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>> ELLEN CONDON: Hello, everybody. My name is Ellen Condon. and I'm here from the University of Montana, Rural Institute on Disability and also Marc Gold and Associates. I've been asked to talk with you about customized employment today.

We want to talk about the definition of customized employment, the distinction of customized employment versus labor markets, job development and employment, also the features that make customized employment unique and also some of the categories of customized employments.

Customized employment was defined by the U.S. Department of Labor as, it means that we are individualizing the relationship between employers and employees, in ways that meet the needs of both parties.

That's critical. Customized employment isn't a charity. You have to have a win/win on both the employer side and the employee side. How we start the approach to customized employment, it's always looking at the individual first, and we look at the individual determination of their individual strengths, their support needs, their interests, and their impact of a disability.

We don't just ask what you are interested in and follow that, that verbiage to job searches. We really take an intense look at who the person is first, and then create a unique one of a kind position for that individual, in a way that meets the need of that employer as well.

So there's two distinct approaches to employment. There is labor market, job development, and there is also customized employment. In labor market job development, we are responding to the identified needs of the employers first with applicants who are qualified to meet those general needs.

So think about this as our demand driven employment. Basically, the employer identifies that they have a need. They create a job opening. They list out what they need in terms of a job description, what are the skills they are looking for in applicants, what are the duties they expect that person to do.

And then applicants or people wanting the job submit their resume', their qualifications. They complete their application, submit it in for review, the interview, and then everybody who is interested in that position competes for the job opening.

That is how many of us got our jobs, and many people with disabilities are successful through traditional labor market job development.

However, there is a large group of people, especially with significant impact of disabilities, who don't compete well. So just because somebody doesn't compete well doesn't mean that they can't work.

It just means that they need a different strategy to enable them to find employment that works for them and for the employer. So that's where customized employment comes in.

So with customized job developments, we begin with discovering the strengths, the support needs and the interest of each job-seeker. And we proactively negotiate a job description that meets both the job-seeker's needs and the employer's specific needs.

Through the process of discovery and really intensely getting to know that individual job-seeker, we actually create a blueprint for the ideal job for that individual. This is not the dream job. It's the ideal job in which they will be successful.

Through discovery we create a blueprint that identifies under what conditions will this person be successful, what are the contributions, what are their tasks that they are going to be offering to an employer, and then we proactively approach employers that may have need of those contributions, and we make a proposal to the employer.

So in contrast to labor market job development, where the employer announces that they have a need first, in customized we begin with the individual. We determine what they need and what they can offer, and then we proactively approach employers.

Many times the employers that we are approaching don't have a job opening, and that is actually fine, because if they have a job opening, there's already competitive strategy in place.

And for folks that don't compete well, they can work. However, we want to use an alternative strategy that removes competition from the table. We want to look at identifying what the ideal situation is for them, and start approaching employers with a proposal rather than reacting to employers who haven't identified job, who have an identified job description.

So in customized job development, we look at the individual's skills, the tasks they can perform and the contributions they can bring to an employer. And for folks with a more significant impact of disability, identifying their skills and contributions is going to take some time. It is going to take watching what the person does, how they do it, where they are at their best.

It is not going to be through testing and evaluation. We are going to contact employers only that relate to what that individual has to offer, and match the ideal conditions.

Say for one job-seeker, their ideal conditions are that they need a pretty routine set of tasks. They do best if they are not interrupted mid task. They do best if they have one individual supervisor, and we are looking for a job that enables them to move quite a bit between their tasks and as they are doing tasks, and also take a break when they need it.

We are going to prescreen all employers that match those conditions for the person, and then also we are going to be looking only at employers that have a, that are in need of tasks that this person can offer, and then will value their contribution.

We don't approach just anybody; just the people that would match what this person has to offer, and match their ideal conditions for employment.

And that way, we are looking to set up success for a person. Again, this isn't the dream job. We are looking for successful placement, where the person can make a contribution, and where they are going to be able to participate and be productive.

The job-seeker will present or a representative will present a proposal to an employer where we think there is a good match. Then the employer will review the proposal, and also part of the job developer role in customized employment is to engage the employer in a conversation, and also an analysis of what their unmet needs would be.

