Chip Kenney: Hi, and good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to 2009 Southeast webinar series. Today’s special is Understanding Workplace Culture for Effective Job Matching. We are pleased to have with us Dr. Jamie Mitus from Hofstra University who I will introduce in a moment. My name is Chip Kenny and I am a proud member of the Southeast TACE team and that stands for Technical Assistance and Continuing Education. Welcome back to many of you who have participated in the previous session and we also like to welcome all of you who are joining us for perhaps the first time.
Just a brief word about Southeast TACE. Our mission is to improve the quality and effectiveness of the rehabilitation services and most importantly, enhance employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities. We work in the eight southeastern states which include Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina. I see that we have 31 participants so I'm hoping that all of those states are represented there.
The reason for TACE is collaboration with the Southeast ADA center and both are under the umbrella of the Burton Black Institute of Syracuse University, New York. We have and will continue to host quite a few seminars this year. If you've signed up already that's great and if not, please visit our website on the TACE webinar room, and I think Celeste is going to post that website to you in a moment. Registration will open up about a month before each session is scheduled, so please put a reminder on your calendar to sign up for the topics you're interested. All of the instructions and materials for each webinar will be posted on our website. Familiarity with this information will greatly enhance your learning experience.
Just wanted to make a quick note about our webinar system. The system that we use is fully accessible to everyone regardless of disability, and the assistive technology that may be used with each individual computer. The system makes it possible for us to conduct workshops from just about any computer with internet connection and the web browser and for those of you that prefer connect using the phone bridge please note that long distance charges may apply.
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During today’s session you'll only be able to ask questions by typing in the chat area. I will follow these questions and direct them to Jamie at the appropriate time or Jamie and I will coordinate those questions. We will also voice the questions for the benefits of participants, the captioner, and the transcript of the session.
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So having said all that and if we are ready to begin, I'm privileged to introduce our presenter for today, Dr. Jamie Mitus. Dr. Mitus is the program Director and an Assistant Professor at Hofstra University, New York in the rehabilitation counseling program. She also serves as one of the co-principal investigators of the employment services systems research and training center, a project that is supported by the National Institute on disability rehabilitation research, the U.S. Department of Education. Her project is investigating workplace socialization from an organizational perspective in relation to employees with disabilities. Other research interests of hers include Organizational Adjustment of Rehabilitation Counseling Professionals and the Psychosocial issues with individuals with Traumatic Brain Injury. Dr. Mitus completed 27 presentations at local and national conferences; she's had three publications with another one in press and has also written two book chapters which will be released, which have been released in 2008. Dr. Mitus joined the Masters of Science and rehabilitation counseling in 1993 with a PhD in Rehabilitation Psychology with an emphasis on Rehabilitation Counselor, so, having said that, welcome to Dr. Mitus, and welcome to all of you and I will turn the microphone over to Dr. Jamie Mitus.
Jamie Mitus: Good afternoon, everybody. I'm pleased to see that you're all in attendance for what I feel is a pretty exciting topic in relation to the kind of work we do as Rehabilitation Professionals. Before we get started I will also just run through a few key points for housekeeping and I want to thank Chip for doing such a great introduction for me and also to thank TACE Center for inviting me to present on this topic which I feel quite passionate about, so hopefully, at the end of the presentation you'll feel some of that as well.
Essentially as Chip had said I'll be reading through each of the slides and then elaborating on each of them. Some of the slides do have URLs which will be typed up in the public chat area for you. That way if you want to go later and tack a closer look at that particular website, you can do so.
There are some documents that are going to be accompanying this presentation and those documents I will speak about as we move along. They are available in the supplementary materials area on the event web page, so certainly you'll want to get your hands-on that as we get to the point in the presentation for each of those handouts.
In terms of addressing questions, as Chip had said you can go ahead and type those into the public chat and I'm probably going to look for natural breaking points to try and address as many questions as I possibly can. If for some reason I don't get to your question, please feel free to leave your e-mail perhaps in the public chat and then I can get back to you later with an answer to your question.
Okay, so on that note, we're going today move to the next slide in a minute, but I just want to say that and give you a little bit of background in terms of workplace culture, related to that workplace socialization and why for me I feel that this is such an important component to the work that we do as rehabilitation professionals. Oftentimes, at least I think back to my experience when I was working in the field much like what all of you are doing and I would have a consumer who secured a very comfortable and nice position but two months later we would find that the individual had lost a job or we were not able to keep the job for this individual, and oftentimes we would look at the job skill and the job tasks that were involved with respect to why didn't this job work out, where was the breakdown in terms of being able to incorporate the accommodations perhaps that we needed so the person could be successful, and more than not, what I would typically find and perhaps this is the case for you too is that it wasn't necessarily about the job function or the job tasks or the clients skill in being able to actually do the performance of the work. It typically had to do with workplace culture and workplace socialization issues. Being able to navigate through that, being able to understand it, being able to adapt in the culture of that setting that many instances created difficulty for the individual, and then furthermore, another issue we contended with was if it was a client I had worked with and it looked like things were successful and we had terminated working with that individual, only to find out a month later having the client call back to say that I left my job, when I would have preferred that individual to call me beforehand and seeing if we could have done something to prevent him or her from leaving and problem solving through whatever the workplace culture, issues are. So certainly, that's what I saw a lot in my experience which perked my interest in terms of looking more at this cultural piece, so when I was working on my doctorate, I connected with a gentleman who dealt a lot with Organizational Socialization and in working with him, I'm like wow, this is really interesting because a lot of what you're talking about in terms of how employees adapt into the work setting applies to employees with disabilities as well, and yet there's some unique issues pertaining to disability in terms of disclosing of the disability in relation to the workplace culture or dealing with accommodations that certainly we would want to be mindful of so that sort of spun my whole interest in this area, so since then, I've been trying to build my work around that and hope to be able to share some of what I'm learning so far with you today.
So, on that note I'm going to move to the next slide, Slide 2. Okay, on Slide 2, it says Outline of Training and the bullets say: Overview of Employees KSA-V, which I'll explain in a minute, definition of workplace culture, characteristics of workplace culture, evaluating workplace culture, and the last bullet, is saying comparing workplace culture to KSA-V.
So, basically here, what we're going to be talking about is just initially giving you a brief overview of an employee’s knowledge, skills, and abilities as well as values, KSA-Vs, and then I'm going to be tying that all into workplace culture as we move forward, and then define for you what workplace culture is and in doing that I'm going to utilize a model that's been used within the organizational field. From there we're going to talk a bit about characteristics of the workplace culture which are also known as artifacts of the workplace and how you can observe and pick up those artifacts to get an understanding of what that place is like and what it might mean for your client who is trying to adapt and adjust. From there we'll talk about in relation to the artifacts how do you evaluate for them when you're out there doing job placement services and then lastly, comparing what you find out to what it is your client is looking for to make sure that it will be a good match.
We're going to move on to the next slide, Slide 3, and on Slide 3, it says: The client's KSA-Vs, which is the title, and then underneath that, the bullets say knowledge, skills, abilities, values, and then a definition of KSAs, which says: The attributes required to perform a job and are generally demonstrated through qualifying service, education, or training. There is a URL underneath that, the Department of Labor and again that will be typed in the chat room for you so that you can go there if you would like.
Basically, I'm going to break each of these areas down in a second, but one thing I wanted to point out in the field of rehab is I think we tend to put a lot of emphasis on what our clients knowledge base is as it pertains to again meeting the job tasks, what skill sets our client has in order to again achieve the job tasks, as well as the abilities, and we probably to some degree also deal with their value systems and what's important to them, but my lunch is that we probably tend to put a little bit less attention into the value piece and you'll see again why this part is so important as it relates to the workplace culture.
