 Hi everybody and welcome to today's presentation on Vocational Goals and Skills or Career Exploration, kind of however you want to call it. I'm more excited than usual about this particular class, which if you know me means it could get a little dicey here and there, because this class was actually requested by one of the students. So I am more than happy to try to accommodate whenever there's a topic that you're really interested in or you need information about. Please feel free to let me know because it's a lot more exciting for me to do things that I know that you're going to be interested in. So that being said, let's go ahead and get started. Over the next little bit, we're going to identify the purposes of vocational goals. When we are in graduate school, most of us had at least one course on career counseling and career exploration. I got my master's degree in vocational rehabilitation, so I had like way more than that. Obviously that means that I am a proponent of vocational goals, but I really want to help people see that it's not as overwhelming as we may think. If I remember back to taking my NCE, there were tons and tons and tons of questions about or it seemed like it about theories of career placement and career exploration and things like that, and there were just so many different theories. What we're really going to do here is look at the purpose of vocational exploration of vocational goals for people and the practical application of that information. A lot less on the theory, a lot more on the practical tools. We'll learn ways to help people explore their vocational wants and needs, and there's a difference, especially for people in recovery. There are some very specific needs that they will probably have. In addition to the wants that a lot of people have, like the ability for promotion, upward mobility, a fun place to work, yada yada. We will learn about the CGOE online, the DOT online, which are abbreviations for what is now known as ONET, the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, the Guide for Occupational Exploration, and I have no idea what ONET stands for anymore. I assume it's occupational on the internet, but they have condensed basically the CGOE and DOT into a really fun website. I need to get out more, but I think it's fun. So we're going to actually take a look at that and see how we can help our clients explore what they need to. Then we'll define and explore the concept of functional assessment. This is basically taking all of the jobs and all of the education you've had and identifying all of the skills and tools that you have as a result, as a cumulative result of all of those learning experiences, and figuring out how you can take that information and apply it to help people find a job that not only will pay them, but they will also enjoy. Then we're going to move on to reviewing skills related to finding, getting, and maintaining a job. For people in recovery, some of the most challenging aspects are actually putting yourself out there in a situation where you may experience rejection, because most people don't get every job they apply for, but also going through the interview process and answering some of those tricky questions, like, tell me about yourself. A lot of our clients have a sort of major reaction to kind of default back into the therapy session, and, well, you know, I'm in recovery, first thing out of their mouth. I'm not saying they should keep that a secret, because, you know, if they feel like they need to put that out there, then, you know, more power to them. But we want to know what about the person makes them great for this job. So we're going to talk about ways to address some of those interview questions that may trip up people who have been in intensive treatment for six months or more. And then we're finally going to discuss job coaching. And while it's probably not something that you do, it's important to understand the function of job coaches and why they may be important to some of your clients who have either a long history of addiction and or severe and persistent mental illness jobs. Why do we care? How does it impact recovery? Jobs provide structure when somebody goes from intensive treatment to not intensive treatment. A lot of their time is freed up treatment has provided structure for them. Jobs will now fill that function fill that void and provide structure. This helps them get up in the morning at a reasonable hour. You know, I'm always harping on circadian rhythms and having to get up about the same time, go to bed about the same time ish. A job will sort of force people into that situation where they have somewhere they have to beat, they have to get out of bed before noon. It will fill time. You know, people who are in early recovery, whether it's from addiction or mental health, when they have time on their hands, they may not know what to do. They may not remember what they like to do. They may start falling back into old traps of negative thinking or craving those sorts of things. Employment can help clients practice new interpersonal coping refusal skills in a semi-structured environment. And I say semi-structured because we are not taking people for the most part and putting them in a situation that we know is a therapeutic one. They're in a real-life situation, but in general, the jobs that our clients are going to be taking, we hope, put them in a situation that is relatively healthy and free of drug and alcohol. So those two things being said, when a client is in those situations, they're going to encounter people and they're going to have to work on their new interpersonal skills, their communication skills, assertive communication, coping skills, not focusing on necessarily egocentrism, not having everything be about them, learning how to deal with things