That is another distinct difference in customized job development, is that the positions that the job-seeker ultimately will have most likely doesn't exist yet. We are going to create it. And the position is going to evolve from the task that we know this person can offer, but also the tasks that meet an unmet need for this employer.

And therefore, we are customizing creating a one-of-a-kind job that reflects the best of the job-seeker and also meets the unmet needs for the employer.

The position is then negotiated. So in customized employment, this is a strategy that, you know, we have developed in response to the need for a more flexible workplace for all workers, not just workers with disabilities.

However, for the large number of people with significant impact of disabilities, who we just haven't figured out how to place in employment, and how to access paid employment in the community for those folks, this is a critical strategy.

So the people that we are looking at are folks who haven't had the opportunity to work before, and they may have been screened out of employment because they were evaluated and found not to be ready. That may be because the number reflected on an IQ test was perceived to be too low. It could be that they have some behavioral challenges that someone perceived would be a barrier to paid employment.

Or it could have been that their production wasn't reaching what we thought was the criteria to have a paid job in the community.

So many of the folks that need customized employment actually are folks that were screened out by a more traditional approach to employment. They were seen not to be competitive or not ready. However, in customized employment, we are beginning with the assumption or the presumption that everybody is ready to work. It is up to us, the professionals, to determine what that work is going to look like, and how to identify and match their skills and their ideal conditions to an employer that will value the skills and contributions of this individual.

So again, just because you can't compete doesn't mean that you can't work in a paid job in the community.

Some of the presumptions around customized employment are that people can work without having to be competitive, that everyone has something to contribute.

We need to define work individually. So for me that may mean 40 hours a week, but for somebody who has a significant medical impact as part of their disability, it may mean that they work up to two hours a day, and their attendance is based on their health and their stamina that particular month during the year.

But each person's definition of work is just based on what their contributions are, and also what works for them.

Another presumption in customized employment, and we are finding this to be true around the country in rural or urban areas, are that employers are still hiring even in a depressed economy. They are hiring through different strategies. I'll explain that in a minute.

The other piece is that customized employment is about matching an individual's contributions to unmet needs of the employer. So again like if we can avoid, if we are going to take competition off the table as, because it's a barrier for many people with significant impacts of disabilities, we have got to look at using a different approach to employment, and determining what somebody is going to do in the work force.

So we need to start with who that person is, what they do, what their skills are, what we can offer an employer, and approach employers in a different way.

We want to avoid a competitive labor market approach to job seeking, if this is an individual who doesn't compete well, because we know that is not going to be successful.

The second premise about everybody has something to contribute, this may for somebody with a significant impact of disability, it may take some time to identify their skills and their contributions. Let me give you an example of that.

I worked with a young woman who has a pretty significant physical impact of her disability. She uses a motorized chair. She answers yes/no to questions, yes is a raise of her left hand, probably about two inches off the tray on her wheelchair; her no is a grimace or she will even turn her head away from you.

She can communicate with switches. She uses a big Mac switch. She will reach out with her left hand and press the switch, and she can say that she wants to communicate something in her communication book. Then her communication partner needs to ask yes/no questions to determine what it is in the communication book that she wants to communicate.

She also uses the big Mac switch to operate anything with an on/off switch, such as a stapler, shredder, or to offer a greeting or message or direction to somebody. She can use the big Mac switch for that as well.

As we were getting to know her, we started spending time with her and her family doing that first meeting and interview at her house. We asked her family what her responsibilities were during the day. They explained that their house is pretty small. She couldn't use her motorized chair within the house because it wasn't accessible. They would transition her from the school bus into the home in her manual chair, and then they would transfer her on to a daybed in the living room so she could watch what was going on.

When I asked about chores and responsibilities, in my attempt to identify tasks that she did and skills she had, the family explained, due to the inaccessibility of the house and her limited mobility, she doesn't really have any responsibilities.

I tried to tackle the issue in a different way. I asked the family, could you describe what her morning routine looks like? They talked about in the morning, her mom would get her out of bed. She would help her clean up. She would put her hair in whatever style they were going with for the day.

