Checklist For Identifying Quality Work Sites
For Public Job Creation Programs
by Clifford M. Johnson
1) Close supervision at the work site that is ongoing, supportive, and provides feedback on performance and growth over time 2) Work responsibilities and tasks that promote learning and enhance future employability
3) Flexible work schedules that allow participants to attend education and training activities
4) Suitability of the work environment
5) Safeguards against displacement of regular employees
6) Accessibility of the work site
7) Capacity and willingness to perform necessary administrative functions
8) Potential to hire successful participants
9) Capacity to accommodate larger numbers of placement
10) Community support for work to be done by participants
Public job creation initiatives are only as good as the work sites at which participants are placed. The work site provides the primary learning environment in which participants will develop an understanding of workplace demands and expectations, acquire new skills, and gain the experience they need to succeed in the regular job market. A high-quality work site will foster and support this personal growth and development. One of poor quality will impede learning and may even reinforce counterproductive attitudes, habits, and behaviors.
The following checklist is intended as a guide to program administrators as they seek to identify or develop high-quality work sites. Strong and effective work sites need not necessarily meet all of the criteria listed below. For example, a work site may provide a great learning environment even though the work responsibilities and tasks assigned to participants do not offer opportunities to acquire new technical skills. The checklist instead gives administrators a tool for ensuring that their staff consider the most important factors related to work site quality, and for increasing the likelihood that they will have an explicit awareness of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the work sites they eventually select.
1) Close supervision at the work site that is ongoing, supportive, and provides feedback on performance and growth over time
Close, ongoing, and supportive supervision of participants by appropriate staff is the most important characteristic of a high-quality work site. Supervisors typically serve as instructors, mentors, and role models for participants in public job creation programs. An effective supervisor monitors each individual's progress, provides regular feedback, identifies and addresses emerging problems, and motivates participants to pursue their employment goals. Because this process is central to the acquisition of new work-related skills, the work site supervisor is a key figure in the implementation of publicly-funded jobs and other work experience models.
In assessing whether a work site will be able to provide adequate supervision, the first question often is whether the agency demonstrates a reasonable understanding of, and commitment to, the fundamental goals of the public job creation program. If senior managers at the work site are committed to the process of improving participants' work readiness and skills, staff within the agency are far more likely to devote time and energy to necessary supervision.
Staffing patterns within the work site agency also deserve considerable attention. Effective supervision of participants takes significant time and energy. In identifying potential work sites, it is important to determine whether the agency has sufficient staff to provide high-quality supervision of participants. The ability of supervisors to monitor and encourage participants' progress over time, and the quality of the inter-actions between supervisors and participants, can have a great impact on program outcomes. For this reason, program staff should work closely with agencies to identify supervisors who will be effective in these roles and to promote participation in supervisory training activities whenever possible.
Finally, public job creation programs should be prepared to encounter substantial turnover in supervisory positions within nonprofit agencies. Program staff will need to set aside time to orient and get to know new supervisors. They also may need to be in contact more frequently with participants affected by this turnover to help them through the transition.
2) Work responsibilities and tasks that promote learning and enhance future employability
Effective supervision at the work site gives participants in public job creation programs the opportunity to become familiar with the demands and expectations of the regular labor market. Over time, high-quality work sites document each participant's ability to assume significant responsibilities or perform key assignments effectively. This sequence — structuring work roles that are appropriate and challenging to the individual, and then documenting competencies achieved during the course of the placement — is the linchpin to enhancing future employability.
When considering work sites, an important question is whether managers have some flexibility to modify work assignments in response to individual abilities and needs. Larger work sites may be able to offer a broader range of job descriptions and tasks that more readily accommodate participants with varying skill levels. In virtually all sites, however, there will be a need to negotiate with managers and supervisors at the site to achieve a good fit between the participant and the publicly-funded job.
The value of any work experience can be further enhanced by assigning work responsibilities and tasks that enable participants to learn new vocational or technical skills (sometimes referred to as "hard skills") and become more competitive in the job market. This goal requires program staff to strike a careful balance between the focus on "real work" and the need to avoid displacement of regular employees (discussed more fully below). Work sites are particularly effective in providing a "stepping stone" into unsubsidized employment when work responsibilities and tasks closely parallel those found in entry-level jobs within the regular labor market. Some publicly-funded jobs within nonprofit or public agencies may enable participants to obtain credentials or a license that will open the door to better-paying jobs with potential for career advancement.
3) Flexible work schedules that allow participants to attend education and training activities
The most promising models for creating publicly-funded jobs combine paid work with education and/or training services that reinforce and build upon the skills that participants have or acquire at the work site. "Wrap-around" education or training programs often involve 10-12 hours per week of classroom instruction at a community-based organization, community college, or other training facility. To facilitate participation in these activities, the most attractive work sites will offer flexible work schedules on a less-than-full-time basis.
Schedule conflicts can be avoided either by targeting work sites that are willing to provide part-time employment on a daily basis (e.g., 9 a.m. - 1 p.m. or 1 p.m. - 5 p.m.) or several days each week. Work sites that typically do not utilize part-time work schedules may be able to arrange "release time" so that participants can attend education or training courses. When arranging part-time schedules, work sites should be careful to avoid situations in which participants are perceived as receiving preferential treatment or are pressured to match the output of full-time employees.
4) Suitability of the work environment
A search for high-quality work sites should look beyond the specific attributes of a potential work assignment and examine the suitability of the broader work environment as well. A wide range of factors may render a work site inappropriate for participants in a public job creation initiative, including:
- safety concerns arising from the presence of hazardous equipment or materials at the workplace;
- tight production schedules or other deadlines that create pressure and leave little room for errors or inconsistent productivity; and
- lack of racial or ethnic diversity at the workplace that may foster or reflect a climate of racial intolerance or hostility.