they don't like because we all have those things at our job. And refusal skills. Sometimes people may invite you to go out for drinks at lunch or may invite you to go out for drinks on Friday. Or worse yet, they may invite you to sneak out behind the shed and smoke a joint. We want our clients to be able to practice refusal skills. Obviously, we don't want them to necessarily be in that situation. A safer situation for them than maybe if they're sitting around with all their butt or house at work, they know their significant negative consequences if they get caught. So it helps clients really start practicing these new skills that they're developing and sharpen some of the skills that they had prior to coming to treatment. It reinforces the concepts of honesty, faith, trust, and hope. They have to be honest with themselves. Hopefully they're being on job. They're figuring out that if they do the next right thing, you know, they're going to keep their job. Sometimes bad things happen. Sometimes you get called into the boss's office. Sometimes things happen. I remember one of the first situations I had when I was a manager and I made a boo boo and it was a pretty sizable one. And I went into my boss's office and I'm like, you know, not I had no idea what was going to happen. Maybe he was going to fire me. Maybe, you know, who knows? And I walked in and I'm like, Richard, I screwed up. And I told him what happened. And he's like, okay, how are you going to fix it? Which is one of those situations where I went in there, I was honest, I did the right thing. And, you know, we were able to work through it instead of me trying to hide it, making the situation worse, in which case I probably would have gotten fired. So concepts of honesty, trust in other people that they're going to show up to work, that they're going to pay your paycheck, that they're going to uphold their end of the bargain. A lot of our clients have never experienced that or haven't experienced that a lot. So these basic tenants of recovery are also basic tenants of being a good employee and engaging in the workplace. Employment also provides a sense of accomplishment. You go to work. You work for a week. You get money. You get paid. It's like, hey, you know, I actually have money to pay my bills. What a concept here. It provides people with a sense of pride, a sense of accomplishment. After they've been at a job a while and they start celebrating anniversaries, it also gives them that sense of accomplishment of I can follow through on something. And they are financially independent. They no longer need to rely on mom or drugs or walk in the streets or whatever it was for their money. They are able to pay their bills, the ones that they have to pay, in a relatively easy fashion. Some of our clients are going to be working minimum wage jobs. So I'm not saying that it's not going to be tight, but it's going to be on the up and up and it's going to be doing the right thing. So what are some of these vocational needs? Remember I said at the beginning of the presentation that people in recovery have some very unique needs related to employment. Think of the acronym HALT, Hungry, Angry, Lonely, and Tired. People in recovery ideally need regular hours that are preferably not overnight. Some people prefer working the 3 to 11 shift, more power to them. Some people like the morning shift, great. The overnight tends to get a little bit wonky because your body is not programmed to stay up overnight. So a lot of people, even if they are on the overnight shift, switch their schedule around on their days off and it gets wonky and adds a lot of stress and it's a huge relapse trap. So regular hours that get them to bed at a reasonable hour and preferably before daylight. Boundaries. People in early recovery have a difficult time setting boundaries, especially with authority figures. So it's important, whatever job they take on, and this could be even working as a stock clerk or something. If the supervisor is always calling you at the last minute going so and so called and sick, I need you to cover another shift or some other kind of job where you're being emailed constantly. You leave the office and you're still getting emails to 8, 9, 10 o'clock at night. That is not healthy for our people in recovery because it will start to wear on them. They start to lose the balance between home and work and get exhausted. Hungry, angry, lonely and tired. So we want to watch out for that. We want to watch out for that for ourselves too. This is not exclusive to people in recovery. This is just kind of a healthy workplace. A drug-free environment. Ideally, we don't want our clients going to work in a club or in a bar or in somewhere that we know people are smoking dope and drinking alcohol throughout the day on the job. And I will stop short of highlighting some of those. It's important for clients to be able to understand what they can and cannot handle. And some clients may have to take a particular kind of job for a short period. Most of the time, that's not the case. They may have to choose a job they want a little bit less or one that pays a little bit less, but may be safer and better for their long-term recovery. Reasonable stress. All jobs are stressful sometimes. Sometimes it's good stress, sometimes it's bad stress, but it's stressful sometimes. Can't get around it. What we want to do is eliminate some of the unnecessary stress. If you are familiar with the MBTI or the curacy or just general personality traits, extroverts versus introverts. Extroverts are going to be happier in a situation where they're around other people. They don't mind being interrupted. They enjoy. They draw energy from other people. They will do well in sales. They will do well as a cashier. They will do well in situations where they have