Okay, I'm going to go ahead and move on to the next slide, Slide 4, and here, I give you some brief definitions of each of those key areas. I'm also going to provide for you an example as we talk about this. On the slide it says at the top for the title: KSA's and then underneath, there are bullets with the first saying K for knowledge, and the definition saying a body of information applied directly to the performance of a function. Underneath that is "S" for Skills, an observe ability competence to perform a learned psychomotor activity and underneath that is “A" for Abilities and that definition is saying competence to perform an observe ability behavior or a behavior that results in an observe ability product and once again, we have a URL for the Department of Labor that if you wish to go and visit their website you're more than welcome to do.
So in defining these three areas, when we do a valuation with a client or again we're assessing them for occupations that they may be able to perform, we obviously are looking at these three areas. We want to get a sense of what body of knowledge that they may have that will fit into various occupations, and so for example, if we were to use say a commercial pilot, in looking at the type of knowledge a commercial pilot would have to have to do that job, knowledge might be, for example, information about transportation, understanding FAA regulations as it pertains to flying a plane and again transportation law. The individual would probably also have to have knowledge of principles and methods for moving goods as well as moving people, as well as a third area might be geography, having a lay of the land and knowing how to get from Paint A to Point B.
Just a quick note, on the side I see that they have indicated that the link is not working and the page could not be found for the URL, so I will make a note of that and look into see exactly what the problem is for you. I apologize for that problem.
Okay, so in getting back to the commercial pilot we see there's obviously a body of knowledge he or she would have to have in order to do that type of work and then in translating that to actual skills in terms of skills that have been learned and developed over time, this might for example, mean that the pilot would have to be able to operate and monitor, and this would mean things like being able to watch the gauges on the airplane as well as the dials, being able to watch the indicators and understand what they mean, and respond accordingly. Another type of a skill that the pilot might need to have would be operation and controlling. Obviously, I know I would prefer a pilot who could skillfully control the airplane so that it could land and take off safely and making sure again that we get from Point A to Point B safely and then just as another example of a skill that we might look at if we were working with a client on something like this would be speaking. Obviously, the pilot needs to be able to speak in an effective manner to the Patrons on a plane in a calming voice being important as well. So again, we would be looking at that as we would be doing an evaluation with the individual with a disability, and then Abilities as the third piece we might be looking at is simply dealing with a competence that the individual has to potentially perform an observe ability behavior and again that would result in some type of an observable product. So example of an ability that perhaps a pilot would have to have would be problem sensitivity, where we would want to know that the pilot had the capability or the ability to know and detect when there would be some type of a problem in order to then know how to problem solve and correct for that. Another type of ability would be being multi-coordinated, so the individual would be able to operate the plane with hands as well as any foot equipment that would be necessary, so just to give you an example there. And as I was saying, as a professional when we're evaluating, assessing and looking at job matches, we tend to look at these areas and we look at them pretty well and pretty closely as it relates to the job function that the person would be required to do.
Okay, we're going to move on to the next slide. This would be Slide 5, and at the top, the title says Values, and underneath is a definition which I'll give to you. It says: Work values are principles that guide your behavior in professional contexts. They define how you work and how you relate to your co-workers, bosses, and clients. They also reveal your potential for advancement. And this was a definition I obtained from Seneca Career Resources which again the URL is provided on the slide and hopefully you'll be able to access as soon as we post it up on the public chat. So, basically here, we're talking about certain principles that you as an individual subscribe to in your life and they sort of drive and dictate how you go about behaving in this context within work. It drives your work behavior, and alongside with the principles, values can be needs that you have that are necessary to have in the workplace in order to be satisfied and feel committed to stay with this particular employer. And you'll see why in a minute that if we aren't addressing this and that a person’s values aren't addressed as it relates to culture, it can have negative effects on both the client as well as the employer.
Okay, so we're going to move on to the next slide, Slide 6, and I just want to take a second here, realizing that we won't be able to have discussion here but I'd like just to tell you to take a few moments in thinking about your own work environment. And sort of to try and get your mind into thinking about culture a little bit here, and just when you think about where you presently work and if you had to define the type of characteristics that make up the work environment where you are, what would they be, if you had to name two or three different things, so again, just something to think about, you don't have to respond or anything like that but thinking about your own work setting, what are the workplace values that dictate the culture there and how do you see those and in what way do they come through? For example, are you in a work setting that you would define as being fast paced or an environment that's pretty competitive? Perhaps you're in an environment that you see as being very team oriented or a setting that's quite flexible. Some of you might even describe your setting as being, hold on one second. Oh, okay, I'm just reading that if you do want to respond and put some of your answers, you're welcome to do that in the public chat area to try and generate a little bit of discussion around this.
So basically thinking about your own work environment what those characteristics are and then how do you know that like in other words what characteristics or what do you observe that supports those characteristics in that work setting to define it as being flexible or competitive and so on? Again the reason why I want you to think about this is because we're going to take that and move it over to thinking about the clients that you work with and the difference obviously being that you're in your job every day, so you've come to really know your work environment by living and breathing it every single day and when you're doing job placement, while it's more difficult to access the culture and define it of a potential employer because you're not in there yet and your clients not in there yet, there are still some things that you'll be able to do to try and get some handle on that as a way to help your client make a good decision.
So just looking at the public chat, I see some people putting down as some of the characteristics of their work setting that there's collaboration, there's flexibility, that there is a team orientation, that it's a self-pace which is probably quite nice, and again what I would challenge you to think about is that if you feel that your organization is collaborative, what is happening in that work setting that would make you define it that way and likewise as far as the self-pace. The self-pace maybe it's because there is flexibility and when you can come into work versus when you can leave or perhaps you have some wiggle room in terms of deadlines and time frames to work with, but there's definitely observable pieces of information that would support these types of values that you're identifying in your work setting so thank you for sharing that.
Okay so we're going to move on to the next slide and this would be Slide 7. The title says: What is workplace culture? And underneath is a definition that the by a gentleman by the name of Edgar Schein, who has done extensive work in this field, and the definition says: A common set of beliefs, values, meaning, and expectations shared by members in a work setting that dictates the type of activities and behaviors assumed by those members. So basically what we're talking about is you have an organization that to creates some sense of order, they've come up with a certain set of values that are driven by beliefs and a certain level of meaning and expectations that dictate how people perform, how they act in the work setting. Everything from how they act in their job to how they socialize with one another to their basic work behaviors in terms of when they come into work versus when they leave. This is all influenced by what the organization subscribes to in the way of its values, meanings, and beliefs. So to show this to you in a more clear way, we're going to move to the next slide where I've put together a model, but Oh, but before we do that actually, let me just hit on for a second some of the reasons why it's important to look at workplace culture. And then we'll go ahead and look at that diagram and that model.
So now we're on Slide 8, and the title of this slide says: The importance of workplace culture. Why it's important, and basically, the first bullet on this slide says: Contributes to a better job fit and overall integration for the consumer or the client, it contributes to consumers job satisfaction, it contributes to consumer's job commitment, and it may reduce an employer’s turnover. So let me go ahead now and speak to each of these just for a second.
The first bullet, in terms of talking about creating a better job fit and overall integration, that's fairly obvious. I mean, essentially if we're looking at skills, we're looking at knowledge and making sure there's a good match there and now we're looking and considering the clients or the consumer's value system and making sure that it's a blend to the organization, that means the individual is going to be able to act in a way, behave in a way that's more true to who he or she is as a person and so there for, there's consistency in how he or she acts to the values that he or she has, so as a result, that person is going to be able to integrate more successfully versus the consumer who may have some very major value differences going into a work setting and expected to perhaps work in a team but much more values working independently and really struggles to make that work. This person will have a lot more distress obviously than the first person who has a good match that way. And when you, depending on the level of this distress that you have, it then impacts on how satisfied they are in the job. If you have a consumer who have working in a setting that the values he or she subscribes to are a good fit, then that persons acting and behaving in a way that is more satisfying and more pleasing so likewise this person is going to be more content about the work itself as well as the organization, and the flip side of this too is that you're going to have an employer who is more satisfied with the consumer because more than likely, the consumer is going to be performing as expected because of being satisfied.
