A new career development program called Career Path helps employees enhance their skills and advance their careers, promoting greater job satisfaction and improved outcomes for people supported.
Career Path promotes personalized development plans for staff, who shape their own pathway, leading to career opportunities and skill enhancement. The desired outcome: enriching staff’s overall work experience, improving personal outcomes for people supported, and supporting the organization’s overall needs. Career Path engages with a wide range of training opportunities, categorized into three tracks: Leadership, Skill Enhancement, and Personal Development, which includes a variety of offerings.
People engaged in the Leadership Track are learning skills that may be related to advancement or other opportunities. Says Bobbi Jo Yeager, Senior Vice President of Workforce Development, who serves on the committee: “We offer in-house leadership training for employees that want to get promoted to a management position at ADAPT. The courses included how to coach employees, how to give feedback, working with families, life planning, which include POMs, Money Management, taking care of the physical plant, how to motivate staff, setting expectations with staff, how to interview.”
Also offered in the Leadership Track is The Training Collaborative, a shared project of ADAPT, and other agencies in the Human Services domain. Its goal is to develop emerging and talented leaders and help to coach their staff and enhance DSP skills. The Training Collaborative also offers 101 Leadership Supervision training designed for new managers, covering various topics to support managers to promote quality work. Also, part of the Leadership Track is a Master’s Degree program in Human Resources offered through Stony Brook University.
Employees who are engaged in the Skill Enhancement Track focus on skills that build and strengthen skills that will further assist those that we support. Offered in the track was a 3-day cooking class covering cooking techniques and nutrition. Another course offered an 8-week Sign Language class, in which 20 employees were enrolled. The most popular offering in this track was a beginner’s Excel class, attended by 40 ADAPT staff at an outside agency.
People engaged in Personal Development Track may select a personalized development plan based on their particular areas of interest or opportunities for learning based on their career goals. “This track is for employees that might have career goals outside of their current job with ADAPT,” says Bobbi Jo. “For example, they may be working as a DSP but going to school for business management, or whatever their career goals are. We have several colleges that we work with to offer tuition discounts, and of course, ADAPT has a great tuition reimbursement program.”
The committee has a lot of Career Path offerings in store for staff in 2020. For more information, please contact byeager@adaptcommunitynetwork.org.