to be quote on. That is exhausting for the introvert. The introvert prefers to have a cubicle that they can go and they can work uninterrupted and then they can choose when they have their social time. The extrovert gets very exhausted if they don't have that social interaction. So it's important to ask people, what kind of environment do you like being in? Do you enjoy being around other people? I'm an extrovert. I need to be around other people. Even when I worked in the treatment facility, even when I was a mid or upper level manager, I would regularly do groups. I would regularly go walk the floors and talk to people. Not because I was spying or because I was keeping tabs on things, although that was a great benefit. It was also satisfying my own need for social interaction so I could see how people were doing. We could communicate. The reason we got into this job was to help people start feeling better. Being able to get out there and draw energy from other people and get their enthusiasm. Structure versus spontaneous. This is the other dimension when we're talking about career exploration that I really encourage people to look at. When we're talking MBTI or CRC, we're talking judging versus perceiving, but basically your person is the client, someone who likes structure that like knowing that at 8.15 they have a meeting, at 8.30 they get to start work, at 10 o'clock they have their coffee break. Is that the kind of structure they like? Do they like having the day beapable? Or do they like things that are more spontaneous? Law enforcement is a perfect example. You never know from one minute to the next if it's going to be a slow day, if it's going to be a long day, if it's going to be call after call after call. People who get into jobs like law enforcement tend to like the unpredictability of what's going on. Again, talking to them about what it is that they really enjoy. Sales can be another spontaneous extrovert activity. Thinking car sales. You don't know how long it's going to be kind of quiet on the lot, and you may have three customers come in or you may have 23 customers come in, and each one of those people is different. So an extrovert who prefers spontaneous interactions is probably going to be just giddy as a pig in slop if they are able to interact with 23 people and try to figure out what makes them tick. Our clients generally know what they have done in the past and getting them out of that box and going, but what do you enjoy? If you could create your own work environment, what would it look like? And they need to have an effective supervisor. This is challenging sometimes. And when I say effective, I don't mean the greatest supervisor ever, although that would be wonderful. I mean one who is at least minimally competent. We can deal with some of the hiccups. We can deal with some of the challenges in counseling as the person is adjusting to the job and can deal with some of those issues as they come up. But the supervisor has to at least be there mentally and cognitively. So I'm not asking for a lot, but these are the big things for somebody in recovery. Wants. Now the other thing is when you take a job, what is it that you want out of it? Well, pay for one. Sometimes people will be able to go into a high wage, high demand job from jump. Most of the time that's not going to happen. So we need to help people understand especially if they have long gaps or an inconsistent work history. They may have to start in an entry level position and gain some, gain a foundation, kind of prove that they can show up and do the next right thing. It may not be the best pay and it may not even be at a job that they want to be at forever. And that's the difference between a job and a career. A job is one that there's a time limit to it. You're willing to do it for a year, 18 months, two years. And then you're going to move on to something else. You don't see a future in that company or in that occupation. A career is one in which the person starts at some level, could be entry, could be higher, but sees opportunities for advancement and envisioned staying at that place for a while. When we were in high school, most of us had jobs. I mean we had summer jobs. It wasn't something that you figured you were going to go back and work there for the rest of your life. But it was something that you could put on your resume to show that you could show up, do what you were asked to do, play nice in the sandbox and effectively communicate with others. Some people also want power. And especially taking a job in early recovery, power can be tempting, but it's also a lot of stress. So I caution people, even if they can step into a managerial position, maybe they were a manager before and they can go back to their old job, they need to be aware of the additional stress that's brought on them by having power, especially power over other people's jobs. So we talk about that. What is it that you want? What would make you happy in a job? Power can also be having a say, not necessarily managing other people, but having a say in your day-to-day duties or how things run. I come from several different organizations. Some were top-down leadership, some were bottom-up leadership. And the bottom-up leadership organizations seemed, from my perspective, to function a lot better because upper management was willing to listen to the input of line staff. Now, they didn't always agree, but they were willing to listen to the input and they were also willing to explain why they couldn't do something if it was a big issue for line staff. Okay, now we're going to get into the fun stuff and I'm going to hope all my computer gadgets work. The dictionary of occupational titles and the guide for occupational exploration are the two books that I told you about. I believe they are still in print