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Brown Bagger

This section is set up to provide a ready-made Brown Bag Session for you to use with employees and/or managers. Use as is, or adapt this information for a general employee group. You may reproduce as many copies as needed.

Applying What we Know to Training Design

By Tamara Cagney

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orty percent of all staff members delivering EAP training have never received formal instruction on how to deliver trainings. It’s vital to boost this percentage since EAPs with more experienced trainers have higher referral rates.

Understanding the barriers to an optimal supervisory training environment is also helpful. These obstacles have been identified as: • Organizational change; • Supervisor apathy; • Lack of upper management support; • Time constraints on supervisors and EAP staff; and • Budgetary constraints.

It is often difficult to “think outside the box” when we’ve been part of the box for so long, but EAPs are a resourceful and creative group.

If we recognize that the tried-and-true approach is not as effective as we’d like it to be, we can then create some exciting new alternatives. The following are some of the ideas that can be explored: Cognitive Mapping Cognitive mapping is a technique that was described by Joel Bennett and Wayne Lehman.

They investigated supervisory tolerance-responsiveness. Basically, this approach referred to the attitudes and behaviors associated with managers either taking proactive steps to deal with — or ignore — troubled employees. These studies suggested that engaging supervisors in discussions about tolerance might increase referrals to the EAP. “Tolerance” is often viewed as positive, but August 2007

in this case it is referring to dysfunctional tolerance, such as enabling, problem minimization, and neutralization of deviance. Rather than use an informational strategy emphasizing increasing knowledge about the EAP, and its policies and procedures, Bennett and Lehman utilized cognitive mapping.

This technique creates a visual map of thoughts or ideas and connections or links between those thoughts. It was suggested that supervisors either take action (respond) or do nothing (tolerate) when faced with a poorly performing employee. A discussion of what leads to taking action or doing nothing when confronted with an issue might look something like this:

Mapping Employee with poor performance and poor attitude

Supervisors/ Managers

Feel burden of responsibility

Not trained

Call HR with questions

Safety sensitive?

Stress

Doubt confidentiality

NO

Not responsive

Cautious about employee reaction/anger/ sense of betrayal

Increase own tolerance

Confused & rely on peers to interpret policy

Cognitive mapping helps managers understand how tolerance can become a risk factor. It also helps managers see EAP referral as a useful tool that enhances safety and well-being, and it helps managers assess their own coping styles.

Finally, it encourages seeking the appropriate help. The use of cognitive mapping to bring to EA Report Brown Bagger 1

Brown Bagger the surface, and address supervisors’ concerns about dealing with troubled employees and the EAP, increases the responsiveness and willingness of supervisors to use appropriate resources.

Attribution Theory Another approach involves applying attribution theory to training design. Historically, supervisors are trained to focus on documented evidence of declining job performance rather than focusing on the possible causes of the problems, or motivations of the employee’s behavior. It is important for us to understand that they are automatically engaging in attribution informational processing.

Supervisors must accurate assess why an employee’s substandard performance occurs in order to effectively evaluate, discipline, and offer feedback to the poor performer. Only then can they try to change the employee’s behavior.

In terms of poor performance, attribution theory suggests that supervisors try to determine whether poor performance has been caused by factors such as job task, context, or something “in” the individual employee.

When interpreting an employee’s poor performance, supervisors are likely to ask three critical questions that will guide their decisionmaking and referral actions: 1) Is the cause of the poor performance internal or external?

2) Is the causative agent likely to continue in the near future?

3) To what extent does the employee have control over the causative agent?

Supervisors also ask themselves other types of questions that influence their response: 1) Is the employee performing poorly on one task or on work in general?

2) Is the employee’s behavior similar to that exhibited in other situations?

3) Is the employee’s behavior unlike that exhibited by his or her co-workers?

The answers to these questions help the supervisor determine their reason(s) for the poor

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performance or other unwanted result(s).

Together, answers to these questions form the pattern of information that leads supervisors to attribute employee behavior to different causes.

It also helps them decide whether to discipline the individual, and it influences their willingness to refer the employee to the EAP. Research has shown that internal, controllable, stable attributions for poor performance lead to punitive responses by supervisors more often than external, uncontrollable, and unstable attributions. Put another way, supervisors respond more punitively when they believe a subordinate’s poor performance is the result of a “bad attitude” (i.e. internal and controllable).

Similarly, evidence exists that internal, stable attributions lead to responses directed at the person, whereas external, unstable attributions lead to responses directed at the situation. These findings follow the logic that supervisors are less likely to punish their subordinates because they perceive the failure to be beyond the subordinate’s control.

Some of the possible implications of attribution theory for employee assistance programs may be that if supervisors think that poor performance is a sporadic problem that only occasionally gets out of control, they will be reluctant to act.

