tool designed to identify the causes of employee performance problems in human service settings. Its items are grouped into four domains: training; task clarification and prompting; resources, materials and processes; and performance consequences, effort and competition. A supervisor completes the checklist by interviewing the employee's manager and observing the work, and domains with several problems point to the type of intervention most likely to help. In their evaluation, an intervention matched to the checklist's results improved performance, while an intervention it did not indicate had little effect.

Completing the Checklist

I interviewed the Cedar Street house manager, then observed two evening shifts and talked with three staff members. The results were spread across all four domains, but unevenly.

Training: half the evening team had joined since programs were last taught, and neither newcomer could describe the steps of the residents' programs. One item in this domain was a clear problem.

Task clarification and prompting: staff did not know which programs were scheduled on which evenings, because the schedule was in the binder, and no prompt reminded them during the shift. Two items were problems.

Resources, materials and processes: the binders were locked in the office, and the house manager, who worked days, held the only key; evening staff had to call her to get it. Materials for two programs, a coin set and a laminated sandwich sequence, were missing. Three items were problems.

Performance consequences, effort and competition: no one had ever given evening staff feedback on programs, and their records were never mentioned unless an audit was coming. Programs competed with dinner, medications and showers, all of which had firmer deadlines and were checked. Three items were problems.

The key to the binders was in the house manager's pocket, and she went home at three.

What the Diagnosis Meant

Retraining would have addressed one item for two staff members. The checklist found more problems in resources and consequences than in training. Even well-trained staff could not run programs without the binders or materials, and the work was invisible compared with tasks that were checked.

Interventions Matched to Causes

Each domain received its own intervention. For training, the two newer staff received behavioral skills training on their residents' programs, rather than the whole team attending a retraining day. For task clarification, a whiteboard by the kitchen now lists each evening's scheduled programs, and the shift checklist includes "programs run" between dinner and medications. For resources, the binders moved to an unlocked kitchen cabinet, and the missing materials were replaced in the first week. For consequences, a weekly graph and spot-check feedback were designed, to begin a month later once the other changes were in place.

Presenting the Diagnosis to the Director

The regional director had proposed the retraining day, so I brought her the completed checklist rather than a summary. Seeing the items side by side, she noticed the key problem before I mentioned it, and she approved moving the binders the same afternoon. She also asked a fair question: would the other three homes show the same pattern? I completed shorter versions at two of them over the next month. Both had unlocked binders and current materials, which helped explain their higher completion, and both had gaps in feedback. That finding turned a single-home fix into an agency-wide change in how evening work is recognized.

A Similar Case in the Research

Fienup et al. (2013) used a functional assessment approach with a different performance problem in a human service organization: staff meetings that consistently started late. Rather than assuming that staff were careless, they assessed the conditions around meeting attendance and designed an intervention based on what they found, which improved the timeliness of the meetings. Their case and ours share a lesson: a performance problem in a human service setting usually has identifiable causes in the environment, and the intervention should follow from them.

Evidence Across Settings

Gravina et al. (2018) surveyed twenty-six years of organizational behavior management research in human services. Many kinds of intervention improved staff performance, but noted that relatively few studies reported a pre-intervention assessment of the problem's causes. That gap means that many interventions may succeed or fail for reasons no one examined. Using a diagnostic tool is one way to close it in practice.

Early Results

In the four weeks after the interventions began, completed data sheets at Cedar Street rose from 31 to 74 percent, and spot-check accuracy rose from 52 to 80 percent. The newer staff's accuracy rose most after training, and completion rose most after the binders moved. Because the changes were introduced together, the data cannot show which mattered most; the evaluation paper later in the course will address that question with a stronger design.

Limits of the Checklist

The checklist relies on interviews and brief observations, and staff may give answers they think a coordinator wants. I tried to reduce this by observing as well as interviewing and by asking open questions. The checklist also does not weigh items, so a locked binder and a missing coin set count the same, though one blocked every program and the other blocked one.

Conclusion

The first plan, retraining all staff, would have addressed one of four domains. The Performance Diagnostic Checklist-Human Services, as described by Carr and colleagues, identified problems in training, task clarity, resources and consequences, with the largest in resources and consequences. Fienup and colleagues' case and Gravina and colleagues' review support diagnosing before intervening, and early data at Cedar Street rose after interventions matched to each cause.

References

Carr, J. E., Wilder, D. A., Majdalany, L., Mathisen, D., & Strain, L. A. (2013). An assessment-based solution to a human-service employee performance problem: An initial evaluation of the Performance Diagnostic Checklist-Human Services. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 6(1), 16-32. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03391789

Fienup, D. M., Luiselli, J. K., Joy, M., Smyth, D., & Stein, R. (2013). Functional assessment and intervention for organizational behavior change: Improving the timeliness of staff meetings at a human services organization. Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 33(4), 252-264. https://doi.org/10.1080/01608061.2013.843435

Gravina, N., Villacorta, J., Albert, K., Clark, R., Curry, S., & Wilder, D. (2018). A literature review of organizational behavior management interventions in human service settings from 1990 to 2016. Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 38(2-3), 191-224. https://doi.org/10.1080/01608061.2018.1454872