if you want to get them, but like I said, Onet is now sort of the online repository for all of this information. So let me see if that works. It worked. Okay, so this is Onet online and this gives you the ability to let your clients explore. They can go down here and find occupations. They can do an advanced search to explore occupation with skillset similar to theirs. And they can do crosswalk searches. So this is obviously the homepage. It is one place that they can start. The interest profiler and all these links are in your class. The interest profiler is really nice because you have the short form, which is web-based, mobile-friendly paper, pencil, or a downloadable version. This will help them identify, and this uses Holland's theory of vocational exploration. So if you want to go back and look that up, you can. It's not on the test. It helps people understand what kind of work environments that they're really going to enjoy. Let's see if I can pull up paper, pencil really quick. Okay, that's going to want me to register. You can open all of these and look at them. Let's see if I can look at short form online. Okay, so they have happy faces instead of numbers. Gives you directions. There's no right or wrong answers. Things that you might like to do, and it gives you lists of different types of skills, different types of activities on a job. You're going to walk through all of these and get an idea about what your interests are. These results can be linked to over 900 applications in Onet Online. Now, our checklist, remember I talked about the functional assessment earlier. The functional assessment takes all the skills and tools that you've learned and combines them and says, okay, we have all this stuff that we can draw from for the next job that this person wants to take. What jobs might best utilize this person's skills? This checklist is basically the easy place, if you will, to find that information or to find a place to cohesively collect that information. But how do you identify those skills? Well, I'm glad you asked. I told you I'm way too excited about this class. So then you go to the crosswalk search. You see you have find occupations, advanced search, you can do it by abilities, interests, knowledge, skills, work activities, work context, work styles, work values. If there's a particular thing that's important to one of our clients, I typically start there. But with the crosswalks, you can find out what skills you already have. So maybe you are a stalker. And I mean like at a store, not the criminal kind. Okay, let's try counselor. Okay, so if you're a mental health counselor, let's look at what kind of skills and tools we allegedly have. So this tells you all of the things that we have been trained in, five of 26 displayed. So these are all the things that we do. When you're creating a resume, you want to find the job that you're applying for and identify how many of those skills and tools that you actually have. And this goes on for quite a while. At the bottom, it tells you in this particular title, occupational title, what's the educational level? 62% have a master's degree. 34% have a bachelor's degree. When we look at interest code, social investigative and artistic work styles, you have to have self control and a concern for others, stress tolerance and dependability. Some jobs require different work styles than that. But you know, generally, if you're going to be working with the public, you're going to have to have most of these characteristics. Then down here, it talks about related occupations. If the person's like, Yeah, well, I really like that. But I don't have a master's degree. And I think it's too late for me to get a master's degree. Well, let's look at substance abuse counselors. So then we can go down here. And professional degree would be more like a certificate. 19% have a bachelor's degree. 30% have a master's degree. Most states don't require substance abuse counselors to have a master's degree. So you can explore the different options that are out there. I go through it with my clients. Generally, we'll do it sort of in a group setting. I'll get them started I'll get them started showing them on the overhead projector what they can click on that they can't break anything. Then I turn them loose in the computer lab and let them explore the different jobs that are out there, the different jobs that are available. They may find something that they never even dreamed or thought that they would do. A friend of mine is starting a new career. He just graduated graduated college, retired from the military. And he is now going into real estate. Not something that he ever trained to do. Not something that he ever thought he would do. But it fits his interest inventory. And he's like, that could be pretty cool. And it's a short training period. Taking some time, you know, when you're not in the middle of this class, maybe when you're watching TV, you're on your iPad. This is a mobile friendly site. Just explore some of the different resources that are on here. You can also find out bright outlook talks about new and emerging occupations, things that are projected to grow rapidly. So if you're working with someone who's a young person, maybe you're working in an adolescent facility or with somebody who's, you know, in the early 20s, they still have time to go back to college or get additional training. You can explore some of these things, not saying that every job that's growing rapidly, or that's a bright outlook is going to require a lot of training. You know, some of them don't. I know there's a huge demand right now still for cross country truck drivers. And it pays really, really well. But you have to have those special skills and abilities. You know, I could never see myself driving a semi truck. I like my little compact. I