She would place her in her manual chair, and she would position her so that the young woman was looking out the front window. And what she did then was she would watch until the bus came. And as soon as she saw the big yellow school bus, she would vocalize and let her mom know it was there.

For somebody like this young woman, who doesn't have a lot of work experience, whose skills are hidden, we are going to have to collect information just about what she does during the day, how she does things, where she is at her best, where she is most engaged, physically, intellectually. And so from that story that her mom shared with me, we were able as a team to identify the skills are that she is observant. She will alert somebody upon request.

So the tasks were that she would observe and wait, and that she would alert when something happened. As we were planning later on for appointments, we had to look at, okay, what are the tasks that she could do using those skills? She could identify that somebody had just entered a business. She could offer them information using her big Mac switch. She could direct them.

She could invite them over to where she was sitting, and offer information, if that was part of what the employer needed her to do. Again, everybody has something to contribute. It may just take some more intense time and looking and searching to identify what the contribution is.

That's the piece in customized employment that enables everybody, regardless of the significance of their disability to be able to work.

The other presumption in customized employment is that we are going to define work individually. So for one young man I've worked with, he works two hours on Monday and he works two hours on Thursdays. That was identified by his team as what would work best in his life right now.

Part of the rationale for only working four hours a week is that he has other things going on in his life that the team feels are just as important as employment right now. His stamina is pretty good. He can actually work more hours than that. But they have asked to limit it at this current point in time.

For the young woman that I was describing, we initially defined work as 20 minutes initially, and then she would take a 20-minute break. Then she would work another 20 minutes. We were looking at a time frame before 11 in the morning, because she seemed to have seizures starting more frequently at 11, 11:30. When she started to have a seizure, then she would be out for the rest of the day.

We were looking for tasks also that wasn't time sensitive or time critical, meaning that if she was ill or she was having a bad health week, it didn't, it wasn't critical that she didn't get to work and perform the task those days.

For her, what was, I guess, successful employment really was individually defined by her ideal conditions of employment.

It had to be a setting that would accommodate her intermittent health issues, and also would, where she could get something done in 20 minutes, but also take a break, so that she wasn't overtaxed and wouldn't begin seizing.

The next piece is that employers are still hiring in a depressed economy. They are just hiring them in a different way. Actually, I've heard this from employers directly. If we think about what that means, maybe employers have fewer job opening signs. However, they still have unmet needs. They are still concerned about their bottom line.

So as we are identifying an unmet need of an employer. If we can find a way that our job-seeker can offer a service that will bring in more customers to a business, will increase customer service and thereby increase the employer's bottom line, we typically can negotiate a position, a paid position for that person, because we can also show the employer how this is going to bring revenue into their business.

A little bit later, I'm going to explain what customized employment can look like. It may not always be a wage job. It is always paid, it is always in the community, but it may be an entrepreneurial venture or self-employment. It just depends on how that situation works between the employer and the job-seeker.

So what we are finding is that even in an incredibly depressed economy, employers still have unmet needs. They are willing to hire people or pay job-seekers if we can show how this person is going to increase the bottom line. The other piece about customized is about matching the person's contribution and unmet needs of the employer. That's the crux of customized employment.

Again, like we have talked about in the beginning, we are not looking at employer needs first. We are starting with who the individual is, what they can do, how they do it, and coming up with that ideal blueprint for a job that reflects who they are at their best, and then approaching employers and making a proposal based on what this individual has to offer, and at the same time we are analyzing what the employer needs and how this person's work and their tasks can increase the bottom line for the employer.

The big piece in customized is that it starts with the individual. We need to look at their skills and abilities. Sometimes, in some cases when I first met somebody and talked about the possibility of their going to employment, if people don't understand the strategy of customized employment, they start with an assumption that somebody has to be competitive in order to work.

And so I've run into teachers or agencies that will start with the question about, how on earth are you going to get this person a job? They are so slow. Whereas, once we get to know the individual, we see that their pace is, they do have a distinct pace. They are methodical. They are precise. They like things in order.

That is a piece of, those are their skills. Those are their contributions. And as we are looking at employers that would really value that, we are certainly not going to approach an employer who has a high rate of speed in production requirements. That would just be a waste of our time or the waste of the job developer's time.