It can also impact on how committed the consumer feels to the organization, and what we mean by that is if you asked a client, you know, what's the likelihood you're going to stay working for this employer and if the consumer is telling you Oh, I don't want to leave at all, I love my job, I think it's a great place to work, everyone is really friendly, we get along versus the consume r saying Oh, you know, I'm really dreading going in each day, it's getting tougher every day, obviously we know that the first person is going to be more committed, more invested than the second person and that's going to impact on how they perform in the job which will then affect satisfaction and then also the employers satisfaction, so all of this connects together. It's sort of a domino effect.
Lastly, the employers turnover is important because that has to do with actually leaving, where you have the employee leave and if an employer is hiring people that do not fit in terms of the culture or fit in terms of values that employer is going to have a higher turnover so naturally again, from our end of it as rehab professionals we want to be accounting for that to heighten the likelihood that our consumer is going to stay, especially if it's a good fit. Because aside from all of this, the other part of it is that, thinking about your experience again what it's been like, and consumers and clients that you've worked with, when you've had clients who weren't successful, think about the outcome of that, what it was like for them, and the impact that may have had on their self-esteem, their self-confidence, so now what you thought was some steps forward in terms of this client moving forward, you've actually taken the clients taken some steps back because it isn't just about quitting the job, it's all of that other stuff associated with it that you're going to have to work on to help prepare that person to move forward into the next job. So the more that you can do as part of your placement process to create a good fit, but then also too, even if worst case scenario, it's still not going to be an optimal fit, if you're working effectively with the client that it won't be as much of a blow. If they still end up leaving and hopefully being able to move forward more easily and more successfully the next time around.
Okay, so let's move on to the next slide, but before I do that, I just want to see if anybody has any questions at this point before I explain the Schein Three Layer Culture Model. I'll just give a second or two to see if anybody types anything in the public chat.
Okay, it seems that we're ready to move forward. I've just moved to Slide 9, and the title of this slide says: Schein's three layer culture model. What you see on this slide is basically a diagram. On the left side, you have three boxes. The first box says "artifacts & behaviors" and then there's an arrow on the right side of that box connected to a circle, and in the circle, it says “visible but hard to decipher." In the second, underneath back on the left side of the screen underneath artifacts and behaviors we have a second box that says Espoused values and connected to a circle on the right side and it says greater level of awareness and then lastly, in the third box on the left, it says: Basic assumptions and beliefs and you have an arrow again on the right side of this box connected to a circle that says: Taken for granted, invisible and pre conscience. Now as I've described this model, let me say that you're not probably going to be going to your clients explaining this model. This is really intended to be a model for you to be aware of and to help sort of organize the way that you work with your clients and from that, then taking bits and pieces based on where your client is functioning and operating at, to help him or her understand how to work towards blending and fitting into the cultures. So you might not utilize these particular terms when you're talking to your client but putting it in more of a layman term in a way that they can understand to help them adapt and adjust.
So, I'm going to start at the top with the Artifacts and Behaviors. Basically, what we're going to do is walk through each of these. And then in the next several slides I have some very specific examples of different types of artifacts and we're going to talk a little bit about some of these to try and make this a lot more concrete for you.
The Artifacts and Behaviors are things that you're going to observe as I was just saying earlier about asking for those of you who said you worked in a collaborative work setting, or in a flexible work setting, or that it's a self-paced type of a work setting, you identify those as particular characteristics that are probably supported by certain artifacts and behaviors that you witness, every day you go into your job. So essentially artifacts are those observables that you see in terms of things on the wall, to communication that's occurring between people. As I said we're going to talk about several of these in a minute. They're pretty observables, but most of the time we're not thinking about them in terms of culture and we're not connecting them to certain types of values as a way to then help make a match for our client so we may observe them, but we don't necessarily walk through this process of connecting it to values.
So, you have the observables in terms of the artifacts and behaviors. Then, underneath that are these espoused values and basically, again those are much like what we said before in terms of some kind of a principle or a need of the organization that dictates how that organization operates. Whether again it's being people oriented organization or they value competition, we're going to talk about some examples in a second to again illustrate this model, but essentially what happens is that you have these underlying values that some employees may be aware of and some employees may not be aware of. It all depends upon how much Management really socializes its employees to understand what the values of the organization are, and as a result of those values, you then see these artifacts and behaviors that support the values. And then at the deeper layer which again you really aren't going to be addressing so much with your client but just something to be aware of is that essentially what makes an organization choose certain values to subscribe to as an organization? It's certain assumptions and beliefs that upper level management may have about how things should operate and that is used to drive and dictate what the values are.
So in a way, I kind of think of this model like if you think of a blade of grass where at the very surface level you see the grass blade, you see that it's green, you see that it's pointy, you see that it's flexible. That you can think of being like the artifact and behavior. Then, underneath that, you have the dirt itself and you may or you may not see it depending on how much grass is present, so it may be observable, it may not. Some employees may be quite familiar with the values while others may not, and then the last layer of the assumptions and beliefs, think of it like the roots of the grass, so you absolutely don't see them because they're underneath the ground but they are definitely there leading up to the artifacts that are being observed.
So let's take an example. If you think about a basic assumption that we have in life, one of the assumptions has to do with if we're a person that tends to be oriented to the past, the present, or the future. Are you a person that you're always thinking ahead towards the future and feel that it's important in order for planning and to get things done that you have to think ahead? Or are you a person who tends to operate more from the past, where you think it's really important to look to the past to help you determine how to do things in the present and in the future? Basically, people have one way or the other that they tend to follow more so, whether they're more pastor oriented or more future oriented. Many of us are kind of a combination of those things but generally speaking we might be more one than the other. So if you're an organization that you are very future time oriented, you believe that in order to get ahead, you've got to be thinking ahead and looking to the future, then that belief is going to dictate your value system. That again you have this value that we are future oriented and that drives the kind of action we take in this organization. The reason why we have this value is because our belief is that if you are future oriented, then you're going to get ahead. You're going to be able to beat your competition. The way that you're going to observe that in our organization is if you go to our team meetings, you'll see that we're always putting together our future goals, we're always thinking about the steps that are necessary to get to that next goal and even though we might have accomplished one goal that's wonderful but we got to move forward and start talking about the next goal so there's sort of again this connection between the three. And as I said you're going to see more as we move forward in terms of how these might connect.
So, with that said we're going to move to the next slide, Slide 10. And here, we're going to talk a little bit about specific artifacts that you might observe in the workplace and then utilize as part of a discussion with your client as he or she is making certain decisions about employment and trying to integrate within. I want to highlight at the top of this slide, Slide 10, the title says Artifacts & Behaviors and underneath I have several bullets related to different artifacts with the first one being longevity followed by shared tasks, social times, work schedule, and routines, employee training, break and meal times, initiation pranks, employee incentives, group customs, and celebrations. So we have two slides with these different artifacts but as I said I want to kind of elaborate on some of them to help illustrate what we mean by workplace culture. And at the bottom of the slide, there's in quotes it says Hagner, 2000, as Dave Hagner authored a book that's the workplace culture book that he wrote specific to disability that is quite helpful in terms of understanding these different artifacts. And then on the right side of the slide is a picture and it's got different tools, kind of more from caveman time, I'm not quite sure why I selected that particular picture, but nevertheless we'll go ahead and talk about some of the artifacts.
The first one that I have listed is longevity, and as we talk about these different artifacts, try to envision clients and consumers on your caseload and see how they may relate to some of these different artifacts that we'll talk about, and think about perhaps some employers that you've worked with as well, and if they seem to fit alongside with some of these artifacts and behaviors.