get really, really nervous even driving the Jeep. So, you know, that's just not something that's going to fit my interest profile. Plus, it's an introverted occupation. All right, so moving on. Now we need to help people create a resume. We want to use those skills and abilities identified from the Onet Functional Assessment. We want to go back and say, okay, this job requires these 15 skills. I've got these 12 skills out of those 15. So I'm going to highlight those on my resume. Remind people to keep their resume to one page. Once they get past one page, it starts getting overlooked. Once they get past three pages, it probably is going to not even make it to the recruiter's desk. Have them be prepared to address gaps in employment. I put a PDF in the class that talks about different ways to address this in terms of how do you answer this question and what do you have to say, what employers are required to do as far as reasonable accommodations, what employers are allowed to ask, and what they aren't allowed to ask. So that's a whole different class in and of itself, but that is in your class. Interview. Dress for the occasion. Many of our clients have never gone to a formal job interview, so they don't know how to dress. Be on time. That's kind of a no-brainer, but it is important to encourage people, and I encourage my clients to be early. If you're early, then if something happens, you won't be late. If you plan to be there at 6.59 and your appointment is at 7, and there's a traffic jam, you're going to be late, and that means you probably are not going to have a good interview. So be on time. Don't overdo the perfume, cologne, or makeup. Working in residential for a couple of decades, I've had the opportunity to see people coming out of an addicted state in early recovery, starting to feel really good about themselves, starting to be very excited about going to social engagements, dances at the 12-step club, things like that. But I also see them not in large part, not being conservative with perfume, cologne, and makeup. They are feeling great, so they are going to smell great, and they're going to smell great from three miles away. So we do want to encourage clients to be aware of this. One of the ways I put it to them is just to remind them that a lot of people have sensitivities to different perfumes and colognes. It's posted in lots of different health departments and places like that anymore, so this is not a surprise. I encourage them to use it very sparingly or not use perfume and cologne at all, going to an interview. And makeup, obviously, for the women, use it sort of sparingly, so they feel good, they look good, but they don't look like they're going out to a party. Encourage them to stay positive. Too often our clients start out with the negative and follow it up with a positive. I used to be an addict, but, or I have a long history of depression, but I'm really trying to change, and that's great. That's awesome, but I don't want them to start the sentence with that. I want them to start the sentence with, why are you amazing for this position? So this does take some rehearsal, both in group and individual sessions, and just by themselves looking in the mirror. There are several links in your class to articles, wonderful articles, one of them is by Forbes, the 50 most challenging interview questions to answer and how to answer them. I encourage clients to practice on their own, have a roommate interview them, interview themselves in the mirror in the bathroom, whatever it takes so they feel comfortable and they know what they're going to say. Hey, so here are the ones we were talking about. How to ace the 50 most common interview questions. The Glassdoor blog talks about 50 other questions, 10 tough interview questions and 10 great answers, 10 interview questions, top job interview questions on monster.com, and the 31 most common interview questions and answers on the Muse. So you're getting a wide array of perspectives on what the questions are and how to answer them. Our clients come from so many different backgrounds, it's not possible to just put all these questions into one document with one answer because that's not the way it goes. What you want to do is look for the spirit of the answer. What are you trying to get at? This can be a fun activity to do in group, do some mock job interviews and see how it goes. Maintaining the job, punctuality, make the tasks you hate manageable. Many of our clients, whether addiction or depression or anxiety, people with anxiety may get so worked up about having to do something that they kind of stop themselves. People with depression may just dread the tasks so much they procrastinate forever. Anxiety and procrastination also go along. And people with addiction may just not do the tasks. They may have to numb out in order to do the tasks. Either way, if your client has had a history of jumping from job to job because they just don't tolerate distress at the job, well, this is a therapeutic issue. How do you tolerate the stuff that really sucks? There's going to be stuff. We had one of the places I worked once a month. We had an all-day meeting. It was all day long, and people got up one after the other and gave performance reports and things that, in my opinion, could have been much more efficiently and easily communicated in an email. I would have read it in an hour instead of sitting there for eight. But that aside, they fed us really, really well. So I looked forward to the lunch. I would bring charts that I had to review. I wasn't the only one bringing charts, so it wasn't obvious that or it wasn't out of the norm for me to do that. Find something you can do while you're there to make the task manageable. I hated lecture classes when I was in college because I am not an auditory learner. Imagine