Training Human Service Staff

This book provides practical strategies for managers and supervisors of human services agencies to use in assessing and successfully addressing workforce challenges. Each strategy is described with detailed instructions about how to assess the strategy, develop an intervention plan, and evaluate its effectiveness. Chapters also discuss how and why each strategy should be used. The book includes worksheets, forms, flow charts, and examples of how successful agencies have used these strategies.

Training Human Service Staff: Evidence-Based Strategies for Promoting Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Trainee Acceptance is a comprehensive guide that equips professionals with the tools and techniques to optimize the training of human service staff. In Section I, readers are introduced to staff training, understanding its importance and the critical criteria for success. The book delves into the gold standard of Behavioral Skills Training and explores in-person training methodologies in Section II, which encompass both group and individual staff training. Section III reviews technology-based training, including video modeling, computer-based training, and distance training via telehealth, offering readers innovative approaches to meet modern training demands. Special topics in staff training, such as maintaining staff skills, professional workshops, and the evolving gold standard, are explored in Section IV, rounding out a comprehensive resource. Focuses on evidence-based strategies that have been proven to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of staff training Covers all aspects of training, from essential criteria for success and the gold standard of Behavioral Skills Training to in-person and technology-based training methods Explores maintaining staff skills post-training, professional workshops and webinars, and the evolving gold standard for training performance skills

This guidebook will show how supervisors can ensure support staff to deliver quality services for people with disabilities whose quality of life is heavily dependent on how well those services are provided. Supervisors must ensure staff receive necessary training in their job duties, are actively supported to stay motivated to work proficiently and, at times, effectively assisted to improve their work performance. Supervisors have to overcome many challenges to fulfill these critical duties, often involving frequent changes in their staff work force and varying or limited resources. Complicating the job of staff supervisors is a lack of formal training necessary to perform their supervisory duties effectively. When supervisors do receive training in how to supervise staff work performance, the training is not always very useful. The training is frequently too general to equip supervisors with knowledge and skills to affect staff work performance on a routine basis. The training also is commonly based on unproven means of promoting quality staff performance, stemming from current fads or ideology that has little if any hard evidence to support the training content. Over the last five decades, a technology for supervising staff work performance in the human services has been evolving, derived from applied research conducted in many human service agencies. However, most supervisors have not had opportunities to become aware of these evidence-based means of fulfilling their supervisory duties. The purpose of The Supervisor’s Guidebook is to describe the existing evidence-based approach to supervision. Description of the approach is supplemented with practical suggestions based on the authors’ combined experience encompassing over 100 years of supervising staff performance in the human services. The intent is to provide supervisors with detailed information about tried and tested means of promoting diligent and proficient staff performance and to do so in a way that maximizes staff enjoyment with their work.

The authors have assembled some of the finest minds in the field of supervision studies to produce Supervision as Collaboration in the Human Services. Key aspects of a learning organization and the process of organizational learning are explored across the various human services (social, mental health, health, and aging), making this an essential core text for graduate and undergraduate students of social work and counselling, as well as for human services supervisors and practitioners.

An insightful volume that demonstrates how human service managers and administrators can innovatively and successfully make their agencies more effective using the principles of organizational behavior management. Improving Staff Effectiveness in Human Service Settings demonstrates the potential of OBM for identifying, tracking, targeting, and evaluating problems. Researchers, academicians, and practitioners examine interventions with OBM that took place in actual human service settings in response to severe organizational and staff problems. This important volume is an excellent resource brimming with well-evaluated, cost-effective staff management strategies..

Used by thousands of management staff throughout the human services field. This easy-to-read book is packed with many ideas which can be immediately implemented to elevate your leadership skills as well as improve employee commitment, performance, and retention.