When we talk about longevity, what we're talking about is when you go to meet with an employer you want to get a sense of how long employees typically work in that environment. Is this a work environment where employees generally stay and they stay for a long time? Maybe some employees have been there 15 years, maybe some have been there five years, or is it an organization where there's again high turnover, maybe employees tend to only stay a year or so, maybe six months? You want to take a look at that because if they not staying, then that may give you some clues about how good of a culture it may be to place your consumer.
Now, in saying that, I do want to emphasize that in this day and age versus say four years ago where we had people staying in jobs for their entire career, we know today that people don't stay as long as they used to with respect to the workplace, so one thing you'd want to make sure of is depending upon the type of environment and work setting that your client is looking for, the type of work industry. Get a sense of what the longevity is for that industry and so this way when you're going to an employer and you're doing job placement and you're asking about typically how long people work in the organization. You have something you can compare against. You wouldn't want to compare an organization that perhaps the manager says, well, usually, people stay here about a year, and compare that to 15 years when actually in that industry a year is considered to be pretty doable. But it's important to look at the longevity; because it really does give you some indication about if it's very short, shorter than what you would have expected that could be some red flags for you in terms of whether or not it's a good culture for your client to work in.
Secondly, another type of artifact you can look at are shared tasks and what we mean by that basically is that the work that is done is shared by more than one employee. So it's done by more than one person, and what can be good about that for your client is it can give him or her other people to talk to that do the same work in terms offer understanding how to get the job done and that can be very beneficial in terms of socialization and how they adapt into the work setting. As opposed to a work setting where maybe they are the only one and they don't have another person that they can connect with on that. Obviously, shared tasks can be helpful too if you're trying to carve out a mentor perhaps. Obviously, the more the mentor actually does the same type of work the better it's going to be for your client. But again not just about the job task. It's about the culture of that work area and being able to do the task successfully within that. So this can be very helpful.
An example you might think of here would be to say, say you have a client whose hired as a janitor in a large office building and you've got in this particular employer, the employer basically has two janitors working, teaming up together, and they work floor by floor together. Versus another employer who may do it slightly different meaning that this and the other employer, maybe there's two janitors but one works the odd floors while the other works the even floors. And so they still share a task as far as doing the same type of work but they aren't as shared since they aren't actually teaming up and doing it together.
So taking a look at how that work is done can be important in terms of the culture and understanding how your client might fit in. Another type of artifact that you would want to take a look at and I'm going to kind of lump together a few of them here;. with the social times as well as the break and meal times, and celebrations which I'll talk about as well in a moment. You want to look for these informal social periods that occur in the work setting because it's those times where a lot of informal socialization occurs where you can find out about the unwritten rules if you will of the work setting and how you're supposed to blend in and work in the setting. It might be during a social happy hour that you find out Oh, you really don't want to get too friendly with the Secretary because, you know, she's just very negative, she has nothing positive to say about people. She will kind of bring you down, and so if you aren't participating in those key social times or break and meal times where oftentimes social times happen you're going to miss out on a lot of really important information that can be helpful to integrating into the work setting. And so this is something you would want to inquire about as far as what are the break and meal times? What are typical social activities that go on among employees in this work setting? Just again trying to get a sense of it and that too as we know from many of our clients it can be difficult in terms of how to break into those social times or how to fit in at the lunch time. And so forth so if we can get a sense of it maybe early on, we can help our client brainstorm how to be proactive in accessing and breaking into some of that.
An example too of how this might be an, use for a client of yours is say you have a client that's on social security disability and that client works part-time, and maybe one of the key social times is 3 in the afternoon, everybody takes a coffee break, and they all just naturally come together, but for whatever reasons, perhaps it has to do with transportation, maybe certain issues around the disability itself, your client is best to work during the morning. Well, the issue there of course is that although your client is able to work part-time, your client is going to be missing out on extremely important social time that could be important in terms of being considered an insider as opposed to an outsider, so anything that can be done to try and identify when those key times are and how your client can participate in it is going to be helpful for your client to become an insider in the organization as opposed to an outsider.
On a side note related to that I do want to point out to you something that you'll want to be mindful of because inclusion obviously is a big issue for a lot of the clients that we serve. One thing to know about organizations is that there are natural divisions in terms of whether you're an insider or an outsider. And some of those natural divisions include again whether you're part-time or you're full-time, whether you're temporary or you're permanent, whether you're paid hourly or paid professionally. And so because of these natural divisions it creates certain groups of insiders and outsiders. And so with your client, one thing you want to be mindful of I think is that we kind of had a tendency to focus on the disability thinking that my client is not being included because it could perhaps be something around the disability, which is true, but it may also be because our client is working part time instead of full time so we want to be sensitive to that in terms of how we help our client integrate into the work setting.
I wanted to hit on celebrations as well because that sort of related to the social piece too. In celebrations basically, we're talking about this is generally a very informal process. It can be normal in the sense of maybe once a year the organization has a holiday celebration where they acknowledge certain employees for outstanding performance. That's very formal. It's a very standard process but most celebrations tend to be very informal. They kind of are off the cuff or more in the work unit in the department as opposed to something across the organization as a whole. So maybe an example of that would be you have, Oh, hold on one second here. We have a question I want to take it.
Any advice on, the question says: Unit 3, any advice on encouraging your client to participate in social time versus listening to workplace gossip? It can be a fine line. Exactly. Basically what I would say because gossip is tricky. The thing about gossip is that it can be very harmful but there are elements of it, there's grains of truth within gossip where most of it is salty information, there usually is some underlying truth to it. So in terms of your client, one thing that I would certainly encourage is that number one is assessing how much is it distressing your client? Is your client actually participating but every time your client participates all it ever is gossip. It's important for your client to participate from the standpoint of not becoming an outsider but on the same token it maybe the kind of thing that your client simply doesn't engage in the gossip as much even though your client is actually there sitting with other workers and so forth. Or your client, you might encourage your client to bring up discussion about other things that are not gossip oriented. One of the things we typically think of is that when a client is going into the work setting there's no potential for the client to change anything. That you're walking into the culture, it's all about you blending into the way that it is. And the truth of the matter is that's true up front when you're first starting but as you are there and you're working longer, you have potential to make small incremental changes and so it might be that your client, again, starts to bring up and initiate discussion about non-gossip types of things or maybe your client says, you know, maybe one thing since we're all here at lunch or whatever, wouldn't it be great if we may be shared recipes and we started doing something like that. So helping your client to be creative, to maybe shift the discussion a little bit. Obviously it depends too on the level of cognitive capability of your client too, in saying this, so I think the other part of this too is that can your client participate but if the conversation starts to get heavy, at that point maybe your client might say, you know what? I've enjoyed being here with you but I need to get back to work now or something like that. To be able to excuse him or herself in a way that would be socially acceptable, so that might be another way to try and handle it so I don't know if that helped to answer your question but certainly let me know and we can elaborate on that further.
Okay, so to go back to celebrations, one thing I was going to point out here is say that the tradition is like every month, everybody is expected to donate money to a birthday fund, and that's used to buy a cake that is celebrated for whoever has birthdays in that particular month. And let's say your consumer comes to you and says that I'm getting stressed out because every month I'm expected to contribute to this fund and it's certainly not written in the procedure manual, it's not a part of my job, but it's this underlying pressure that you're expected to contribute to this birthday fund. And you know that I'm on SSDI and I don't make that much money and it's very difficult. In that situation, this is again where you might have the client first of all, identify who is the client close to in the work setting. So hopefully your client perhaps has made some connections to certain people that he or she might trust more so over others, and what you can do is have your client sort of feel out other members of those particular people in terms of what are some of your thoughts about the birthday cake every month? And kind of testing the waters to see, you know, I really like being able to contribute but boy, last month was really tough for me and I'm just wondering if we might be able to every once in a while do something a little bit differently. And helping your client maybe come up with another way that can celebrate that isn't a financial strain. So the idea is to help your client be proactive in looking at other ways to celebrate that might be more feasible. So that he or she can still participate but not get in trouble for not contributing and being looked at Oh, she's not contributing again and the rest of us are contributing and that's not right. That's not fair, so helping your client to sort of be proactive and how things could be done differently that in terms of some of these celebrations that would be more feasible. Another example might be more of a social issue in terms of co-workers going out after work and perhaps you are working with a client who is recovering from substance abuse and if you're going to sit into the organization, it's expected that you're going to participate in going out every once in a while. And if your client constantly says no, then that begins to create a division as far as or her ability to fit in. So the question then becomes if your client is at a point that he or she could handle some of that participation, but is not at a point to handle some of that, could the client maybe then come up with another type of activity they could do after work that would not take them to a bar. Doing something else, maybe, like is anybody up for going to a movie? Something like that. So again, it's helping your client figure out how to navigate some of that stuff in a subtle way that doesn't change the norm too quickly oral of a sudden.
