Customized Employment Overview
The customized employment planning process facilitates employment possibilities for students who might otherwise not achieve employment.
Customized employment planningis a flexible process designed to personalize the employment relationship between a job seeker and an employer in a way that meets the needs of both. It is based on an individualized match between the strengths, conditions, and interests of a job candidate and the identified business needs of an employer.
Customized employment utilizes an individualized approach to employment planning and job development — one person at a time . . . one employer at a time.
Why Customized Employment?
Customized employment planning is a positive process that focuses on “real work in the real world” and involves:
  • Linking the student with the subsequent job development efforts to be conducted and to the actual job tasks identified by the employer.
  • Painting an accurate picture of the student's life and relationships.
  • Opposing negative evaluations, reputations and perceptions which might exist concerning the student.
  • Welcoming and empowering others, especially those closest, into the life and employment outcomes of the student.
  • Developing relationships with potential connectors and mentors in the community.
  • Assisting with the transition from the student's current life circumstance to the life of an employee.
  • And most importantly, resulting in an individualized, customized job for the student.
The customized employment process includes some or all of the following:
  • Strategically matching information gathered about a job seeker through the Discovery process to information gathered through a needs analysis of an employer. This connects the needs of both the employer and the job seeker.
  • Developing an individualized employment relationship between the employee and employer.
  • Focusing on the employee's strengths, needs, interest to include the conditions for the employee to demonstrate them at a their best level of performance
  • Meeting the specific needs of an employer with the goal of a mutually acceptable agreement.
  • Creating a new position through job restructuring that matches the job seeker’s interests and abilities.
  • Making changes to various aspects of existing jobs, such as allow an employee to work different schedules or change the way a job duty is performed
  • The employer provides reasonable accommodations and other workplace supports.
  • A win-win situation for both the employee and the employer!
Customized employment may take the form of:
  • Task reassignment: Some of the job tasks of current workers are reassigned to a new employee. This reassignment allows the current worker to focus on the critical functions of his/her job (i.e., primary job responsibilities). Task reassignment typically takes the form of job creation, whereby a new job description is negotiated based on current, unmet workplace needs.
  • Job carving: An existing job description is modified — containing one or more, but not all, of the tasks from the original job description.
  • Job sharing: Two or more people share the tasks and responsibilities of a job based on each other's strengths.
  • Self-Employment: This allows for an individual to receive assistance in the creation of an independently owned small business (typically a microenterprise, under five employees). The business is based on the strengths and dreams of an individual and the unmet need of a local market while incorporating the individualized planning and support strategies needed for success.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” is something we’ve all been asked at different times in our lives. When we graduate from high school we usually have some idea of the profession where we hope to have a career. If not, we are expected to figure it out as we attend college or as we experience different jobs in the world of work.
Sadly for students with developmental disabilities this is most often not the case. It is often thought that a real job in the real world is not possible because they need “too much support.”
According to a National Harris Poll conducted in 2004:
  • As many as 90% of children with disabilities are living at poverty level three years after graduation.
  • Only one out of ten persons with a developmental disability will achieve integrated, competitive employment, and most earn less than $2.40 an hour in a sheltered workshop.
The truth is that everyone can work! What work looks like for some is quite different than how it may look for others. The traditional labor market approach (matching people to existing job openings) very rarely results in jobs for people with developmental disabilities.
Resources

This material on Customized Employment was developed by Griffin-Hammis Associates and is used with permission.