So we look first at who the person is, not whether they are ready, not how fast they work. We want to step back and see what they do. This is a young man that, one of the first days I observed him, I was watching him perform his work experience at the school, and was working on a coffee cart. And the first thing he did is he approached the coffee cart, he walked up to the basket of cream cheeses, and they were individual packets, Philadelphia cream cheese. He turned the packet or turned the basket over, so kind of dumped them all onto the latte stand, and what he did was picked them up one by one, and top left centered them, and the writing was all facing the same way.

Initially, discovery, I don't know what that means, but I'm just paying attention to it. Later on, we realized he was committed to putting things where they belong. He had an order in his head that he wanted things to go in. And after he arranged a workplace, it was all, everything faced the same way. Everything was in its place.

We also realized that he was very gentle and precise with fragile work items, with children and also with pets. So it led to tasks in a greenhouse. It led to using a pipette as a task later on in a different job.

But the whole piece is that if we hadn't started with who this person was and looked for the skills and contributions, then we would have, we might have been very mistakenly assuming that he didn't work fast enough to be hired by an employer in the community; whereas we found an employer who hired him as her first and only paid employee, because she wanted somebody who was precise, who was cautious, who was detail oriented.

So customized employment always starts by getting to know the person, and looking at what conditions are going to help this person be most successful, most able to contribute and participate, because if we are going to approach an employer, first of all we have to identify an employer that is a really good match. But also, we have to make sure that it's a win/win for the employee but also the employer. I need to identify contributions and tasks that the employer is going to value.

I do that by looking at the individual job-seeker first. I'm also going to look at interests. I'm going to look at what motivates them. For a person I'm starting to get to know now, getting paid in cash is a big key or it's going to be a big key to employment success for him.

He likes, he doesn't like to wait for reinforcements either. He wants to be paid quickly. So as we are talking with him about what, how much he needs to make, how quickly he needs the cash. We are thinking of running a cash business, he also likes to buy/sell things. He likes money transactions. The other piece is he also interprets if you are getting tips, that would be paid in cash, so that would be good.

That is another piece to who he is. It is another piece to creating a position for him where he is going to be successful. If he has to wait two weeks for a paycheck, my guess is that he is not going to be motivated to perform the job, even if it's in other interest areas, say around clothing, around cars. He is pretty clear about it's got to be cash money.

Let me explain some of the differences to you between customized employment and supported employment. I think unfortunately, when customized employment first was introduced as a strategy for employment, people mistakenly thought as just a new name for supported employment.

There is a lot of features of supported employment and customized employment that are real similar. What I want to be able to do is explain some of the distinctions.

The first distinction of customized employment is just the intense time that we dedicate up front to getting to know the job-seeker. We need to understand their impact of disability. We need to know how their disability impacts how much information they need in advance of any change at the workplace.

We need to know or understand how their hands work, what kind of materials can they work with, what type of materials do we need to avoid, how predictable does the workplace need to be or the flow of tasks need to be, how varied does it need to be. Is there an issue around time of day? We need to have all this information, so before we approach an employer and negotiate this one of a kind position, that we can see the blueprint of what this person needs in our head as the job developer.

I think that is one of the main pieces that is distinctly unique about customized employment. It would be taking the best and the most effective strategies that we used in supported employment, and just increasing the power of those strategies and really adding in the need for that intense discovery or getting to know who that person is, and what they need to be successful and to make a contribution to an employer.

In customized employment, we always start with the job-seeker. Before we even think about which employers are going to be contacted on their behalf, we are going to start by doing discovery of the job-seeker, determining what their ideal conditions are like I just described, but also what their skills are, what tasks they can offer, what some of their motivations are around work. Then we are going to look at which employers may be a good match.

Sometimes in supported employment, we would start with an employer that was hiring, but was willing to take an existing job description and carve away the pieces that the person couldn't do.

Because we started with the existing employer, and the existing job description, started with their needs first, that would make that situation not customized. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's not a good situation.

