Stars ABA offers clinic-based, ABA interventions primarily meant for the children diagnosed with autism. It has been shown that Stars utilizes discrete trial training when it comes to teaching the children skills and desirable replacement behaviors in addition to the regular behavior intervention plans aimed at decreasing interfering behaviors. Despite the fact that Stars ABA offers more exceptional services for the children with autism, the organization has recently experienced significant levels of discrepancies within the company. Some of the inconsistencies that have identified to be affecting the firm include, the employees are not offering necessary reinforcers frequently to children believed to be participating in various undesirable behaviors. Secondly, the staff members were also reported to be offering higher level of attention and reacts sensitively when the kids engage in the unwanted behavior. Third, there were cases of the excessive tardiness of the employee in addition to higher rates of employee turnover. In the recent days, Stars ABA reached out to my firm with the aim of creating an intervention plan that would address the problems that the organization is currently going through and at the same time allow for a continuous seamless environment for these children to learn and develop in.
Problem Identification
From an outside look, it seems that the issues that Stars are experiencing are all over the place. , therefore, to understand the underlying problem, an interview will be held with members of the company. Working closely with children with autism apparently opened a different door that some staffs might not be ready to face head-on. The interview will look to find the following bits of information: What training did the staff members receive regarding delivering reinforcers? What is considered appropriate behavior? What is deemed to be inappropriate behavior? What has caused each staff member to report late to work? What factors have to lead to a staff member wanting to seek employment elsewhere?
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After the interview, it was established that the employees lacked training in recognizing what is believed to be appropriate and inappropriate behaviors. Based on Cunningham & Geller, (2008), the skill set for each employee was proven to be entirely different, and no two staffs provided similar examples of appropriate and inappropriate behaviors. Further, no accountability was provided to employees to report to work on time and the day employees who were relieved continuously of their duties late felt unappreciated, unsupported, and communication was severely lacking between shifts. Based on the company's case, three of the employees left the organization, and three more are considering moving due to a lack of progression inside the company. Finally, there was a higher rate of employees’ turnover and staff were providing more consideration and acting emotionally when the kids behave in unsuitable behavior.
The most suitable tool to gather data and specific information about the problems at Stars would be an interview with each employee (Brown, 2002). This would help to understand their feelings and opinion regarding the organization. The data utilized during this step would be qualitative where employees would describe their feelings and experiences working at Stars ABA. The problem that requires intervention at Stars ABA is how to equip employees with appropriate skills and improve their behavior. Organizational behavior tends to focus on contingencies that might impact the staff behavior as is the case with Stars ABA. One of the contingencies that might have impact employee behavior at Stars ABA is the character and quality of the supervisors who might be harsh and uncompromising forcing employees to lose their motivation at work. The level of support that these employees receive from their superior might not be sufficient to encourage them to work hard for the company (Cunningham & Geller, 2008). Further, the type of task assigned to these employees could have also contributed to increased turnover because employees are not deriving satisfaction in their assignments. Positive reinforcement is one of the measures that the HR could adapt to motivate employees and it entails adding a pleasant stimulus such as a reward and praise to improve a particular behavior among employees. On the other hand, negative reinforcement can also be utilized in instilling a specific behavior where the HR will remove an aversive stimulus to enhance a particular employee’s behavior (Cunningham & Geller, 2008).
Program Question and Research Design
The program question that would be utilized in the intervention strategy is as follows: To what level can staff motivation impact overall organizational performances of employees at Stars ABA to ensure that they deliver reinforcers frequently when children shows certain improper behaviors, prevent them from reacting sensitively when the kids engages in undesirable behaviors, avoid lateness and address high turnover rate?
In this case, to express the efficiency of this program, a descriptive design would be adopted. According to Grimes & Schulz (2002), descriptive research is associated with numerous advantages that would be of benefit to this study. First, the subjects would be observed in their natural environment thus eliminating potential bias. The study also often results in a precious data collected in the vast amount, and the gathered data allows for the gathering of in-depth information that is qualitative. This arguably provides for the multifaceted approach to the process of data gathering and analysis. Finally, surveys might be utilized by an organization to study employee’s behavior, attitudes, and beliefs. However, descriptive research has its limitation including the participants might not tell the truth or behave naturally when being observed. Asserts that there are possibilities that that confidentiality might be an issue, and research bias might also influence the study. Lastly using this design, the findings might be open to interpretation. The descriptive research design is the most suitable for this intervention because it will help in answering the question of who, what, when and how related to the specific research problem. Descriptive research would further assist in obtaining information about the current status of a phenomenon and at the same time describe "what exists" concerning variables or conditions in a situation.