If the supervisor feels that the problem has external causes, the supervisor may be less likely to act than if they think the problem lies within the individual. If the behavior is seen as internally caused, then the supervisor may focus the intervention on the employee.

Attribution Theory Locus of Causality Stability

Internal

External

Controllable

Uncontrollable

Stable

Typical Effort Punitive response

Ability Helping Response

Level of Supervision

Task Difficulty

Unstable

Specific Effort

Mood Helping Response

Co-worker Interaction

Luck

Controllable Uncontrollable

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Attributions as Mediation The demonstration of attributions as a mediating link between subordinate performance and supervisor behavior has important implications for organizations. When supervisors make erroneous attributions for subordinate performance, their intervention or response may be inappropriate. For example, if supervisors believe that ability, a stable cause, produced the performance, that level of performance (high or low) would be expected to continue, regardless of the leader’s efforts.

If, however, ability was NOT the cause of the subordinate’s performance, the supervisor may either miss an opportunity to help a person who could perform well, or to sit back and watch a previously successful person struggle. This may mean that greater attention should be devoted to helping supervisors learn better analysis techniques to avoid misattributions, which would result in poor choices of leadership behavior.

Understanding these dynamics and helping managers understand them as well may give the EAP a different way to approach referrals. A referral form that incorporates this approach might look something like this: Supervisor’s Assessment Is the employee performing poorly? ...On one task?

YES ...On work in general?

YES Is the employee’s behavior similar to that exhibited in other situations?

YES NO Is the employee’s behavior unlike that exhibited by his or her co-workers?

YES NO Consider intervention focused on the individual employee.

Consider intervention focused on the task, team, organization, procedure, or policy.

 Is the problem a single incident or part of a pattern?

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Brown Bagger  Does the problem represent a change in the employee’s behavior?  Is the performance problem due to: • Poor communication by management?

• A change in the work environment?

• A lack of knowledge, training, or experience?

• An obvious physical problem?

• A conflict with management?

• Unreasonable standards expected by the employer?

• Being overqualified?

• A recent traumatic experience?

 How serious is the problem behavior and what are the potential dangers and consequences if the problem is not resolved?  How is this problem affecting the rest of the work group?  Could the employee change the performance if his/her life depended on it?  Am I equipped to handle this problem myself, and if not, who can help me?  Am I prepared to take disciplinary action if necessary?  Does the employee want to work and does he/she want this job?  What is a realistic goal for the employee?  What is my action plan?

Summary We’ve been doing the same thing the way and for too long. Redesigning our approach to training may give EAPs different results and lead to a more effective and integrated approach to dealing with troubled employees. We need to explore new approaches, using available research to help and share ideas with EAP colleagues.

Tamara Cagney, RN, MFT, CEAP, has spent 20 years working in EA programs, designing and evaluating EAPs, delivering training, designing drug-free workplace programs, DOT testing programs, and providing consultative services to fellow EA professionals. She may be reached at (925) 294-2200, tcagney@sandia.gov.

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Brown Bagger H A N D O U T Supervisor Referral Barriers

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t is past time for EAPs to take a closer look at manager trainings. Supervisors and managers continue to be reluctant to utilize referrals to the EAP as a management resource. A resource of current literature discovered that the following variables were consistently related to difficulties with supervisor referral: • Occurrence of a public worksite incident is the strongest predictor of referral. Fewer than half of supervisors considered referral for a job performance problem without incident. Training needs to active address the dual roles of EAP proactive intervention and crisis management.

• Degree of management support for the EAP. We need to NOT underestimate the need for clear messages of management support, including time allocated for training, and the expectation that managers and supervisors appropriately use resources to deal with personnel issues — as reflected in their performance expectations. The supportiveness of the referring supervisor’s superior seems to have the most powerful impact.

• Existence of a supervisor network. EAP involvement in supervisor/manager mentoring groups, and informal networking groups for new managers improves supervisors’ willingness to refer a situation to the EAP. • Occupational category of the supervised employee. Directly address subtleties of measuring performance in different levels of employees. Referrals are much fewer in areas where “poor performance” is more difficult to define.

• Supervisors’ attitude toward their role in referral. Integrating the EAP into larger organizational pictures that link EAP services with health and productivity management, and that support human capital needs with bottom-line financial success of the company, promotes referral. In addition, linking to other organizational initiatives, such as workplace violence programs, provides new avenues to approach supervisors.

• Supervisors’ attitude toward the perceived cost of the referral. Supervisors’ concern about damaging the employee’s career, apprehension over the time and effort of making a referral, and the support they’ll receive from HR and management, loyalty to employees, and fear that confrontation would cause political repercussions, are all critical areas that need to be addressed in trainings.

Source: Tamara Cagney.

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