that for a counselor. But I would bring paper with me, and while somebody was talking, I would take notes. And if they were saying stuff that I really didn't need to take notes on, I may make a grocery list. Is that what I need to be doing? Not necessarily. It made it manageable. I was able to listen to what was going on and tune in when I needed to take notes. But it was also a way I could keep my mind occupied, so I didn't start counting ceiling tiles. Help them find solutions if there's something they don't like. Encourage them to find solutions. My favorite supervisor would always say, you can come to me with any problem that you have, but you better bring with you a solution. It may not be one I like, but bring with you a solution. So at least I know that you've thought about it. And then we can go from there. I encourage the same thing out of my clients. When they bring me a problem, I say, okay, what are three possible ways you could deal with it, or even one possible way? What do you think you need to do to deal with it? Ensure frequent rewards. Getting up and going to work, especially if it's a job you just don't absolutely love, is not necessarily the most fun thing in the world. So how can you make it rewarding? How can you make it enjoyable? And that's going to depend on the person. Review the benefits of your job regularly. And I don't mean like health insurance. I mean, why are you doing this job? What are you getting out of it? Encourage people to keep a list of all the good things about work. They like their office mate. They generally enjoy the work. It gives them something to do. It's helping them pay off their debts. It's whatever it is they're getting out of their job, have them keep a list going. So when they're having a bad day and they're like, this is just awful, they can review it and go, okay, you know, I'm getting more out of it than is taking out of me. So I just need to suck it up and get through the day. Encourage them to review their job expectations on a regular basis and identify areas for improvement. Every July, we would give people their job expectations, which is basically the unfilled out version of their performance appraisal that they would get at the end of the year. We would go through it. We would discuss the expectations. And then I would give a copy to them so they would have that copy to keep with them all year long to know what they were being assessed against. If your clients are reviewing those job expectations on a regular basis, maybe once a month, they're going to identify areas that, yeah, you know, maybe I didn't perform as well as I could have in this area last month. What can I do this month to make it better? Most of the time, we are not all straight fives. That's just we're not perfect all the time. This encourages people to find something to work on. But it also encourages people to give themselves pats on the back and say, yeah, I'm doing 95% of the stuff really, really well. Encourage them to maintain a support system outside of work. I can't stress this enough. Your work friends are great, you know, and you may even have them socialize with you outside of work. But you also want to have other people outside of work. If you leave that job, it may be awkward to socialize with them after you leave. It may not be. But you want to have friends in more than one basket. You also want to have friends if they are from work, they're willing to leave work at work. You don't want to be sitting around on a Friday night worried about what happened in the senior management meeting the following the previous afternoon. So encourage people to leave work at work if they're going to be your support system and they work with you. But also have other friends have other social outlets. Remember that you often recreate your family of origin at work. So if you were the wallflower and you just put up with everything and you tried to fly under the radar, that's probably what you're going to do at work. Not always, but probably. If you tended to be the one that had to be the high achiever, you're probably going to do that at work. One of the things we do in substance abuse recovery is we bring out the roles of the addicted family and we have people identify of those roles who in their workplace is filling each of those roles and sometimes all of them don't get filled. But it's an interesting way to look at how people are recreating what they know and it's also a way that we can help them start changing that homeostasis so they don't have to maintain that dysfunctional situation. Regularly discuss work relationships with their coach supervisor or coach sponsor or therapist. It's important for people who haven't been in the workplace, especially haven't been at a job for a long time and or don't have a really great track record with establishing healthy relationships to constantly, you know, kind of address those issues and talk about them in therapy so they can make sure that they are on the right track toward a healthy relationship with a sort of communication and boundaries and they're not getting taken advantage of and they're not taking advantage yada yada yada because what they did before is going to be what they tend to do again unless they put a conscious effort into change. The other thing that they may need to do sometimes and I know this is going to surprise you hearing it from me, is a decisional balance exercise. Yep back to those. Clients may come to you and say I don't want to work anymore. I can't do this job. I hate this job. Encourage them to do a decisional balance. The benefits of staying at the job, the drawbacks. The benefits of quitting their job and the drawbacks and figure out how to tip that balance so it's more rewarding to stay at their job. Motivational interviewing 101. Another thing to remember