The Department of Social Services represents a large portion of the county\'s bu

Question

The Department of Social Services represents a large portion of the county's budget and total number of employees. The job class of eligibility techni­cian (ET) is directly responsible for all client contact, policy interpreta­tion, and financial decisions related to several forms of public aid (e.g., ADC, Food Stamps, and General Relief). The County of San Capestrano has 1,100 budgeted ET positions and hires approximately 200 ETs each year. Once hired, they are enrolled in an extensive eightweek training program intended to familiarize them with legal statutes, procedural guide­lines, and report/documentation preparation. The program costs approxi­mately $10,000 per trainee.

ETs are faced with having to read a large amount of correspondence, including internal memos, announcements of new and revised policies and procedures, on a daily basis. ETs were complaining that they had difficulty reading and responding to the large amounts of correspondence. For an additional $100 per technician, a speedreading module could be added to the existing training program. You decided that the money would be well spent and added the speedreading module to the new technician training program.

Preliminary evaluation of the speed-reading module was that trainees liked it. Speedreading tests administered before and after training showed that, on average, reading speeds increased 200 percent with no loss in comprehension.

Two months after the last session, you informally asked some of the technicians you supervise who had completed the speed reading module if they were using the speedreading principles on the job. They said they were not using them at work, but did use it in their leisure reading at home. When you asked them about using it on the job, the typical response was "I never read those memos and policy announcements anyway!"

Note: Job description for eligibility technicians is provided after the questions fyi.

Questions:

1.     How would you evaluate the effectiveness of the speedreading program? Was this training a waste of money?

2.     What should have been done to insure that the speedreading program was necessary?

3.     What could you do to get the technicians to use the speedreading principles on their jobs?

Explanation / Answer

1. The speed reading program can be assumed to be a success as the results have improved significantly. If the speed has tripled without any ooss of comprehensions the benefits has been worth the money spent. Though they should use the priciples of speed reading at work, but it is OK till they do their duties at same pace and with same level of accuracy.

2. The nature of job itself needed a candidate to be expert at speed reading as he /she was required to do a lot of tasks that required it. Keeping this in mind, the speed reading program should have been the essential part of the training and it should have been in the list of people identifying the training needs for the new joinees.

3. The speed reading principles should be monitored on the job by preparing a checklist that ensures the compliance and fixing responsibility of a supervisor who does the job. The acceptance should be created by motivating the ETs that complaince will lead to even more improvement in the reading and reduce the risk of errors further, leading to even better performance at work. There should also be incentives attached to the compliance.

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse T
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.