Okay, just another couple I'll hit on because I see it's already 2:01. I want to hit on initiation pranks because this is one I think too that it definitely occurs and it's used as a way to induct members into the workplace and determine if you're going to be able to sit in and blend in or not, and an example of this I have in terms of one of my, an individual on Long Island, we talked about this issue and it was a consortium with, we have providers who worked with clients with psychiatric disabilities and this one provider had a student with a disability, a social anxiety this disorder disability and this person had recently gotten a job. And one of the initiation pranks that was done was to set a cup of water on the top of a door and when the person would walk through the door, obviously the cup of water would fall down on top of the person. Part of what dictated whether you were going to be accepted or not was how you reacted to that, if you reacted in a humorous way, then you were considered one of the gang, but if you reacted in a very negative and very upset manner, obviously that didn't work in your favor. So it happened with this particular individual and the real provider was saying that because of the social anxiety it disability that his reaction wasn't what the organization was looking for or what the co workers were looking for and so it created a great deal of Havoc to the point that this client almost quit the job. But first of all, the client called the provider before quitting which is what you want and they had good dialogue and talked a lot about socialization, uses so the client did call the provider and the provider was able to get in there. Number one, and educate the client about that the cup of water really had nothing to do with him. It wasn't targeted to hurt him. It's a practice that's done in this work setting. It's part of a way to be a tradition of bringing people into the work setting and I'll answer Unit 3's question in a second. And basically, help him to understand that not to take it personally, that this was really just a custom of the workplace. But on the same token, talking with the employer about how there's an understanding that initiation pranks happen but that the type of pranks that are used may be ones that are more useful over others and just trying to help the employer develop sensitivity about the use of initiation pranks. And so because the provider was able to get in and talk on both ends of it, that client actually ended up keeping the job.
I have a question from Unit 3 and the question says: Can't these pranks become a legal issue? In the case of the water I'm not so sure that that would be but obviously it could be. When we think about pranks, perhaps what comes to mind are some of the traditions that are done and things like that? Which certainly would be borderline in my mind in terms of being legal but there's a lot of initiation pranks that are noticeably legal. For example, another no pass, or telling that a person in order to go to the bathroom that there's a key to the bathroom when there's really no key. And so the person is looking around, hunting around, trying to find this key. So a lot of times they are fairly minor but I would imagine there could be some that would border on being legal and in that case, you certainly want to be mindful of it in the way of working with your client.
Okay, and another comment says the client could also feel discriminated against. So just as I was saying earlier with the individual lists they use with the disability and the social anxiety it disability. That's why it's so important for you as the provider if you're doing job coaching or what not to be able to get in there and speak with both the employer as well as your client. Because on the one hand you're trying to help your client understand that this is part of the organizes culture, that it's not targeted specifically to him or her because it can happen. It happens to anybody who is hired in this particular position but on the other hand you want to be mindful of it's a very subtle dance because perhaps was it done slightly differently so there for it does feel like some discrimination as well.
Nancy Campbell comments: Well I don't think I want to work for a Company or encourage my clients to work for a Company doing such pranks. So that's why it may be helpful to get a sense of what the work environment is like so one thing that you might do is just ask in terms of informal how people are being socialized into the workplace what happens from that type of questioning, it may help you to get an understanding of what they do and what they don't.
We have another comment: The prank could also create for the client a hostile work environment which can become a complaint filed with DOL. Absolutely. So, but as you can see just from the dialogue we're having on the public chat, initiation pranks which we probably don't think about all that often when doing job placement can in fact be quite an issue so having a sense or an understanding of that can be helpful when you're doing placement. Thank you very much for that input, everybody.
Let's move to the next slide because I want to share a few other types of artifacts and behaviors. So okay, now we're on Slide 11, and just a continuation of artifacts and behaviors is the title. Here, we have jargon, shared equipment, staff meetings, employer sponsored events, performance reviews, organizational charts, name display, gathering places and mission statement. So here just to again hit on a few, and I would absolutely encourage you to get your hands-on a copy of Hagner's 2000 book on Coffee Breaks and Birthday Cakes because he does elaborate on all these different artifacts. In reference to Jargon, we're talking about the language in the workplace. If there's certain acronyms that are used, again think about our own profession. We use them all the time. One way you can know if your client is beginning to blend into the work setting is his or her use of the jargon. If your client is using it fluently, demonstrates a certain level of pride as it's being used, that is an indication that your client is adapting and blending into the culture.
If we skip over to staff meetings, this is also another important type of artifact because it can give you an indication of how things operate within the organization. Whether they are more of a team oriented type of an organization or everything is just top down said to the individual, and so basically in understanding, do other employees get to participate in that meeting or again is it simply the manager whose dictating what should be said? This can be helpful in terms of how your client can gain and access information about the organization and then furthermore blend in to the setting.
In terms of things like employer-sponsored events here we're talking about if it's a Company picnic, if it's a family oriented type of a picnic, versus its employees only, that can give you an indication if they're more family friendly, things like that. If they value their Human Resources as opposed to being only focused on their product. So what kinds of events do they have and do they tend to support non-work related life as opposed to work related life only, depending on the kind of events that the organization sponsors that can give you some clues there. Performance reviews also, even if you're working with a client who is a receptionist, if there's any kind of a review done with her client to give him or her input about her performance and answer and how or she is doing on the job. Performance reviews can be clues to whether the organization supports growth and development, because perhaps they look at how you've performed so far and then what you still have yet to do to develop yourself, they can be clues to whether or not the organization looks to promote within. So if you have a client that wants to work in an organization where there's potential growth but nothing is done in the way of reviews, there's no client of at training and development that's done. It looks like people are hired more from the outside for a higher level position versus from within; all of these types of things give you clues that this organization may not really be about developing their internal people so this might not be the best fit for my client.
And the organizational chart that's useful just in terms of understanding lines of communication, who your client is supposed to go to first versus second and third. Certainly if your client has maybe a complaint about something to jump levels and get in trouble for doing that. It also may give you indications about power in the organization and who has power. But one thing to bear in mind that you typically see is you can have a chart that shows you the lines of power and communication but then what actually happens can be quite different. It might actually be the Secretary who holds a great deal of power because she's or he is the connection to the manager, and everything has to run through the Secretary first. So even on the organizational chart it wouldn't look that way, but understanding the chart and then what actually happens in the work setting is important so your client will know how to communicate, who to communicate to, who could perhaps steer away from, all of that important in terms of being able to adjust.
Then just a few others in terms of name display, this is getting into the specialization of the work space. Generally speaking some employers, you go in and it looks very sterile, and you can't really get a sense of it because there's nothing to really characterize what that organization is like. Whereas in another work setting it might be that people have pictures, a family, or they have some kind of a product from a trip that they took. It's made to who they are and so generally when you see that, that can be a clue that the employer is open to accepting people for who they are and letting them be able to express themselves in the workplace versus conforming to that organization and how they want things done. So we'll talk about that one a little bit more later when we talk about hierarchy culture vs clan culture.
