BA450 Unit 5 Staff Training Paper Example

Signed the Sheet, Could Not Do the Steps: A BA450 Unit 5 Staff Training Paper

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

BA450: Organizational Behavior Management

Unit 5 Staff Training Paper

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

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

Training That Did Not Train

New direct support staff at our agency attend a three-day orientation. One ninety-minute session covers residents' teaching programs: a slide presentation explaining what programs are, how to read a program sheet and how to record data, followed by a short quiz. Staff sign an attendance sheet, and their training record shows them as trained.

The diagnostic checklist at our Cedar Street home had found that two evening staff, hired since the last in-home program training, could not describe the steps of the residents' programs. When I observed each of them running one program, a resident's sandwich-making sequence, they completed 40 and 45 percent of the steps correctly. Both had passed the orientation quiz.

The training record said trained, and the resident's sandwich said otherwise.

Behavioral Skills Training

Parsons et al. (2012) described an evidence-based approach to staff training for practitioners, built on behavioral skills training. Their protocol has six steps: describe the target skill and its rationale, provide a succinct written summary, demonstrate the skill, have the trainee practice it, give feedback during practice, and repeat practice and feedback until the trainee performs the skill correctly. They emphasized that training is complete only when staff perform the skill to criterion, not when a session ends, and that on-the-job monitoring and feedback should follow.

DiGennaro Reed et al. (2018) offered guidelines for using behavioral skills training to support teachers, which apply readily to direct support staff. They recommended choosing a small number of skills at a time, breaking each into observable steps, using a performance checklist that matches the steps, practicing in conditions as close to the real work as possible, and setting a clear mastery criterion. They also suggested following training with brief observations in the actual setting.

The Training Plan

I trained the two new staff members, one at a time, at the Cedar Street home during quiet afternoon hours, using the actual kitchen and materials.

Describe: I explained the sandwich-making program, why it mattered to the resident, who wanted to make his own lunch for his day program, and how the steps and prompts worked.

Written summary: each staff member received a one-page card listing the program's twelve steps and the prompt sequence, laminated and kept in the binder.

Demonstrate: I ran the program with the resident while the staff member watched and followed along on the card, pointing out the prompt decisions.

Practice: each staff member then ran the program with the resident while I observed and scored the twelve-step checklist.

Feedback: after each run, I gave specific feedback: praise for steps done correctly and a demonstration of any step missed, usually the shift from a gestural to a verbal prompt.

Repeat: practice and feedback continued until each staff member ran the program at 100 percent on two consecutive runs. One reached criterion in three runs and the other in four.

The same process was repeated for the other two programs that the staff members were responsible for, over two afternoons.

On-the-Job Results

Training-room success does not guarantee performance on a busy evening. I observed each staff member during actual evening shifts one week and three weeks after training. On the sandwich program, accuracy was 92 and 100 percent at one week and 92 and 92 percent at three weeks, compared with 40 and 45 percent before. On their other programs, accuracy ranged from 83 to 100 percent. Both staff members also completed data sheets more often, since they now understood the programs well enough to run them without hesitation.

Why Only Two Staff

The regional director's original plan was a retraining day for all evening staff. Carr et al. (2013) showed that training helps when the performance problem is a lack of skill, and has little effect when the cause lies elsewhere. The diagnostic checklist found a training problem for two of four staff; the others already ran programs accurately when they had access to binders and materials. Training everyone would have taken a full day of four staff members' time and addressed none of the larger causes. Targeted training took about six hours of my time and two afternoons of each new staff member's time.

Changing Orientation

The results led to a change in orientation for all new staff. The slide presentation now takes thirty minutes, and new staff then complete behavioral skills training on one real program in their assigned home, with the house manager or a senior staff member as trainer. The training record now shows "trained to criterion" with a date and a checklist score, rather than an attendance signature. Two senior staff members at each home were trained as trainers, using the same six steps, so that the process does not depend on me.

Training the Trainers

The senior staff trainers learned the six steps the same way the new staff learned programs. I described the protocol and gave each a one-page summary, then trained a new hire while they watched, and then they trained a new hire while I watched and scored a short checklist covering each step, from giving the rationale to setting the mastery criterion. The most common error was skipping practice when the trainee seemed confident; both senior staff learned to require the two consecutive correct runs even when a new hire said she understood. One trainer told me that watching a new colleague fail a step she had just explained was what convinced her that telling was not training.

Costs and Practical Limits

Behavioral skills training takes more time per trainee than a lecture, and it requires a trainer who knows the programs. Our agency managed this by training in the home during quiet hours and by building a pool of senior staff trainers. Turnover remains a challenge: every new hire needs training, and if trainers leave, the pool shrinks. Brief refresher observations every few months help catch drift.

Conclusion

Two staff members who had attended training and passed a quiz completed fewer than half of a program's steps. Behavioral skills training following Parsons and colleagues' six steps, adapted with DiGennaro Reed and colleagues' guidelines, brought both to criterion within a few runs, and on-the-job accuracy held. Carr and colleagues' findings explained why training was limited to the staff who needed it, and orientation now trains to criterion.

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

DiGennaro Reed, F. D., Blackman, A. L., Erath, T. G., Brand, D., & Novak, M. D. (2018). Guidelines for using behavioral skills training to provide teacher support. Teaching Exceptional Children, 50(6), 373-380. https://doi.org/10.1177/0040059918777241

Parsons, M. B., Rollyson, J. H., & Reid, D. H. (2012). Evidence-based staff training: A guide for practitioners. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 5(2), 2-11. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03391819