If the person, if the job-seeker can be successful in that situation, great. However, if we want to look at how customized distinguishes itself as a strategy from supported employment, we are really looking at that intense up front discovery, getting to know the individual. So we are actually proactively in the employers that we approach, we are also going to identify unmet needs, and we are going to identify a position that doesn't exist yet. We are going to create a position.

The other piece is that negotiating the duties, the flow of the work, the support, all of that we assume that we are going to be doing that piece in customized employment.

And when I worked in the field as a supported employment professional, we didn't negotiate as quickly or as frequently. In customized we are just assuming we are going to have to negotiate this position, because most likely it doesn't exist yet.

The other piece that is unique to customized employment is that typically we represent the job-seeker. There is a tool that Marc Gold and Associates uses called the visual resume' and also the agency portfolio.

We use those with employers and typically don't have the employee with us initially. But we will go in and we will represent the individual so that we can talk to the employer about their strengths, about their skills, what they are going to contribute.

We offer them a list of tasks we know the person can do, or can do with training, based on how well we know the individual, and then we are going to negotiate a position. We may have to negotiate some accommodations. We may need to negotiate start time around the person's transportation schedule, or maybe it's around how long their personal care requires in the morning.

But there is probably going to be some sort of negotiation. Those skills typically are more prevalent in a professional than the actual job-seeker, so that is why we represent the person.

The other really unique thing about customized employment is that customized employment is an option for any one of us. It is not just for people with disabilities.

When the U.S. Department of Labor first offered customized employment as a strategy, it was in response to the needs of many people, not just people with disabilities. But the work force in general needing more flexibility of employers.

So it may have been that the depressed economy, we needed to figure out a way to support ourselves in a different way. It may be that somebody wants to live in a really rural area, and there are no job openings there. So how do they support themselves? It may be that we are taking on the care of one of our elderly parents, and so our work schedule needs to look a little differently. Customized employment can be for any one of us, just not, it's not just about people with disabilities.

However, this strategy is critical for the people that don't compete well for whatever reason.

I want to talk a little bit about the features of customized employment. Similar to supported employment, we are talking about one individual in one job. It's definitely in the community. It is a paid position. It is paid at minimum or prevailing wage. Sub minimum wage is not a component of customized employment. It has got to be at least minimum wage, so whatever your state minimum wage or area minimum wage is.

Again it's in the community, alongside people without disabilities. The other piece is that, again, like I emphasized earlier, is that the only employers that we contact in customized employment are those that the individual led us to through this individual plan of employment.

So again, customized employment could be for any one of us. Say we are somebody that wants a more flexible way to earn an income, that we want to live in a rural area, that we want to telecommute. Customized employment is perfect. We have to start with what are our skills and contributions that we, that somebody is going to pay for, and what are our conditions for success? Like what do we want? Are we trying to avoid Fridays? Are we trying to avoid driving to work? We want to work out of home?

Those are our ideal conditions for success. But again, anybody can use this strategy, and for people who don't compete well, this is a strategy that will enable them to obtain a paid job in the community.

More features of customization that make it really unique, instead of testing and evaluating to determine whether or not somebody can work, in discovery, which is the foundation of customized employment, we are going to start by describing what they do, how they do it. Like if I'm getting to know a job-seeker, and somebody tells me, okay, the person is nonverbal, that is the first piece of information, but I need much more in-depth information.

I want to know how do they communicate if they are nonverbal? Do they use gestures? Do they sign? Do they use pictures? Do they mime what they want? How do they effectively communicate? Are there some frustration issues around people not understanding them?

That is going to be another area that is not going to prevent them from being employed, it is just a part of their impact of disabilities that I need to understand and plan for, and add that into that feature into their blueprint for their ideal job.

The other piece in customized employment, I'm not looking at job titles. I'm looking at discrete tasks, and as I'm marketing for somebody performing job development, I'm offering an employer a set of tasks that I know this person can do, and part of how this works to create a new job is that the employer will review those tasks, and then also they typically will offer tasks that are unique to their work environment, that they see the job-seeker can do based on the presentation we have made.

So we are not, again, not job titles; we are looking at specific tasks. Then we are going to reassemble those tasks into a unique job description that the job-seeker can do, and will meet some unmet need of this particular employer.