And then the mission statement, obviously, that's very clear in terms of what values are and one thing I would alert you to in terms of if you're in the organization and you're taking a tour and you see the mission statement and you're reading about the values is utilize what you read in terms of the values to do some questioning with that employer about those values and how they're carried out, because sometimes an employer, had, it may be written in the mission statement but how it's carried out is quite different. So you would want to be sensitive to any discrepancies that exist there as well.
We're going to go ahead and move on to the next slide, and then I also just want to mention in the public chat we have an important comment by Linda that says: “Some of these organizational charts may not be actually documented, very true, but implied internally in the work environment”. And that again is extremely important because what that means is that it's not necessarily a very clearly designed structure to the organization so it's been sort of developed along the way and it gets to again what's written versus unwritten. And so even though it's important to follow the written rules it's very important to follow the unwritten rules as well so when you don't have a clearly defined organizational chart. Understanding that structure informally is beneficial to your client. This slide I'm going to gloss over but Slide 12 says categorizing artifacts and behaviors, and basically there's four bullets, the first being design and structure and it says: Degree of formality, division of labor, organizational charts, decision-making process. the second bullet, systems and procedures, routine protocol, written policies, communication flow, orientation process and work roles, physical artifacts are furniture arrangement, work space, technology, the building facade and social artifacts are: Rituals, customs, celebrations and gathering places. This slide is just simply showing you that you can take all of these artifacts and sort of lump them into different categories to make it a little easier to understand and follow so what I did was sort of describe the different categories and went through a few of the different artifacts to give you an example. And just as an example if you look at the physical artifacts, I have work space listed there. Here we're talking about when you walk in the building, is everyone behind closed doors or is it more open and free flowing where maybe desks are shared? There’s no walls or divisions and things like that. that can give you some indication in terms of the communication patterns, collaboration, teamwork, things like that that might go on in that work setting, just as an example.
We're going to go ahead and move to the next slide, Slide 13. On this slide all I did here was I wanted to make the connection now between the three pieces of Schein’s model, the values, the assumptions and beliefs and ultimately the artifacts. So I put on this slide just examples of some types of values that perhaps may be written in a mission statement and then what underlying belief might potentially be driving that value. So if we look at trust being the first one, let me go ahead and read out the whole slide. the title says: Values, assumptions and beliefs and then on the left side, the values are trust, education and training, and profitability, and then on the right side, the assumptions and beliefs are: People are good versus evil, for the second one free will to learn versus being deterministic, and third, success is defined by what you do versus not who you are. So if we look at trust, say the organization values trust, and maybe an underlying belief for this organization is they tend to believe people in general by nature are good versus evil. And by believing that people in general are good that they're going to try and do the best that they can versus doing what's wrong, it's easier to put trust and stock in the people that you work within the organization as well as perhaps customers and things like that.
The second value, education and training, the belief that might be driving that particular value would be the belief in free will to learn versus more of this deterministic pre-set way of being. So it might be that the management believes that we have a free will to be able to learn and we're influenced by our environment. As opposed to it's already set in place when we're born. So again we see where this belief can drive a kind of a value that the organization might have. And then pertaining to profitability, if the organization is very driven in that way, it maybe that they aren't as concerned about who you are as a person. They just want you to be able to achieve the bottom line and get what needs to be done. So for them, the belief is that for success and profit to occur, it's about what you do and not really who you are. So we see again where these underlying beliefs may influence certain types of values that the organization could subscribe to.
We'll move on to Slide 14. And here we'll give a couple other examples of values as well and the slide at the top says values, assumptions and beliefs and the two values here are teamwork and diversity and the assumptions are people are collective versus individualistic in nature and the second being Heterogeneity is better versus Homogeneity. So what we are talking about here it may be because management believes that collectively, when you work together, it's better than if you're working one on one. And that this is better for the good of the organization. So as a result of that they infiltrate the organization with this value of teamwork and then the artifacts carry through with that as well, and I'm going to show you some examples of that in a minute. And then diversity, it may be that the organization or the management again believes that for them to be successful, it's better if they have people of different backgrounds, people of different skill sets versus an organization where everybody is the same, and they have the same skills and so forth, so again, that could feed into their belief and diversity.
Let's move on to Slide 15 and here we're going to use teamwork as an example with party facts, the top of the slide says: Identifying the value with the artifact: What might you see? So, if you go into an organization and the first thing you see is the mission statement saying: Teamwork, I listed here just some different artifacts and we'll talk about a few of them in terms of what you might potentially see in that organization. Employee incentives which is an artifact, basically here we're talking about what's put in place to motivate employees to do their job, to be able to get the job done. And basically in an organization where teamwork would be valued, more than likely those incentives are going to be team oriented. So perhaps, the organization at the end of the year gives certain bonuses or gives a certain reward and recognition but instead of giving it to anyone individual, it would be given to a team, so again, we see that influence there.
In the case of staff meeting, this is where your client might observe the language, the jargon, where instead of using our language there's a lot of "we" language, and it would be again where instead of the manager reporting out to the employees that there would be brainstorming going on, and looking for input from all of the employees as a team as a whole, so that would give you a sense that perhaps the organization is more team oriented.
In the case of the pace of the organization I think you could argue here that it could be slower or faster. In the case of being slower, it might be a little bit slower only because the organization is allowing for teamwork to occur which if it's done collaboratively and democratically, it requires peoples input. I can tell you working in a University that tends to be team oriented. It takes a very long time to get things accomplished because you do get everybody’s input and feedback. So in that regard it could be slower but on the other hand it could possibly be faster too if things are being delegated to team members and then they're coming back together and then moving forward in that direction. So that would be something you could explore as well. And as far as if we jump ahead maybe to work space and take that one for example. This again may be where the space would be open more so, space would be shared, maybe an office is shared instead of anybody having one individual office. Even if you have a client who is working on an assembly line it might be that instead of having one person per assembly line, they work in teams of two. Or even if we go back to the janitor example and they work in teams of two per floor as opposed to opposite floors and working individually. So you could explore all of that as far as getting a sense of whether or not the organization would tend to be more team oriented, and in this slide I'm highlighting a few artifacts but I certainly would encourage you to go back and look at some of the artifacts and think back to maybe employers you've dealt with that you would identify as being more team oriented and then think about how they were team oriented based on some of those other artifacts that are listed by Hagner.
Let's move on to the next slide. We'll use diversity as another example, the top of the slide saying, identifying the value with the artifact, what might you see? The value being diversity, and here we list share tasks, work schedule, employee training, performance review, and gathering places. Okay, if we look at shared tasks, again this is where you have more than one person doing the same type of work. But what you might tend to find is that in an organization that wouldn't support diversity, maybe all those employees are very similar to one another in terms of their backgrounds, their skill sets, how they look and what not. Whereas in an organization that supports diversity, those shared tasks, the makeup would be a bit different. They might have different backgrounds, different skill sets and so forth, look a little bit differently and so on. And again, if you were visiting an employer and you're touring around to get a sense of a placement for your client, you could be observing for this and perhaps interjecting some questions as part of the process to the employees to get a sense of that diversity.
In terms of work schedule, here what you might see is a flexible work schedule where maybe some people start at 9:00 and some people start at 11. They allow for flexibility given variation and diversity in life circumstance. So diversity we're not talking about just ethnicity. we're talking about it could be other things like life circumstance, whether you have kids or you don't have kids, whether you're taking care of an aging parent versus not taking care of an aging parent. So diversity can be in a lot of different ways, so if that supported, then you might tend to see a more flexible work schedule. Or one where the employer would say well, your start time is 9:00 but if you come in at 9:30 that's okay as long as you stay the extra half hour at the end of the day. Versus another organization which is structured which will say you have to be here at 9:00 and you leave at 5 and there's no flexibility around that. So organizations that tend to have more flexible work scheduling will tend to probably be more inclined to follow and value of diversity.