is that burnout work environments are common. It doesn't matter if you're in a Fortune 500 company or if you're working in a little mom and mom and pop place. It happens. The characteristics of a burnout work environment can be addressed. It doesn't mean it has to stay that way. But if you feel these, you have to either figure out how to deal with them yourself so they don't wear you down. Figure out how to deal with them in the workplace to fix it or pay attention to your own health and wellness and at a certain point you may need to look for a different job. The third one is not my go-to and I encourage people to try to work it out because they do need to show that consistent employment history if they're wanting to develop a career and advance and get paid more and all that stuff. So characteristics of a burnout work environment. Unclear requirements. You show up and you're like, okay, I'm here for work and what do I do? And they're like, just hang out with Stacey for the day. Okay. It's important that people know what their day is going to look like, what the requirements are, what's expected of them so they can do it. Discipline without reinforcement or recognition. Too often supervisors will discipline because they have to, but don't reinforce positive behaviors or recognize hard work and achievements. As supervisors and as clinicians, we really want to highlight the good stuff and say, you did all of these things awesome. There's this one thing that we need to look at. When I'm talking to supervisees and we're talking about constructive feedback, we talk about the criticism sandwich. Start out with some things the person is doing really well. Identify one thing, observable measurable that they can work on. And follow up with highlighting again, the things that they can do well and your belief that they can change whatever it is that they need to address. Impersonal work environments. You just go to work and you clock in and you are a number and nobody knows your name. High stress with no downtime. And this can be general stress. If you work in an emergency room, that's highly stressful. If you work in a crisis stabilization unit, that's highly stressful. You can get my idea. Personal stress would be more like working in a situation that does not meet your personal temperament, personality needs and preferences and all that kind of stuff. One job I was hired for as a clinical director, which was great. That job quickly morphed into being 100% cold call sales trying to get butts in seats and increase our census. There was no clinical to it. And that was so far out of my scope of training and my comfort zone. It was emotionally and cognitively exhausting to me. So, you know, stress with no downtime. That was my job all day, every day. Lack of personal control or no say in what happens. I talked earlier about that bottom up leadership. If senior management is willing to at least hear suggestions, but they need to hear them and then they also need to, here's a concept, identify that they heard and considered it. If they say, put your suggestions in a comment box and then that's the only thing you ever hear. That doesn't communicate to the line staff that they have any kind of say in anything. It's just like, well, that's a token thing that we're doing in order to make the line staff feel like they have a say. Senior management needs to hear the suggestions or read the suggestions and respond. It doesn't have to be a long response, but if they respond, it makes a huge difference to the people who made the suggestion. It can open a dialogue for maybe brainstorming alternate solutions, which takes me down to poor communication. Burnout work environments almost always have poor communication, which means line staff don't have clear understanding of what the requirements are. They're probably going to make more mistakes because they don't know what the requirements are. So there's going to be more discipline, which is going to cause it to be a much higher stress environment and they're not going to feel like they have the ability to say anything or to fix anything. Why is this important to our clients? Because if we're taking somebody who is coming out, let's say coming out of hospitalization for clinical depression and a suicide attempt and they've got their land legs, they're feeling good, they're getting ready to go out and get employment. I don't want them to go into a situation that is going to do nothing, but stress them out and make them feel like they're failing every time they turn around. I want them to have successes. I want them to feel competent. I want them to feel like, hey, this may work. I want them to have that hope, faith, trust, all that kind of wonderful stuff. So it is important to consider these environments, but it's also important to work with our clients because most environments, most workplaces have at least a couple of these characteristics. So then you can say, all right, Sally Sue, you said that at your office place, it seems like there's a lot of discipline and nobody says anything about the good stuff. So how can that be changed? It doesn't mean that you have to go to your supervisor and go, dude, you need to give us a little bit of recognition, although that's happened before. People, line staff can reward and recognize each other. If somebody does a really good job on something, give them an atta girl or an atta boy. It doesn't have to come from a supervisor. A lot of times it's very meaningful if it comes from a peer. So that's one way to increase that reinforcement, even if it's not necessarily coming from the top, can help people feel better about their job. So brainstorm with your clients. How could you deal with this short of quitting your job? What are ways that you can address it? So you can enjoy life and it's not