Selected Intervention
Competency-based training is a platform for learning and organizational development that focuses on the employee’s skills and traits critical to meet the strategic objectives of an organization (Cunningham & Geller, 2008). Competency-based training is characterized by knowledge to support the employee performance, competencies aligned to strategic goals and training that is designed to influence behaviors tied to a competency. The success of an organization entirely depends on the employee’s capabilities; therefore, it is critical to developing employee skills. In this program, the competency-based staff training intervention would be utilized (Brown, 2002). The primary goal of the present intervention is to recognize employee’s competency skills and then give them an opportunity to exhibit their skills and expand the qualities of employees. Competency-based training is beneficial because, it helps improve the overall quality of services and products, targets particular training needs of the employees and standardizes performance across your organization. It further helps in ensuring that training is cost-effective, goal-oriented and productive. The training developed would be designed to fit seamlessly into Stars ABA.
In the implementation of Competency-based training intervention the following steps would be used:
Need analysis- The first step is to analyze the needs, and this would focus on how the employees support overall achievement of Stars ABA. The contribution made by each employee to the achievement of the company’s goal would be analyzed and what the company wishes to achieve.
Competency identification-The second step would focus on the specific skill of these employees through analyzing their capabilities to the success of the organization. The common traits and competencies of the top performers would be focused.
Skill gap- In the third step, skill gaps would be focused where the difference between the current and desired levels would be analyzed. Skill gap data would be gathered through interviewing the employees and the managers. In this step, questionnaires would also be necessary for collecting data that would help identify the skill gaps. Historical data would also be of help since it might help point areas of weakness that need to be focused.
Individual development plan-The fourth step entail the development of an individual development plan where the researcher would primarily focus on the need gap development activities (Brown, 2002).
The implementation of the program would be the responsibility of the Human Resource Manager. Throughout the program, qualitative and quantitative data would be collected with regards to the employee behavior. Some of the areas that would be focused will include the employee turnover rates, punctuality, a frequency of delivering reinforcers and number of employees retained (Cunningham & Geller, 2008). Data would be gathered twice every week to have a clear understanding of the progress of the program and areas that should be improved to make it efficient. Throughout the intervention session, the collection and documentation of the qualitative and quantitative data would be done twice weekly. The gathering of data would be through observation and interview. Data would be entered into the spreadsheet and graphed for easier analysis and comparison. The following are the two primary SMART goals for the program.
Reduce overall employee turnover rates by 50 percent within two months.
Increase Staff was delivering reinforcers frequently when children are participating in various improper behaviors by 20 percent within three months.
Program Evaluation
After the completion of the intervention training program, the next step would entail the evaluation of its effectiveness. One of the most suitable approaches to achieve this would be to compare overall performance evaluations before and after the intervention training. Observations would be assessed weekly to give room for potential adjustment of the program. Based on the work by Brown (2002), during data evaluation, consideration would be placed on the new skills acquired, efficiency, turnover rates and absenteeism. In this case, both visual analysis and calculation would be employed in the evaluation of data. The visual analysis would help make the comparison more manageable while calculations would help determine the rates and trends of the data.
With the use of the data collected, the effectiveness of the intervention would be determined as follows: If the evaluation includes consistently low ratings and negative comment on the employees before training, while when the ratings and comments become positive in the later assessment, then it would mean that the training worked. However, if the later evaluation indicates that the comments and ratings remained low or dropped, then it would imply that the training did not work hence the need to revisit the issues (Brown, 2002). The intervention would thus be considered to be useful when after the adoption of the training program, the employee turnover rates drop, the level of absenteeism declines, and frequency of delivering reinforces on a frequent basis improves, and employee lateness improves.
When the intervention is proven to be effective, then it would be essential to adopt it as part of the training program for the company (Cunningham & Geller, 2008). However, if it shows to be ineffective, then it would be critical to go back to the initial steps and revisits all areas to determine what did not work. It is evident that many factors might impact the success of the intervention including the availability of the resources, the learner’s ability and motivation to learn, employees readiness to be trained and the training environment.
References
Brown, J. (2002). Training needs assessment: A must for developing an effective training program. Public personnel management , 31 (4), 569-578.
Cunningham, T. R., & Geller, E. S. (2008). Organizational behavior management in health care: applications for large-scale improvements in patient safety.
Grimes, D. A., & Schulz, K. F. (2002). Descriptive studies: what they can and cannot do. The Lancet , 359 (9301), 145-149.