The nature of the workplace also may create serious safety or liability concerns that should be considered during the placement process. For example, work sites that may bring individuals into contact with controlled substances, confidential information, or vulnerable populations may not be appropriate for many participants and would require, at a minimum, additional safeguards to prevent abuses. Other placement options may be foreclosed to some participants because the work site refuses to accept individuals with criminal records or substance abuse problems, or because the place-ment would threaten to derail the progress that participants have made in overcoming such problems.
5) Safeguards against displacement of regular employees
Displacement concerns are a major threat to public job creation that can only be addressed through careful selection of work sites. Effective protections against displacement are necessary both to sustain support for publicly-funded jobs and to ensure that they expand overall employment opportunities in the community. Support for such jobs may evaporate quickly if they are seen as leading to job losses among permanent workers in public or private nonprofit agencies. Furthermore, the benefits of public job creation programs are seriously undermined if they displace workers who themselves may be tenuously connected to the regular labor market.
Displacement concerns can vary widely across communities. The creation of work sites in a hospital or public health agency, for example, may open a promising career path in one community and pose no significant threat of displacement, while in another community they may threaten the job security of regular employees. Program staff need to be aware of displacement risks as they seek to ensure that participants are given challenging work responsibilities or tasks at work sites, and they should monitor sites to determine when participants are being asked to assume duties that should be performed by regular employees.
Several mechanisms can help prevent large-scale displacement of employees at the work site or in related agencies. Review of and concurrence with proposed work assignments by labor officials are essential in any work site where regular employees are represented by a union. Public job creation programs implemented at the city or state level also may ease displacement concerns by establishing local work-site review boards that include a broad cross-section of the community, including representatives of organized labor.
6) Accessibility of the work site
A great work site is of little value if it is in an inaccessible location. Lack of transportation is one of the most common problems that participants face in current job creation programs. Because many low-income adults do not own cars, proximity to public transportation routes is a key factor to consider in selecting work sites. For individuals with disabilities, it also is essential to identify high-quality work sites in facilities that are accessible to the handicapped.
7) Capacity and willingness to perform necessary administrative functions
While a basic goal of any public job creation initiative should be to minimize administrative burdens imposed on work sites, some functions related to program operations inevitably fall upon managers or supervisors at the work site. Time sheets must be approved and submitted for each pay period. Progress reports and perfor-mance assessments have to be completed on a regular basis and discussed with each participant's case manager. Work-site agreements also need to be renegotiated when the program's needs or circumstances at the work site change. Any one of these functions alone is not time-consuming, but collectively they represent a significant commitment on the part of managers and supervisors involved in the program.
The capacity and willingness of the work site to carry out these functions (and others that may arise) are particularly important when public job creation initiatives expect work site agencies to assume more responsibility for program administration. For example, many initiatives centralize payroll functions within a single agency or a small number of contractors, but others require that work sites place participants on their own payroll. This latter approach obviously requires a higher level of commit-ment to administrative support at the work site.
8) Potential to hire successful participants
Most public job creation initiatives encourage but do not require work sites to hire successful participants. This approach recognizes that many public and nonprofit agencies can provide high-quality work sites even though their budgets and future staffing needs are limited and unpredictable. All other things being equal, however, work sites that expect to hire new employees as a result of planned growth or attrition, and that agree to consider successful graduates of public job creation programs for entry-level positions, deserve favorable consideration when developing and selecting work sites. Public job creation initiatives also can be designed to provide financial or other incentives that encourage work sites to hire successful participants.
9) Capacity to accommodate larger numbers of placements
Smaller agencies frequently provide high-quality work sites. They are able to create a more welcoming climate where participants immediately feel part of the organization. Staff in small agencies also are likely to feel a greater investment in their participants' success, and as a result they may make extra efforts to provide personal as well as professional support in times of challenge or crisis.
The advantages of developing work sites in small agencies are offset by the difficulty of achieving substantial scale through individual placements across a large number of agencies. As public job creation initiatives grow to serve larger numbers of participants, it is very difficult to generate sufficient work sites without relying upon larger agencies that can accommodate many participants. In some instances, participants may be assigned to work on common tasks in teams or groups, while in other cases they may simply be spread out across various departments or units within the agency. Both approaches represent useful strategies for moving initiatives to scale while maintaining high standards for work site quality.
10) Community support for work to be done by participants
Since participants' employability gains are a key criteria for judging the success of public job creation initiatives, high-quality work sites must promote work readiness and foster skills development. Yet the creation of publicly-funded jobs also offers other opportunities. The work performed by participants can fill gaps in public services and contribute to valuable projects that have been shelved or postponed as a result of budget constraints. Their work also can bolster the capacity and effectiveness of nonprofit and public agencies that serve low-income communities. When effectively developed, public job creation programs yield a powerful "dual benefit," making participants more employable and productive while providing communities with a new resource to address important unmet needs.
Many different tasks have been performed by participants in past and current job creation initiatives, spanning fields as diverse as child care, after-school care, construction, education, environmental preservation, land management, health and social services, recreation, public works, and public safety. No single set of work assignments will make sense in every community, and some highly visible projects (e.g., graffiti removal or litter abatement) are likely to be poor options because they offer few opportunities to build skills or enhance employability. Even if only a modest fraction of all work sites are designed to elicit community support, however, they can play an important role in sustaining public job creation initiatives over time.