a drain on you. Related issues, money management. Many of our clients, especially those with addictions, have not had money and been able to hold on to money when they get it. So direct deposit is awesome. Cosigner on withdrawals larger than $50. This is something we used to do as a matter of course, if there was a cosigner that someone could trust. So they couldn't withdraw $200, $500 and go spend it on crack or go gamble it away. No ATM cards and no debit cards. People need to be able to think before they purchase. If they have a credit card, a prepaid credit card can help them rebuild their credit. So that's awesome. And they need to learn budgeting because this new job and getting money every week or every two weeks can seem like Christmas and they get $250 or $800 in their hand and they're like, wow, what can I buy with this? Not thinking that they still have to pay the rent, the car payment, the insurance, yada, yada. Budgeting is an essential skill to teach. Work addiction and compulsion. If somebody gets into a job, maybe they're having to start back at an entry level and they were middle management before they started having difficulties, whatever those difficulties were. And now they're getting back into it. They're feeling a sense of accomplishment and they start becoming obsessed. They're working all the time. They love work. They can't wait to get to work. I've been guilty of this when I take on new jobs and I've had staff tell me, Dr. Snipes, it's a marathon. It's not a sprint. Go home. So I can't say I am the best example of this all of the time, but I'm getting better. Encourage people to set long-term occupational goals. So the long-term goals you can refer to if somebody's working too much and they're not taking days off and they're working 16 hours a day, six days a week, you can go, your goal is this. Are you going to be able to reach that goal at this pace? Are you going to burn out first? And how is this working 16 hours a day, six days a week, affecting your recovery and the rest of your life? Encourage people to keep the balance in focus. Job coaches and one stops. I said we were going to talk about this. One stops are the places where people can go to look for jobs and sometimes that's also where they get their unemployment. These places have awareness of local hiring trends. They often have job coaches at the one stops. Job coaches have connections with addiction and disability friendly employers. Yes, they're not supposed to discriminate based on disability. Addiction is one of those out there that's kind of squirrely as to whether it's considered a disability or not. So it's important to understand which employers will hire people who have a history of addiction, who have a history of criminal acts and or who have a history of mental health issues or severe and persistent mental illness. Job coaches and one stops are also aware of other programs that are available. One is the federal bonding program. The federal bonding program will put out a bond to basically ensure someone who has a felony charge on their record and it ensures the employer. So if they hire this person with a felony conviction and the person with a felony conviction does the wrong thing, the employer is not going to be liable. They're going to be covered for $250,000 or whatever the bond is. This bonding program has just done oodles and oodles of good, especially for people with addictions who have maybe a charge of possession of cocaine, which is a felony in most every state, helps them get back into the workforce, get their life started over again. Now it doesn't mean they're going to be able to necessarily work in certain sensitive occupations like law enforcement or with children, but it does mean the majority of jobs out there, they can get a bond that will protect the employer if the employer wants to give someone a chance who has a felony conviction. Finally, I told you there was going to be an article in your class about hiring people with a mental illness, so it addresses both the points that the potential employee needs to be aware of and it also addresses the potential points that the employer needs to be aware of. And then I have a link to SAMHSA, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's Supported Employment Best Practices. Right now it is currently out of print, but there's digital versions and you can download the PDF, so it's there. If you want to take a look at it, you can read it on your iPad, you can print it out, whatever you want to do. Employment provides a variety of benefits to the person in recovery, including improved self-esteem, structure, financial independence, positive social support, and a safer place to practice new skills. Onet provides an online resource to identify career skills and abilities and jobs that fit the person. We want to create a win-win situation. The employer gets a good employee, the employee gets a job or a career that is going to help them feel good about themselves and not add stress to their life. The first six months of employment often require significant support from a coach, sponsor, and or therapist in order to help people maintain motivation. Remember if they're just coming out of recovery, they're probably still in recovery. They're probably still recovering, they probably get fatigued easily. They may get frustrated easily, so we need to help them maintain motivation and identify any things that they may be doing in the work environment to recreate family of origin issues or to not set boundaries between home and work where the family is impacting work. So we need to help them navigate this whole career thing and learn how to set those boundaries in a way that they feel comfortable and the way they feel that they're not being taken advantage of and they're excited most days to go to work.