Again, unique to customized employment is that focus on unmet needs. Some employers, you know, may have identified a need they have. They may have an employee that is doing a piece of it, but it takes away from some of the other tasks that that employee really could generate more revenue for the business doing.

That could become a piece of a job description for somebody, or an unmet need may be something that we help the employer identify that they aren't even using any employee to perform those tasks. However, this job-seeker could perform those tasks, and again boost their bottom line.

So customized employment, all the job development efforts are guided by an individual plan that comes out of the job-seeker's strengths, the features that enable them to participate, to contribute, their interest areas, their motivations to work.

And that plan starts with getting to know the job-seeker, and then funnels down into a list of prospective employers that may match that individual's conditions.

The specific job duties are negotiated with the employer on behalf of the individual. The other piece to point out is that customized employment is voluntary. Employers are not required to customize. You may find employers, when you offer the idea of customization in a unique reassembled job description, their response may be, if the person can perform all the essential functions of the job, we will hire them if they are the most qualified applicant.

Basically what they are stating is that we are following the ADA, the Americans With Disabilities Act. We will hire anybody who is qualified as long as they compete and they are most qualified.

Some employers just due to corporate policy are unable to custom tailor a job or renegotiate a position. That's okay. That is totally legal. It's a voluntary strategy for employers to use.

What you want to be able to do as a job developer is, again, find a way that this new job position, this new re-bundling of the tasks is going to boost the employer's bottom line.

What we are finding is that smaller employers may be more flexible in the confines of a job description, so that may be a much easier place to start than some of your large companies that more traditionally we have approached in a more competitive strategy to get people with disabilities employed.

The customized process, how does this all work? I've said a couple times that we have got to start with getting to know the job-seeker. It has got to be the discovery piece. I'm going to share with you in a minute the steps of discovery.

The customized process, we are going to start with discovering who this job-seeker is. We are going to spend time with them in what they typically do. We are going to see how people support them to communicate. We are going to see if there's some effective strategies that maybe are used at home, that help them be more self-directing and independent and get them transitioning smoothly from one part of their morning routine to the next.

We are going to look for things that motivate them. We are going to look for, is there something, is there something that the person does without being expected to do it. That is an indication of some internal motivation about, you know, something that they do at home, but also we can generalize that and look at, is that something, a skill or contribution that we can then bring into the work force as well.

The second piece is, after we do discovery, we have to capture that information in a written document. Marc Gold and Associates calls that document a vocational profile.

It's a narrative document. It is a comprehensive document. It is very optimistic and positive. It's really not going to help me to develop a job for somebody if I have a list of everything they can't do.

What I need is how they get things done. If this is a person that doesn't read, how do they decipher written information? Will they initiate taking something, maybe they recognize some sight words, but if it's labels that they don't understand or they don't know, will they bring to it a coworker and ask for assistance?

One young woman I worked with, what she did for words that she couldn't read is she used a communication device to communicate, and then what she would do is would actually type in the word, match letter for letter, and then hit speak it.

So totally using her device, and in a very unique way, enabled her to read the words that she didn't understand.

Those are the pieces of information that I'm going to need in this profile. It's a positive document. It is optimistic. It is going to describe information from all avenues of the person's life. I'm going to gather information from home, from the community, from if this person is enrolled in adult services somewhere, I'm going to look at performance there, interview people there.

I'm also going to look at school, if the person is in school. But it crosses all areas that we may not think are employment relevant, but in discovery they become employment relevant, pieces to a puzzle that we are going to pull together to create this blueprint for this one of a kind position for the person.

After the profile, we are going to move on to a customized employment planning meeting, and again that's unique to Marc Gold and Associates. We have a structure for how the meeting flows, what we are looking at, at each component of the meeting, and that leads to a plan for job development.

From there we look at creating a visual resume' to go represent this person to make employers, sorry, make -- the next step is putting together a visual resume' that will help us represent the person in negotiations with employers. And it allows us to share information about the person's skills, their contributions, their experiences, and also has a list of tasks that we can offer to that employer.

From there we are going to be looking at job development, and negotiating the one-of-a-kind position, if we find a match between what the person has to offer and what the employer needs.

