The VSV Approach to Employment Training
More than five years after the implementation of welfare reform, many who remain on the welfare rolls have significant employment barriers, and many former recipients are caught in a cycle of acquiring and losing dead-end, minimum wage jobs. A study of the employment histories of a sample of sixty-five homeless parents served by a local homeless family organization, ForKids, confirmed our impression that the vast majority of jobs acquired by this population group pay less than $8.00 per hour and last less than 12 months.
We expect that the skills training, emphasis on basic work habits, and supportive services provided at VSV will have a significant impact on program graduates’ abilities to acquire and retain jobs paying at least $8.00 per hour. Long-term retention of decently paid jobs, in turn, will reduce welfare dependency, homelessness, child poverty, and other social problems.
VSV’s training philosophy and methodology is a natural extension of our social service approach:
- We believe in hands-on employment training. Most people within the population we serve have had negative experiences with formal schooling and do not perform at their best in classroom settings. On-the-job training with supportive coaching is ideal for these individuals.
- We break each task or skill down into the smallest pieces necessary for the trainee to understand and consistently perform them.
- We try hard not to do things for trainees that they could do themselves.
- We make a daily mantra out of the notion that it is always okay to ask questions and better to say “I don’t know” than to do something wrong and attempt to sweep it under the rug.
- We tie a portion of the trainees’ compensation to their ability to master good work habits and new skills.
- Although we have no expectations that our trainees necessarily will become library aides or bookstore clerks when they graduate from VSV, we believe that we are teaching a broad range of transferable, marketable skills by rotating all of our trainees through most of the possible positions at Spotlight Books. With this collection of skills mastered, we believe that our trainees will be well positioned to acquire and maintain a range of living wage jobs.
- We supervise our trainees closely, and we work hard to make positive learning experiences out of mistakes.
- We hold our trainees responsible for their behavior, but we never yell at, berate, or belittle them. When we have a concern about an individual trainee’s behavior, we meet with him or her privately
- We supplement hands-on training with highly participatory workshops addressing good work habits and general employment skills. We frequently use games for learning purposes in these seminars.
(One of the VSV book processing stations)