It can also come in the way of holidays and days being taken off and how people utilize their time off. So maybe in one organization, they have instead of you have two weeks’ vacation and then you get these holidays, the organizations that might be more diversely oriented would have bank time meaning that well, you don't really have two weeks and holidays, you have this huge thing of bank time and you can use it in whatever way works best to your circumstances. So inquiring about some of the benefits around work schedule would help you get a sense of diversity as well.
Gathering places, again perhaps if you're taking a tour, looking at who are the people that are gathering together. Is it a mixture of just professional people or are there also hourly employees mixed in. So do you have a mixture of part time, full time people coming together as well as looking at diversity of ethnicity and gender and all of those things too. So by looking at where people are meeting and gathering and so forth, you can get a sense of how that is supported too.
We're going to go ahead and move on, it is 2:30 so I want to make sure we cover all of the material, and we're moving on to Slide 17. So what we've just done so far is we've talked about Schien’s model and how you can perhaps utilize that model as a way to sort of structure yourself in exploring values of an organization as well as these artifacts, and as it would relate to your clients value system. And what I want to do now is just share with you a way to sort of organize different cultures that employers may subscribe to as a whole. What you tend to see out in the literature are sort of these four broad types of cultures that can define what an organization is and I will tell you that when you're at an employer setting you may notice that they are one of these cultures more than others and often types there can be kind of a blend. So it's not only important when you're meeting with an employer to get a sense of what the culture is as a whole but also thinking about where is it that my client is going to be working in within this organization. Where is the unit because the unit might look a little differently from the overall organization, so you want to explore it on both those levels. So I'm just going to talk with you for a few moments and these four types of cultures and then we'll move forward.
on this slide I should have said I apologize, the topic says: Types of workplace culture and then there's four bullets the first being hierarchy culture, market culture, add hockey culture and then Clan culture. And then on the right is a picture with office workers working on computers looks like they're on a globe of the world and there's a sky with clouds.
Thank you, okay. All right, so the first culture we'll talk about is hierarchy culture. This is a culture where it's very formalized and very structured. So basically, a person walks in and it's very prescribed in terms of the procedures that the person is going to have to follow in order to get the job done. This is an organization where they may have very thick procedure manuals, again another artifact where it's spelled out from A to Z in terms of exactly what the person is supposed to be doing. And that the person is supposed to follow every single step accordingly to do the job. Leaders or managers in this type of a setting they tend to pride themselves on being good at coordinating and being good at organizing. And they also tend to like to be very efficient in the way that they get things done. There, the goal of this type of culture is to really have a smooth running organization so that's why there's such a need for procedures and rules that are expected to be followed. Not a lot of room for deviation from that. They have a lot of concern about stability so again they're about consistency and stability and these smooth operations. And they want to make sure that they can be dependable in their delivery and that they always have the same thing that can be delivered. So when you think about an organization, like this, there are a few but one most commonly is referred to, McDonald's is an example of that and the reason why it is if you look at McDonald's in California versus McDonald's in New York, you pretty much know when you walk in how you're going to be greeted, you know what uniform to expect that the person is going to be in, you know what the menu is going to be, very predictable, very consistent, and you know what the food is going to taste like. It's going to taste the same no matter where you go. So it's very prescribed in the way that they operate so that actually serves as an organization that would be considered as hierarchy. We also see it obviously in a lot of government organizations so whether it's the IRS, Internal Revenue Service’s to even State Rehab to some extent. There’s a hierarchy of management as well where you have your bottom level workers and then different levels up to your top Management and typically there's more layers of workers in Management within the hierarchy structure too. And a positive way for some clients, that can be helpful in terms of if they do want promotion potential you've got more layers to work with but you do have more red tape to contend with as well. And if you have clients who need a lot of structure, an a lot of clarity about roles and functions and how to blend in, then this might be a setting that would be better for that type of a client.
In the Marketing culture, this is a bit different. this is a setting where it tends to be very results oriented so instead of focusing on stability, they're looking at the end goal and whatever it takes to get to the end goal to make a profit. So they're very profit oriented, very competitive and so they want to come up with competitive pricing to be able to get the edge over other organizations, very goal oriented and the leaders in these types of organizations tend to be very hard driven. They may work a lot of really long hours and then have that expectation of other employees in the organization. And they tend to be very competitive themselves, aside from the organization as a whole. Typically what holds the organization together is the emphasis on winning. Again this competition piece and they put a lot of stock on their reputation and being successful in the community that way so again, there's this emphasis on competition and because they're goal oriented they tend to put a lot of emphasis on measuring their goals and trying to hit their targets. So obviously you see a lot of sales within this type of culture and so forth, but other companies would be anything like General Electric to perhaps the auto industry and so forth as well. Just to give you some examples there and I should go back and point out on this slide, market culture what you have is a diagram and at the top of the diagram is a box that says Goal and underneath that are three boxes that say Employee in each box and there are arrows from each of those boxes going towards the goal and then underneath that, is one box saying employer and then three lines of the employer going to the employees. And so basically the idea here is that you do have different employees in the organization that are all kind of competing with one another so there's internal competition as well as external competition. And they're all driving towards this end goal, just to explain that.
Okay, going on to Slide 20, this is Adhocracy culture and in this diagram what you see are, they aren't really squares, they are kind of circles with a triangle look to one side of it. And in each circle, if you will, it says: Product/service, and then there's an arrow to the next circle that says product/service and then to the third circle that says product/service. And then underneath that, but underneath the arrow specifically it says dismantle. And what this type of culture is there’s a lot of creativity and basically, teams are put together to work on a specific product and then they're dismantled and broken up when that product is done. And then they move on to the next team and so forth, dismantle and then on to the next team. And so these companies tend to be more risk taking than either market or hierarchy cultures and they tend to, you see employees sticking their neck out to be innovative and creative coming up with new ideas that could be put out on the marketplace. And so what tends to hold this organization together is the commitment that the employees have towards innovation and experimentation. They like to be leading edge versus Marketing but they are also competitive but not necessarily willing to take that risk, and they also, the Adhocracy culture tends to focus a lot on long term growth and developing new resources. So a Company that would follow along this culture would be like the Apple organization or Pixar. When you look at some of the technologies that have come out with Apple like the iPhone and all of that; it's because they tend to subscribe to this type of culture. And I want to interject before we move on to the final type of culture is, you know, thinking about the clients we're working with, we may be thinking that well my client is probably going to work more in an unskilled level position. My client could be the receptionist at the front desk or perhaps again the janitor, cleaning, and so how is this culture going to affect my client? It's going to affect your client because if this is the feel of the organization. If it's the feel of the organization that you have to follow every single rule whether you're the CEO or you're the cafeteria clerk or worker in the kitchen, that still is going to come to you in terms of expectations of how you perform the job. Maybe as the kitchen worker, you can't deviate from what the menu is supposed to be even if you have some good ideas about what should be done. So my point here is that these cultures affect all levels of positions within the organization. It might influence some more than others but definitely even front line entry level workers will get the feel of it when they come in.
The last culture I'll hit on is the Clan culture and in this type of culture, it tends to be a bit more family friendly oriented. There’s more of an emphasis on the people as opposed to the product or the service itself. The leaders in this organization, they tend to be considered like mentors to those that are underneath them and in some instances they can almost be somewhat parental-like. So there's much more of a meshing in that way. There tends to be much more disclosure of personal information and personal sharing that you might not see quite as much of in the other types of culture. There's a real sense of loyalty and tradition in these types of organizations. So because of that there's this high commitment and it's because it's people driven. That the emphasis tends to be on the Human Resource development of the people. So you can see here where it's just got much more of a people orientation to the setting and as a part of that you might tend to see more teamwork in this type of a setting so you might find this in some of the smaller mom and pop type companies, places like that, or any organization that tends to put a lot of stock on perhaps training and development of their staff, rewarding their staff, again looking at that artifacts and so forth. And then this slide I just mention too, at the top it says Clan culture and then you have the diagram of three circles inner connected where the first top circle has Manager and then the overlap of the three circles it says team. And then in the very center, with the three circles overlapping it says WE-ness, and then at the bottom, it says employee and then where those two circles inter-relate it says team.