Then we are going to look at what kind of training, what kind of support does this individual need? There again is a big distinction of customized employment. We have spent so much intense time getting to know the individual, that we really understand how they learn best, how they learn most effectively.

So as the job coach, we can really evaluate, are we going to have the coworker trained? Who typically trains new employees? Or is this a skill or particular tasks that we need to step in as an employment consultant, who is skilled in systematic instruction, to go ahead and train.

We are also going to have a clear idea about what ongoing supports this person is going to need to maintain this job and be successful. That is all going to come from discovery.

But all of that goes into the plans for once we analyze the job, how are we, who is going to train, how are they going to train, are we going to provide accommodations now or later? What kind of ongoing support is that person going to need?

Another distinction of customized employment is that many of us customize our jobs, like many of us may start a job working 8 to 5, and then later on once we are in the door, we realize that those hours might be more flexible, and on Wednesdays we want to participate in a class that starts at 4. So could we renegotiate the hours of our job?

Could we renegotiate some of the tasks that we would like to take on, maybe some tasks we would like to get rid of. The distinction with customized employment is that when we are using it for job-seekers who traditionally have been screened out of employment, we are going to have to do that customization up front. We can't get in the door and then try and negotiate around somebody's work hours, because their personal care takes three hours in the morning to get them ready, so they really can't be at work at 7. We have to negotiate that before the first day of work.

If somebody's hands don't enable them to work around non-sturdy or non-rigid materials, we are going to need to look at that before the first day of work and identify the specific tasks, the specific work materials that this person can manipulate.

In customized employment, we have to understand impact of disability up front, put that on the table actually with the employer during our negotiation and our proposal, and really customize the tasks, the hours, the supports, the supervision, whatever is critical to that individual succeeding in the job. Customized employment is more than a job match.

I think historically in supported employment, we were able to look at job-seekers, identify what their skills and abilities were, and then look at a template of the job requirements, and say, okay, is there a match? If there was, folks would go to work.

In customized employment again, it's really about the intensity of the information that we gather up front, that gives us the guidelines of what the individual needs to be successful at work.

Customized employment is far more than a job match, the whole process of customized results in setting the person up for success in a job match. But it is beyond just a good job match. The other misperception sometimes is that just because a job is carved, that means that it's customized. That is incorrect as well.

Again, carving may be a strategy that we use as we are actually doing the job negotiation and creating the one-of-a-kind job description, but that just because a position is carved doesn't mean it's customized. It is customized if the tasks that are part of the final job description reflect back to who the person is, and they are tasks that we went to the employer with stating that this is what the person can do. And so it all starts with really looking at the person initially.

The result of customized, there is some different categories of customized employment that I want to share with you. And the first categories basically are about where the tasks that result in this individual's new job, where they came from.

It may come from one job description. For example, I've worked with a young woman who, she took over the property, paying the property management bills on-line for the owner of Prudential Realty. So all of her job tasks came from that one individual's job description.

So it looks similar to a carved position, but it is customized because we started with who the young woman was, and offered tasks to that employer, and then matched it to the unmet needs, the needs that the employer had, and created a job description that looks very different than the original job description of the realty owner.

Some tasks may come from a variety of jobs. So that would be a multiple source job description.

Another young woman who actually worked at Wal-Mart, which isn't known for being able to be that flexible with job descriptions, they created a unique job description for her. And they took pieces of a job from customer service, they took pieces of a job of somebody who stocked the end-caps at the checkout lines, and they combined it into a one-of-a-kind position for her that she was able to do, and also met their needs for having go-backs, returned items in the store get back to where they belonged on the shelves in timely manner, and also meeting the corporate need for having the end-cap displays organized according to the map provided by corporate within the designated period of time.

Again, it is a multiple for a job description because those tasks came from a variety of jobs.

The other way that we can create a unique job description is create a job description. That would be looking at, if we identify an unmet need of an employer and then we create a position just around that, and it may be that, maybe this employer didn't offer delivery service and that is something that the person can offer.

But again it's got to meet a need of the employer and also increase their business, their revenue, for it to be a win/win for both the employee and the employer.