Okay, moving on to Slide 22, just again reflecting on the key values as each of the cultures. This one is saying hierarchy culture and we kind of talked about this but those key values being efficiency, reliability, fast smooth flowing production and following rules and the example being Internal Revenue Service and as a company. And then I leave blank for you to think about the artifacts and what they would look like in this type of an organization. We’ll move on to Slide 23.
Clan culture, again the slide is saying Clan culture and underneath that the key values saying shared values and goals and cohesion, individuality and relation to that as well as a sense of we-ness. And accompany that actually subscribes to the Clan culture is DHL International. If you go on and read about them you'll see where they put a lot of emphasis on teamwork and Human Resource capacity. And I leave as the third bullet for you to think about again, some of those artifacts and what they might look like in an organization that's Clan culture.
I also want to encourage you of these four cultures, what one you think your organization tends to be most like, and again why. On to Slide 24, the market culture with the key values being competitiveness and productivity and as I indicated earlier, an example of that being General Electric or you could also say the auto industry, and the last bullet for you to think about in terms of what the artifacts might be supporting that.
In Slide 25, Adhocracy culture, again being entrepreneurial creative with Apple and Pixar being an example and then again for you to think about the artifacts.
I see it's 2:47 so I'm just going to try and go through the remaining slides. I can go through them fairly quickly. Because we've gotten through the important part as far as defining the culture and so forth.
In thinking about the work that you'll do, if you elect to try to incorporate workplace culture into job placement and as you are working with employers, there are a few tools out there that you can look to and utilize that can help you with this process. And the first one is actually on the slide it says the employer openness survey so this slide says: Tools to assess for workplace culture and the second bullet is the workplace culture survey, the third bullet is the work culture checklist and then last is observation and interviews. The employer openness survey, we actually did a training on about a month and a half ago. And this is essentially a tool that we can definitely get access for you if you're interested where it's basically 18 questions that are designed to get at whether the employer is flexible or inflexible. And the idea behind this is that more flexible oriented cultures such as the Clan culture. Is probably going to be a better environment for individuals with the disability stance and the reason about that is because if you're thinking about accommodations and so forth that these are cultures that will be more able to blend in accommodations without it being quite so evident. Whereas in a hierarchy culture, an accommodation is going to be a lot more evident and could be a little bit more of an issue in terms of getting that to blend in. It doesn't mean you can't be successful with an employer who is in a hierarchy but it just means those who are more Clan oriented probably are going to be a little more amenable to blending it in because they are flexible to begin with. And so this is a survey that you take to an employer and you essentially ask them various questions about their work setting that tap into their level of flexibility to give you a sense of whether this could be a good fit for clients that you work with.
Another tool is the workplace culture survey and if you goat Hagner's book there's actually the survey in his book. And in his survey basically there's 31 questions that all pertain to asking about the culture of the work setting and it gives you a sense of the artifacts that exist and so forth. So if you're concerned about how would I go about asking an employer these types of questions and so forth, the survey is a way to kind of help you think about and structure yourself in asking some of these types of questions of an employer. So I would highly recommend that one as well. And the other survey or checklist listed as the third bullet point, this is actually available in the supplementary material. It's one that I notified based off Richard Seal who I found online and it's again a way to ask certain questions of an employer about the culture to give you a sense of whether or not this could be a good fit for your client. And if you were to actually take this checklist and use it with an employer, bear in mind you could be utilizing it with more than one of your clients. So it's something that you would want to hold on to and refer to not only for a current client but perhaps some clients in the future. Some of the types of items on there in wire about the artifacts in terms of the longevity and the communication patterns and rewards and recognitions that are offered as well as how the space is used in the workplace. So that as I said is available in the supplementary material so you can refer to that too. And then obviously another way to assess for the culture is when you're there trying to get a tour to walk around and make observations based on the kinds of things we've talked about today and taking notes accordingly, and when you're meeting with the site, if it's possible that you're getting a tour, having a chance to maybe ask a question here and there of some of the other people that are working in that setting.
We've just got a couple minutes left to go, so I just want to indicate in terms of when to assess for culture. You can do it obviously before your client is employed or you can do it after your client is employed. Obviously, you want to try and do it ahead, before they're employed to gain as much information as you can, but as I had said before, you're not going to be able to gather everything until actually after the person is employed. And so on Slide 27 it says when to assess workplace culture, pre-employment during job development, you might do it during your initial employer visit, you might do it when you're doing a job analysis. you could do it prior to your client interviewing, I call it secret shopping, meaning that if it's a public employer, you can get out there and go and walk around and take notes. Or it might be that you have your client go and shadow the employer for a day before actually interviewing to get a sense of it. So and then obviously, you could do it during the interviewing process.
All right, and then I'm just going to end with the next slide, which is Slide 28, when to assess workplace culture, post-employment. Here, your client can begin to assess it during the orientation and training that he or she is likely to go through, whether it's formal two day training or it's more informal and the person starts immediately on the job and communicating with co-workers. I encourage you to talk with your client during this critical time in terms of some of the things we've been talking about, looking for these artifacts and how they match up in relation to his or her values, very very important to do that.
So, on that note I'm just going to skip ahead to the very last slide, Slide 31. There's a case scenario that is in the supplementary material and it's referred to as the Limeberry Lumber. And this is a scenario where you have a write up of an employee’s culture and then a case scenario of two employees that work hypothetically for Limberry Lumber and they're having a difficult time. One of the two is having a difficult time fitting into the culture and so in your own time, what I would ask for you to do is to read through the scenario and see if you can get a sense of if there is Clan Culture, and what not and in reading about the two consumers which one you think could be having more difficulty of the two. And why you think that could be the case based on the culture.
So on that note I'll go ahead and end but I do want to encourage you if you have any questions please feel free to contact me via e-mail or phone and I'm assuming that maybe you guys will post, actually let me go ahead and post my e-mail right now and I'll also post my phone number. So if you'd like to talk further you're welcome to do that and I want to thank you for your time and I can take any other questions you might have as well.
Chip Kenney: If anyone has any questions go ahead and put them in the public chat room now, we'll take a minute or two to see if there are questions and have Jamie respond.
Jamie, I'm not seeing questions but thank you so much for a great presentation. Thanks for helping us understand the sometimes subtle aspects of the work, culture and environment that can in many cases make or break successful outcomes and thanks also especially for the tools that you gave us at the end, so again, our appreciation for a great presentation.
I wanted to remind you all a transcript of the session will be available on the TACE website which is TACEsoutheast.org, That should be available in about two weeks and I'd like to remind you to complete your evaluation of today’s session. Your feedback is critical for us in improving our efforts in terms of presenting information that's relevant to you and making sure that we continue to offer quality webinars to you and the link will be posted on the chat area in a second.
Also, this session has been approved for CEU and CRC credits. To be eligible for the CRC credits you must reside in the eight Southeast states that I've mentioned earlier. If you don't reside in one of those states you can still apply for CEU credits. Again, if you have any questions please feel free to contact us at 866-518-7750, or at our website. And I'd also encourage you to follow-up on any questions that you might have, more detailed information from Jamie. I'm sure that she would be more than happy to have discussions with you, answer e-mails and just direct you in ways that will help you to get the maximum information from Jamie and help us improve our employment outcomes.
So, with that, I'd like to say thank you all for your participation, Jamie, thank you once again for a great job and we all hope to see you back during future TACE webinars. I hope everyone has a good day and we will talk to you next time.
[Event Concluded July 8, 2009]