So the other piece, the other categories of customized employment really are around how the person gets paid. Like I said earlier, sometimes the smaller businesses are more open or more flexible about unbundling demand and unbundling job descriptions and being more flexible with how they get their needs met.

The other thing about small business is that sometimes they don't have extra capital to hire somebody. We may be able to build the argument and they may agree that this person could increase their business, could increase their revenue, but they don't have the capital to hire them. So there is a couple different ways of arranging a relationship that results in employment, paid employment for the job-seeker.

So it may be that the person is self-employed. It may be that they can run their own business and have it within the bigger business, and again, that would make sense to the business if this is a complementary business that increases revenue, increases service, increases customer service, or frees up the employer to do tasks that would bring in more revenue for the business.

Say somebody who is running I guess an automotive repair shop, and there is some prep work that this individual could do, the business owner doesn't have the capital to hire them, but they have this person take over the prep tasks. And therefore, they get paid for those prep tasks, and they invoiced the business for providing those tasks, and their business is situated within the bigger business.

The whole key again is that it's a win/win for both parties, that it's based on the individuals' contributions, their skills, their tasks, but also produces more revenue for the business.

Another way to approach it would be an employee-owned business. We helped a young man develop a business that initially was providing delivery services for a bakery. And then he ended up kind of branching off and having his own business as a delivery service.

He contracted with businesses around his community and provided lunch delivery. So it became his business. And so if it was GlaxoSmithKline providing or hiring him to deliver sandwiches and lunches for employees, they would pay him because he owned his business.

Another way is that some may be hired on as a contractor. So they provide a service. They invoice the business owner and get paid that way.

There is a young man that works at a stable in Montana, and he bills for each horse pen that he cleans. That is how all the stall cleaners are paid in that business. So they are all contractors. Again, self-employment is customized if the tasks, if the whole blueprint and plan for employment originated with the job-seeker.

In customizing a job, we have got to look at five components. We have got to look at, do we know the ideal conditions of employment? Do we know what this person needs to have within a job for supports, environments, tasks, preparation for them to be successful?

Do we understand their motivation to work, what is going to be motivating? What are their interest areas? What are their preferences? We also need to know, what are their contributions?

As a job developer, I can't go market somebody to an employer unless I can explain what they are going to bring in terms of personality attributes, experiences, skills, all of that. There's got to be a reason that this person is going to bring value to the employer, and raise revenue for the employer. There has to be a reason for that employer to hire.

The next piece too is that I've got to know what the tasks are that I can offer to the employer that this person has done, we have seen them do, or we understand that with training, based on this person's skills and abilities, we can train them to do.

Finally, looking at the specific list of employers; again, the employers come from who the individual is and what we are looking for, for conditions of employment for them to be successful.

So the first part in that, in order to customize, we have got to ask who the person is. And in a future webinar, we are going to talk about discovery. We are going to talk about how we get to know this individual so well, that we can go proactively negotiate a job with an employer, the job that actually doesn't exist yet. So stay tuned for the next webinar that is going to be on discovery.

I wanted to share with you some resources that have fact sheets, there is webinars, there is trainings, there is articles, all around customized employment.

The first one is the Rural Institute on Disabilities, where I'm employed, at the University of Montana. Our transition Website is filled with, if you go to the products section, there is going to be monographs, there is going to be fact sheets, there is going to be newsletters. If you go to the training section, there is going to be archived webinars. They are all recorded. They are downloadable. All of our materials are copyright-free. You can download them. You can copy them. You can share them with job-seekers and with families.

The next Website is Marc Gold and Associates. There's many articles and training information for Marc Gold and Associates. Also Griffin-, Griffin-Hammis Associates is another entity that does quite a bit of customized employment around the country.

There is much information there about self-employment, as well as wage employment.

Finally, the Office of Disability Employment Policy has some hot-off-the-press videos on customized employment. There is some videos that focus on a message to employers. There is a video about customized employment in transition, and also, customized employment as a flexible employment option.

There is also a tool kit on the ODEP site. Again, all materials that are free to access. I recommend highly that you

visit all these Websites. Thank you. (End of Webcast)

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